Hooded Horse and Mohawk Games have announced a new expansion for their resolutely pre-modern 4X strategy game Old World. It’s called Empires of the Indus, and as you may guess, it concerns the nations and cultures that once flourished along the banks of the river Indus, running through central and south Asia. Nations and cultures like “the mighty Mauryas, who founded one of the greatest Iron Age empires under the rule of Emperor Ashoka” and “the nomadic horse lords of the Yuezhi who transformed the region as the Kushan Empire”.

Each new faction gets different objectives and mechanics, like elevating Buddhism into a world religion, or overseeing a massive catfight between the rival families of the Tamilakam. The expansion also introduces Hinduism to the game, together with four new Wonders, jungle terrain, over 200 new events, 60 fresh ambitions and four additional rare resources.

Last but not least, there’s a new tribe to reckon with, the Huns. Please find below a trailer, recently unearthed from an archaeological site deep in the Seshachalam Hills.

Empires of the Indus is coming to Steam, GOG and Epic on March 30th. It’s the seventh big DLC pack for a game the mummified scribes of RPS have broadly decreed to be a jolly good time.

“The deeper you wade into Old World the less like Civilization it becomes, until soon it’s only really the hexagons and the race to build a Parthenon tying them together,” wrote Steve Hogarty in 2020. “It’s a story engine as much as it’s a strategy game, one that revels in the playful details of the past, and represents history’s ancient rulers not as the pompous set of weirdos we’re all familiar with, but as capricious drunks, disastrous idiots and beautiful freaks with monkey butlers.”

Nate Crowley (RPS in peace) was similarly besotted, writing in 2021 that “while Humankind has been attracting a lot of attention as the upcoming Pepsi to Civilization’s coke, you might not have been aware of this quiet, beautiful little bottle of Dr Pepper”.

I confess, I think coke, Pepsi and Dr Pepper all taste like ass, so I’m not sure of the implicit pecking order here. Also, I feel like Nate should have invoked some period-specific beverages. In fairness, he did follow up with a complicated lizard analogy, while about 50% of Steve’s piece consists of meditations on monkey butlers, bless him.