Old World

Various events are awesome and add a lot to replayability (even a layer of GoT which is always appreciated!).

As for combat, I think the current system is good, but it can be a little frustrating at times.

The events feel like a story, you familiarize yourself with your dynasty, it feels nice.

It has a steep learning curve - it's almost like a graduate level course after coming from Civilization, but I deeply enjoy its novel systems in the 4x genre.

Along with the DLC which add new civilizations and gameplay updates the game is also constantly getting free updates which improve things like graphics and reworking systems to make the game better like when they changed cities to no longer require a garrison to appoint a governor which I think was a great change.

Also cool in Old World is the setting that makes the AI hate you more and more the closer you get to winning, which simulates a multiplayer FFA lobby quite well imho and keeps the game interesting until the end, when the AI will mass war you to stop you from winning (because of course eventually you would snowball here, too).