Newer Cincinnati homes leak too, usually from a single poured-wall crack from settlement or shrinkage, a cove-joint seam, or a failed or undersized builder sump. The clay soil and water table are the same regardless of age. The fix is often crack injection or a sump upgrade, not a full system.
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A newer home is no guarantee of a dry basement in Cincinnati, because the two big drivers (water-holding clay soil and a seasonally high water table) do not care how old the house is. That said, newer homes tend to leak differently than the pre-1940 stock, and the difference points to the fix. The most common newer-home leak is a single crack in a poured-concrete wall: poured walls develop shrinkage cracks as the concrete cures and settlement cracks as the home settles in its first few years, and a vertical or diagonal crack can start weeping after a heavy rain. For a documented single-crack source, the fix is crack injection ($400 to $1,500) rather than a full drainage system, which is one of the few times a smaller targeted repair genuinely solves the whole problem. Other common newer-home sources: seepage at the cove joint where the slab meets the wall (which, if it is happening around the perimeter rather than at one spot, indicates hydrostatic pressure and points back to interior drainage), and a builder-grade sump pump that is undersized or has failed (a sump upgrade with a proper pump and a backup is the fix). Builders install the minimum viable sump, often a cheap plastic unit with no backup, which is exactly the configuration that fails in the first big storm. We diagnose newer-home leaks the same way we do older ones, by finding where water actually appears, but the menu of likely causes is shorter and the fixes are often less invasive. The mistake to avoid is assuming a new home cannot have a real water problem and ignoring early seepage; addressing a single crack or a weak sump early is far cheaper than waiting until a finished basement is damaged.