Earlier this month, we asked you to vote for your favourite strategy games of all time to celebrate the launch (and glorious return) of several strategy classics this month, including Relic's WW2 RTS Company Of Heroes 3, Blue Byte's The Settlers: New Allies and Cyanide's fantasy Warhamball Blood Bowl 3. And cor, I've never seen such love for individual expansions and total conversion mods among mainline RTS games and 4Xs. As with all strategy games, however, there can only be one victor - and you can find out what that single strategy game to rule them all is right here. Here are your 50 favourite strategy games of all time, as voted for by you, the RPS readership.
]]>A few weeks ago, I talked about a number of new features coming to RPS in 2023, and here we are with our very first edition of Ask RPS! This is a new mailbag feature where RPS supporters get to pose questions to the RPS Treehouse team (mostly video games-related, though not necessarily always), and we then answer those questions in public posts for everyone to get involved with. Easy peasy.
To kick us off, our first question comes courtesy of Old_Man_Gaming, who asked: "What was the first game that really grabbed you and dominated your life?"
Come and find out which games had us trapped in the throes of childhood mania below, and why not tell us about your own gaming obsessions in the comments? You might just find a surprise kindred spirit.
]]>When is Civilization not Civilization? When it’s Unciv, a free to play, open-source reimagining of Sid Meier’s Civilization V that’s being developed by volunteers on GitHub. After nearly three years in development and releases on Android, Linux, and through itch.io, Unciv’s now moving its units onto Steam. You'll be able to play multiplayer Unciv, but that involves using Dropbox for syncing, which isn’t free to use.
]]>Sid Meier, that legendary game dev whose name sits before the names of Civilization games, had a lovely chat with our very own Nate Crowley this weekend, as part of PAX Online X EGX Digital. The pair talked all about some of the most notable parts of Meier's career - including, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization - as well as chat about his upcoming book, Sid Meier's Memoir!: A Life In Computer Games. And thanks to computers, you can watch their whole chat in full below.
]]>Gandhi is one of the most unique figure in history. His adherence to non-violence, his establishment of a full-fledged philosophy behind it and, above all, his success, are practically without precedent. Kings, empires and leaders can often blur into each other. The locations change, the dates are different and the numbers differ, but the essence remains the same. Gandhi was something completely different, and yet games try to represent him with the same pieces they use for everyone else - and so they always make him something far less than he was.
]]>It's been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that's happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day's work for us. Below you'll find our picks for the 50 greatest games released on PC across the past decade.
]]>Well, it's finally happened. On Monday, Apple released the feared MacOS "Catalina" update, killing compatibility for dozens of 32-bit games. From this week onwards, updated Macs just flat out won't run 'em. In the constant churn of developing newer, faster, and sleeker operating systems, the Mac makers have given curators of older games a simple choice: put in the work to bring your games up to speed, or we're leaving them behind.
For some publishers, updating countless classics simply isn't worth the effort, leaving many 32-bit hits in the ground for good.
]]>To this day, the jaunty static of the opening jingle to Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town brings me back to a simpler time. Summer evenings spent hunched over my Game Boy SP, a pane of glass between me and nature’s suburban bounty as I tilled my little squares of land, pet my happy little chickens, and bribed a town’s worth of reticent heartthrobs into falling for my little blonde avatar, Pepper, with an onslaught of ores, animal products, and various culinary delights (but never cucumbers, ya’ gummy-mouthed fish-man).
Harvest Moon was about as wholesome as wholesome gets, my first videogame love, but as the days turned to years, we grew apart. Since then, I’ve filled the hole in my heart with the usual suspects, (Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and so on) until there was only one thing left to do: make my own Harvest Moon. And so began my ongoing personal quest to turn every game I own that is unfortunate enough to not be Harvest Moon into the farming simulation game they were always meant to be. Here, in true naturalist fashion, I present my field notes in the hope that we may go on to tame this new frontier together.
]]>Your time is important. And you know what? So is mine. Here’s this week’s podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. It’s about how your life is dripping away every second you play Stardew Valley.
]]>Ah, 2010! Lady Gaga and Beyoncé were tearing up the dancefloor with Telephone, Inception was fuelling one million drunk 'philosophical' conversations, Jackass had gone 3D, and Civilization V had yet to reach that point in every Civ game's lifespan where it's declared superior to its successor. If you wish to party like it's 2010, you might enjoy a new Civilization VI mod made by actual Civ 6 art director Brian Busatti. It aims to make Civ 6's landscape, buildings, and units look more like Civ 5, less vibrant and more 'realistic'. Yeah, but like, what if we're still dreaming we're playing Civ - does the game ever stop or will "one more turn" keep going forever? Makes you think, maaan.
]]>I’ve been playing Civilization long enough to remember building gaudy palaces that combined Arabic minarets with Ionic columns, and the sight of pixel-drawn Stalin grimacing at me with his retinue of Asiatic advisers. But after 20-something years and untold in-game millennia, I’ve finally begun to feel its insatiable fantasy of empire-building subside. Luckily, total overhaul mods exist.
]]>We've just passed the half-way point of 2018, so Ian Gatekeeper and all his fabulously wealthy chums over at Valve have revealed which hundred games have sold best on Steam over the past six months. It's a list dominated by pre-2018 names, to be frank, a great many of which you'll be expected, but there are a few surprises in there.
2018 releases Jurassic World Evolution, Far Cry 5 Kingdom Come: Deliverance and Warhammer: Vermintide II are wearing some spectacular money-hats, for example, while the relatively lesser-known likes of Raft, Eco and Deep Rock Galactic have made themselves heard above the din of triple-A marketing budgets.
]]>“Sid [Meier] didn’t know he was inventing a genre back in ’91 - if he had he might have been a lot more careful. He was just making it up as he went along.”
That’s how genres begin. By mistake. Somebody creates a set of rules and systems for the needs of a particular game, and then either people adopt and adapt those rules. Soren Johnson, creator of Offworld Trading Company and lead designer of Civilization IV, is working on a new game called Ten Crowns and after spending almost an hour talking with him at GDC, I get the impression he’s going to be very careful indeed. Not cautious, because I expect some bold reinvention of 4X strategy fundamentals, but careful in his treatment of a genre that we both agree needs to escape its own past.
]]>What do you reckon is the greatest threat to the future of humanity? Climate change? Nuclear war? A global epidemic? They’re all causes for concern, but it’s my belief that one of the greatest risks is actually posed by superintelligent AI.
You might need some convincing of that, which is why researchers at the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk have made a mod for Civilisation V that introduces potentially apocalyptic AI. Ignore the pressing need for AI safety research, and it’s game over.
I tried it out last week, seeking to answer two questions. Does it accurately portray the risks involved with the development of a god-like being? And is it any fun?
]]>Last month, the University of Cambridge’s Centre for the Study of Existential Risk released a mod for Civ V that introduced superintelligent AI to the game - not in the form of AI opponents, but as a technology that can end the game for every player if it's left unchecked. It's a novel overhaul to the science system, as well as an attempt to teach people about AI safety.
While I had some problems with the mod, I also thought it was a fascinating idea. Keen to learn more, I spoke to project director Shahar Avin about how the mod came about, the issues that it presents both poorly and well, and how people can get involved with AI safety themselves.
]]>I get knocked down, but I get up again, you're never gonna keep me down. That's what I'll be singing when I play Civilization VI's upcoming Rise and Fall expansion. There are loads of new features but the unifying theme is, as the title suggests, success, failure and recovery. That means dark ages that come with hardships but also bring about the possibility of a renaissance into a heroic age. All of that, and much more, is explained in the brand new video below.
]]>In Civilization, civilization is a competition. Land and resources are limited, and even those nations that don't expand through military might are attempting to climb to the top of the league table in other ways. Geography, technology, culture, religion, diplomacy – they're all, to some extent, weapons to be deployed, or at least arenas where an advantage can be gained. Culture and history are the clothes that Civ wears but it's not really about building an empire or a nation, it's about sharpening a knife.
The upcoming Rise and Fall expansion for Civ VI introduces several new playable nations, but the introduction of one civ has led to criticism from an unexpected source. Yesterday, Milton Tootoosis, an elected headman-councillor of the Poundmaker Cree Nation, spoke to CBC News about the inclusion of the Saskatchewan First Nation. He acknowledged excitement about the news and noted that historical chief, Poundmaker, is to be portrayed as working to build “a bridge between settlers and First Nations”. But he also voiced a fundamental concern about the portrayal: “It perpetuates this myth that First Nations had similar values that the colonial culture has, and that is one of conquering other peoples and accessing their land.” It's a concern that cuts to the heart of what Civilization has always been and - I hope - to what it could become.
]]>Researchers at the University of Cambridge's Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (an actual real institution) have released a Civilization V mod exploring the hot new apocalypse everyone's talking about: unchecked AI casually wiping out humanity in the name of efficiency. If you've already clicked through the universe as a single-minded AI in Frank Lantz's ace Paperclips, you might fancy this mod. Trapping a brilliant mind in a metal box does also have its benefits, you know.
]]>Another year over, a new one just begun, which means, impossibly, even more games. But what about last year? Which were the games that most people were buying and, more importantly, playing? As is now something of a tradition, Valve have let slip a big ol' breakdown of the most successful titles released on Steam over the past twelve months.
Below is the full, hundred-strong roster, complete with links to our coverage if you want to find out more about any of the games, or simply to marvel at how much seemed to happen in the space of 52 short weeks.
]]>Jon Shafer, the lead designer of Firaxis's Civilization V and his own strategy game At the Gates, is gone from strategy specialists Paradox only six months after joining. Paradox say neither that he ditched the company nor that they fired him, rather that they have all "decided to part ways due to creative differences." How enigmatic! We didn't even know what he was working on.
]]>Jon Shafer was 21 years old when he became lead designer of Civilization V. Now working at Paradox on an unannounced project and on his own historical strategy game At The Gates in his spare time, he says he's learning from the likes of Spelunky along with the more obvious strategic influences. We spoke about how the second half of every Civ sucks, the part the series played in his life, the perils of boredom in strategy design, how much we love maps, and what the future holds for both Shafer and Paradox.
I began by asking how he ended up sitting at the Paradox Convention, in Stockholm, the city that has now been his home for two weeks: "It's quite a long story, actually."
That story begins in Denver, around 2003.
]]>Video games always come with an expectation that the player will suspend disbelief to some extent. Genetically engineered super-soldier clones don’t exist, radiation has never and will never work like that, and overweight Italian plumbers could never make that jump. In most cases, if we are unwilling or unable to suspend our disbelief, we may well struggle to enjoy the game and our questioning of the basics of its ‘reality’ would probably make us insufferable to be around.
There are some games however, where the realities of our world are key to enjoying the game. These are the builders like City Skylines, simulators and sports games like Prison Architect and FIFA, and even crime games like Grand Theft Auto. One genre has a particular problem when it comes to maintaining a foot in the real world yet still creating a setting where one can have fun without becoming mired in morally questionable events and choices: historically based games. And among historical games, few subjects are as complex to represent as slavery. Many have tried, from Europa Universalis IV and Victoria II to Civilization and Assassin's Creed: Freedom Cry, and in this article I'll investigate the portrayal and use of slavery in these games and more to explore what they get right, what they get wrong, and how games could do better in future.
]]>A month ahead of its release, I’ve spent a week with Civilization VI [official site]. The build of the game is near-complete, though only ten of the twenty civs are playable and there are some limits on startup settings. When I heard that I’d be able to play so much of the game so long before release, I hoped that was evidence of 2K’s confidence in what they had to show.
Whether that’s true or not, they should be brimming with confidence. Civ VI is excellent.
]]>Last month I spent four hours playing Civilization VI on a very hot day in central London. I came away wishing I could play for another four hundred hours, and also wishing that I had an ice cream. Mint and choc chip preferably.
Since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what Civ VI is doing and how its many systems create a brilliant competitive race through history while also producing some weird tensions around the idea of what a civilization actually is in the context of the game. Are cultures defined by the choices they make, by their surroundings, their neighbours, by determination or by chance? Whatever the answer might be, one thing is sure: Cleopatra hates me.
]]>I made a silent promise to myself that I wouldn't post every single new leader/civ reveal for Civilization VI [official site] because, really, do you need a video to tell you that France is likely to have some big cultural advantages based around museums, and that Japan might have its own warrior code, and cities that enjoy the benefits that come from island life and seafood? The Egyptian video is a good one though, teasing out some details of the new adjacency bonuses for improvements, and the ways that early game strengths might change through the course of a campaign.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Sid Meier is famous for his line that games are "a series of interesting decisions." Which makes it interesting that Sid Meier's Civilization V is a game about telling people to stand still over and over again.
]]>I say top ten, but there are actually only seven different games in the past week's Steam charts, once pre-orders and deluxe editions are filtered out. It seems like a lifetime ago that Stardew Valley and Factorio were doing a little indie rampage around the charts, as Steam's best-sellers have now very much reverted to big-brand type. Also: pre-ordering sure doesn't seem to be going away any time soon, no matter how unwise it might seem.
]]>As if 2016 didn't already contain a rich enough seam of strategy games, Firaxis announce today that Civilization VI will be released on October 21st. Development duties are in the hands of the team behind Civ V's expansions, Gods & Kings and Brave New World, and when we spoke to designer Ed Beach and associate producer Sarah Darney last week to learn all the details, they told us that almost every system from the complete Civ V will be included in the sequel: trade routes, religious systems, archaeology...there'll be no need to wait for expansions, it's all in the base game.
The game is running on a brand new suite of software, built to be far more mod-friendly than its predecessor, and as well as brand new AI systems, there are a host of new mechanics that will explore and emphasise your relationship with Civ's greatest character: the map.
]]>The last big official update to Civilization V [official site] came in 2013 with its second large expansion, Brave New World. Three years later, and almost six years after the game’s original release, there’s another big new release expected, but it’s not an official expansion. It’s the Community Patch Project (CPP; to be named Vox Populi on release), a community-made mod that overhauls and improves a majority of the game’s systems in an attempt to make Civilization V the best game it possibly can be.
]]>When Civilization II came out, I spent an entire summer playing it for several hours a day. The only check on my binging was the fact that my parents would eventually come home and force me to pretend, for a few hours at least, that I cared about things other than Civilization II.
I was a senior in college when Civilization IV arrived. I'd barely played strategy games at all for the previous four years, and "senioritis" brought with it a case of intense nostalgia. I bought it in the spring before graduation. It was still consuming my days and nights when the leaves fell later that year.
That was probably the last time my enjoyment of a 4X game was pure and uncomplicated. Lately, I've been wondering where that joy has gone, and why so few games seem to add anything essential to those old experiences.
]]>One day I'll write a Desert Island Discs about the games I'd keep with me until the end of days, given a choice of ten. It'll no doubt be a Desert Island Digital Downloads given the absence of physical media in my life. I live with the ghosts of entertainment.
Rather than compiling the list of games I'd take to the Vault with me though, today I'm aiming to put together a collection, one from each genre, that I'd use to introduce those genres to a PC gaming newcomer, or a lapsed gamer. A friend inspired this particular bundle of joy, someone who grew up with an Amiga but developed other interests and hasn't touched a game for more than a few minutes at a time, either console or PC, for over fifteen years. A recent illness has left him unable to engage in his usual outdoor hobbies and games have filled the gap.
]]>Oh, Civilization: Beyond Earth [official site], how sad you make me. You work so very hard to make me love you but... well, maybe you're fundamentally unlovable. The Rising Tide expansion, that was a good try. You became more alien, less like your dad trying to wear a spacesuit, but gosh, you made a pig's ear of Diplomacy, didn't you? Bugs and bonkers design decisions queered the pitch.
But maybe it's not too late. I hear there's a big new patch intended to address one of your biggest problems; what flowers are you bringing to my door this time?
]]>Rising Tide [official site] is the first, and some might say much-needed, expansion pack for Beyond Earth, the sci-fi Civilization V spin-off which met a somewhat muted reception. It's out tomorrow, but I've spent the last few days with it.
It's so much better. It's so much worse.
]]>Here's the latest Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide [official site ] trailer talking about hybrid affinities, overthrowing dictatorships, and combining harmony and purity in a part faux-propaganda, part technical rundown of what the upcoming expansion has to offer.
]]>Who'd win in a war: Pagan Min out Far Cry 4 or Gandhi? Sure, Min's great at murder and oppression and has a crack army and all that, but push Gandhi too far and nukes will fly. In Civilization V [official site], anyway.
Custom civilisations are one of the more common Civ mod types, but I do like the look of a new mod adding Pagan Min and the nation of Kyrat. They're mostly focused archeology and exploration, see, though can always deploy those horrible sneaky Hunter soldiers, the gits in the hoods who pelt you with arrows then vanish. Yeah, you can have them.
]]>Toward the end of February, Richard Moss documented the great AI wars that were sweeping through the Civ V [official site] community. If you haven't read that feature, you should do so immediately. I'd intended to follow the 42-player AI-only game as updates arrived but when I checked in yesterday, it was my first visit in a good while. And, to my horror, I found that the game had stalled. Something was rotten in the code of Japan and the save file crashed when processing the nation's 239th turn.
The save file ended up in the hands of Firaxis but Battle Royale organiser TPangolin managed to find a solution before hearing back from the devs. A few hours after I checked in, the problem had been fixed. The AI wars continue and, by thunder, they make for good reading.
]]>A strange thing happened in the Civilization community r/civ on January 10, 2015. Inspired by similar, smaller-scale offerings by a Twitch.tv livestream and fellow redditor DarkLava (from whom he explicitly sought permission), user Jasper K., aka thenyanmaster, shared the first part of an experiment he was conducting wherein he put 42 computer-controlled civilisations in their real-life locations on a giant model of the Earth and left them to duke it out in a battle to the death, Highlander style (except instead of heads they need capital cities).
Since then, the practice has exploded in popularity. Reddit's Civilization community has AI-only fever, but what exactly is so compelling about watching the computer play a very slow-paced turn-based strategy game with itself?
]]>Offworld Trading Company is a combat-free, sci-fi real-time strategy game from the lead designer of the sumptuous Civilization IV.
A great concept with a great pedigree – can it possibly be as good as it sounds? But enough about Snickers More Nuts, let’s talk about Soren Johnson’s new game, an Early Access version of which was released this week.
]]>Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. Scenario Generator is a tool that creates random restrictions, goals and startup settings for a variety of games, and it's the reason I've become happily lost in Crusader Kings II [official site] and Civ V [official site] again. Reinvent an old favourite with the click of a button, as you find out precisely how often you can commit Unprovoked Murder.
]]>The inimitable forces behind Colonialist Legacies have gone and Frankenstein-ed together something audaciously lovely: a fully animated, fully voiced 3D leader screen for their Civilization V mod pack. It's Australia's Henry Parkes and he didn't make his grand entrance on the Internet alone. No, the esteemed gentleman is just one part of their new and improved Australia mod.
]]>A science victory in Civilization is awfully anti-climatic. Thousands of years of research, exploration, art, diplomacy, trade, war, survival, and human progress, and all you have to show for it is a little spaceship popping out your city then flying off the top of the screen. It's nice, but lacks drama. That's where Civilization: Beyond Earth begins, exploring what happens after humanity reaches the stars, so its intro movie offers an extended take on that blastoff. It's all hope and fear and EMOTIONS. Imagine this next time you win a science victory, and try to hold in those little sobs of pride.
]]>A whole new world. A new fantastic point of view.
...I'm so sorry.
However, I am pleased to report that sci-fi strategy game Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth is not simply Civ V with green face paint on. It has the same hexes and it does have much of the same infrastructure as its historical-themed predecessor, but its transformation into something alien goes far more than miasma-coated skindeep. The essential framework of Civ remains, but the final frontier - for the 200 turns with beta code I've spent there - requires a very different sort of thinking.
]]>While visiting Firaxis to play Civilization: Beyond Earth, I spent a couple of hours talking to members of the team and learning how the company works. As the current creators and curators of two of my favourite series of games, Firaxis rank among the most interesting studios in existence, and their history is also a large part of the history of PC strategy gaming. With one eye on the future and the other on the past, here are extended thougts on the utilitarian nature of Civilization, the role of Sid Meier and much much more.
]]>Joking about booking time off work for a video game's release is awfully hackneyed, but I have known people to do it for two series: Grand Theft Auto and Civ. So, just so you know, Civilization: Beyond Earth now has a release date so WINK you might want to WINK book time off work or WINK consider laying the dramatic groundwork for a WINK illness to strike you on October 24.
The news comes alongside a new video with Beyond Earth's co-lead designers talking about the kinda-Alpha-Centurai-ish-but-really-more-Civ-y game, over footage that's mostly cinematics but does give a few tantalising peeks at things including the new web-like tech tree.
]]>Is... Is this E3 news? On day three, I can't tell anymore. Did Sid Meier swing on a trapeze across the E3 concourse to announce that Civilization 5 was now available on SteamOS and Linux? Did Aspyr gather the world's press in an art deco theatre to reveal that this was their first Linux port, after years of porting popular games to Mac? Or is it the case that there was a simple post on Civ V's Steam forum to declare that users of Ubuntu could now begin conquering 4X strategy worlds?
Probably that last one.
]]>Once upon a time, Soren Johnson was the main brain behind Civilization IV. Now he has a mohawk. An indie mohawk. Also, he's making a game about managing a crazy intricate (yet disarmingly accessible) economy on Mars. Last time around we talked about how a Mars economy simulator even works, boardgames, and the current state of strategy gaming, and today we continue that discussion with the future of strategy (and its alleged "death"), MOBAs, the advantages and disadvantages of working at a company like Firaxis, whether or not Johnson will ever make a game on the scale of Civilization ever again, and why Johnson is *glad* that big publishers aren't paying attention to strategy games. It's all below.
]]>The release of Civilization V: The Complete Edition rather suggests we've reached end of the line for Firaxis' latest history-spanning strategy game, and thus can start drawing up our mental wishlists for Civ VI. Though if I've learned anything in this business, it's that there's any number of final-sounding suffixes left in the game names cupboard. Be braced for Civ V: Ultimate, Civ V: Director's Cut, Civ V: What They Couldn't Show Gandhi Doing In Cinemas, and Civ V: In A Different Box.
Back to that shortly, however. The Cool Thing happening off the back of this new omnibus edition is a new and free Civ V scenario that's being given to existing and future Brave New World owners for no-pennies. Said scenario is also a little bit Colonizationy (but only a little bit).
]]>The latest Humble Bundle offers the chance to own three complete Civilizations, as if you were trying to recreate the British Empire. Along with Civs III, IV, the lowest tier contains the recent Ace Patrol games, which are fairly lightweight, but clever, replayable and oddly adorable considering the World War dogfighting subject matter. All of that, along with the latest incarnation of Railroads! can be yours for any chosen price. Pay more than the average (at time of writing, $8.16) and you'll receive Civ V, and the Gods and Kings DLC. More than $15 unlocks the Brave New World DLC as well. BONUS: approximately two days of a Humble Paradox sale remain.
]]>I spent a lot of time playing Civ IV mods, particularly the splendid Fall From Heaven, but I've only tried a couple of alterations to Firaxis' most recent entry in the series, and don't think I've downloaded a single one since installing the two excellent expansions to the base game. That all changed this weekend, when a post on PC Gamer drew my attention to the work of modder framedarchitecture, who has created several historical scenarios and a huge Forgotten Realms total conversion. The Faerun mod requires the Gods and Kings DLC and will disable Brave New World when used, and it adds just about everything you could want from a Dungeons and Dragons themed Civ game.
]]>We've heard tell of the Steam controller's ins and outs (and ups and downs and lefts and rights and Bs and As and starts) from many a developer, but still skepticism reigns. And with good reason: Valve's haptics-powered Franken-pad is kinda bonkers. But now, at the very least, we can see - with eyes or echolocation - how it functions moment-to-moment. Go below to see it power through Portal 2, Civilization V, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and Papers Please.
]]>I've founded religions, spied on my neighbours and sent a spaceship in search of a new home on a distant star. The promise of a Brave New World was enough to bring me crashing back down to Earth though, and I've been making new friends, meeting old enemies and creating great works of art. This latest expansion takes on the greatest challenge of all - injecting some meaningful activity into Civilization's end-game. I've spent a week uncovering its charms and chores, and here's wot I think.
]]>Civ V brings out the worst in me and Brave New World may be the expansion that changes all of that. I was approaching the industrial age in a recent multiplayer game when I realised what a terrible ruler I was - 'terrible' not because I was a failure but because I was too much of a success. I was the coal-devouring, smoke-belching face of global domination, like a nightmarish Punch cartoon come to life, the leader of a people who saw foreign nations as obstacles to be removed. Civ V is a strategy game that encourages the drive toward victory rather than the establishment of a culture with character. Brave New World may change that when it is released on July 12th. Here's an early launch trailer.
]]>Civilization V: Brave New World adds a continent-sized piece of content to Civ V, with nine new civilisations, more wonders, trade-routes, ideologies, and an over-hauled cultural victory. Looks like this could be a fairly big deal compared to Gods & Kings, partly thanks to the "world congress" feature intended to facilitate greater diplomatic happenings between nations.
Footage and details below.
]]>I am saddened to admit that I am not a Civilization player. My brain does not work in that way. No matter how much I try, I just bounce off the game, and then I'm pushed out the way by mean Civ bullies who mock my tactical and diplomatic failings. It's like home economics all over again. But I'm a bigger man than those meanies, and don't begrudge Civ fans the opportunity to see the new expansion pack, A Brave New World. And I don't begrudge Revison3 the hits for the preview that I am shamelessy yoinking. Do click here, as that Sessler guy seems like a nice chap.
]]>I’ve started more games of Civilization V than a hundred men could ever finish and that’s not only because I enjoy discovering new worlds more than I enjoy conquering them. Civilization doesn’t have a compelling end-game, lacking the peaks and troughs of grand strategy, and instead taking a predictable course once the pieces are in place. Brave New World attempts to fix that by overhauling culture, diplomacy and trade.
]]>There's going to be a second major Civilization V expansion. It's called Brave New World, it introduces 9 new Civs, the concepts of tourism, ideologies, international trade routes and archaeology, and basically it sounds like it's pretty huge on an under-the-hood front. I had a big chat with Firaxis lead programmer Ed Beach and senior producer Dennis Shirk on what's in there, why, how it works and why we'll be forming impressive in-game art collections.
]]>How often do you find yourself looking at Civilization V and thinking, 'all this science and culture is fine, but there simply aren't enough deities knocking about the place'. If the answer is 'very often' you might already have bought the Gods and Kings expansion. If not you could read my thoughts on what it does for the game or you could even try it for yourself. There's a demo on Steam and, brilliantly, it's standalone; you won't need the base game to try it. Handy that, for those who held off buying in the hope that an expansion might make the whole thing more appealing. Embarrassingly, I'm not actually sure how much the demo contains but I'd bet fifty pence that it sets a limit on how many turns you can play for.
]]>Civilization V makes people angry. I’ve seen it first hand; perusing the shelves of a local boardgame emporium I was moved to express an opinion about hexes and how much I enjoyed their use in the game. Upwards of twenty furious men immediately formed a stack of doom and pummelled me into submission. “But perhaps the Gods and Kings expansion will make the game more like Civ IV?” one of them asided to his neighbour even as they afflicted my face with blows. “It won’t!” cried future-me from another dimension, at which point my assailants redoubled their efforts to maim me. Thanks future-me. Here’s wot he thinks.
]]>Civ V is integrating with Steam Workshop with the intent of making the use of mods much more user friendly. Create mod collections, browse what's available through Steam and then fall to your knees in anguish because Fall From Heaven is nowhere to be seen in this version of the game and never will be. I haven't explored the modding scene for this one a great deal, although now is the time for revisitations with the Gods and Kings expansion pack due on June 19. I'll be telling you wot I think about that in due course and might be tempted to dip into modland as well.
]]>What happens when you play a single game of Civilization II across ten long years? Well, carpal tunnel syndrome and a lifelong fear of pixels smaller than than the size of a fist. Also, an in-game world which is "a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation", riddled with nuclear fallout and caught in a terrible stalemate between three ultra-nations which have been at war for millennia.
]]>Crush the weak, spare the weekend! Sid Meier and Some Other Peoples' Civilization V is open to all-comers for a bit, from now until some point on Sunday (1PM PDT, whatever that means in real time), making it the perfect time to give its hexy new style a shot. If you like it, you can buy the full game for 75% off, and have plenty of time to get used to it before the imminent Gods and Kings expansion hits. What megalomaniacal goodness does that contain?
]]>I liked Civilisation V, which sometimes causes long-time fans of the series to hurl detritus at me in the streets, but I would never argue that it wasn't lacking features that I craved. Foremost among them was a decent application of the cultural and historical force of religion, so I'm extremely pleased to see that the just announced expansion, Gods and Kings, will bring all manner of theism into the game. Along with religion, there's a focus on bulking out espionage and diplomacy. There will also be plenty of stuff. More details below.
]]>Sometimes the work that goes into a mod is breathtaking. Civilisation V NiGHTS is such a thing, born perhaps equally out of admiration and frustration. The team, led by Markus Beutel, have looked at Civilisation V, stripped it down and rebuilt it from the ground up. They describe the mod as a total conversion but that doesn’t mean it gives you fantasy units, adds magic or allows the use of Achron-style time travel (which I now want, mod community). Instead, this is a remake of the game Firaxis released. A game that is conveniently 75% on Steam this very weekend. The mod has been available and actively updating for almost a year now by my reckoning and it is currently the only way I play Civ V. And I play Civ V a lot.
]]>Civ V's one of those games I've somewhat taken my eye off since launch. While lovely to point my ocular organs at and with a natty new take on Civly combat, it seemed to lack the identity and variety of the evergreen Civ IV. Importantly, however, it's apparently been a continuing slow-burn success, given the steady trickle of new patches and DLC over the last year or so. Latest to the latter's ranks is the introduction of Korea as a playable faction, and a clutch of new wonders.
]]>When we first heard about the Facebook version of Civilization a couple of years back, the prospect was enormously exciting - a persistent online Civ, played from any PC, any time. Of course, back then we perhaps weren't fully aware of the route Facebook games were broadly taking - the pay/spam friends/wait model popularised by FarmVille. There's absolutely nothing to say that model can't be successful and entertaining, but it does mean that Civ World, as the now fully-revealed Facebook Civ has been retitled, is necessarily a very different prospect to Civ itself. In-game footage and dev commentary below...
]]>Wow! It's a good day for passable games getting additional modes. Civilization V, which Alec and I both saw eye to eye about, will be getting updated with a hot seat mode within the next couple of months (hotseat being a multiplayer mode where several players take turns taking... uh, turns on the same PC). Which might seem like a long time to wait for a feature that appeared in Sid Meier's Civnet way back in 1995, but presumably the technology behind it is now so old and irrelevant that nobody understands it anymore, like the tech behind the Apollo space program or the recipe for Greek Fire. Is that likely? I think so.
]]>Big Download note that the patch that makes significant balance changes to Civ V (as well as adding a range of bugfixes and a new building, the Aquaduct) has landed just in time for the Polynesia pack hitting this Thursday, and dutiful Steam might just have updated your game already. You can read the full patch notes here.
Guess what I've got waiting for you beneath the jump. That's right! It's a twenty five minute video review of the new patch by an Eastern European man. Enjoy!
]]>VG24/7 has word that a Polynesia Pack will be available for purchase for Civ V this Thursday, adding a new Civilization and a new scenario for the tidy sum of £2.99. Firaxis are releasing a free map pack on the same day, too. You'll find all your precious details and some ukulele music after the jump.
]]>Wow, just looking at the above screenshot has bumped a cache of memories up into my conscious mind, memories containing lovely sound effects and tense wars. Is Civ V still installed? I need to hear that button-click sound effect again. "Bink," it would say. "That's a good idea, menu button," I would reply. "I should exerminate the infidels."
Anyway, Gamer's Hell has noticed a post over on the 2K forums detailing the upcoming February patch for Civ V. "Significant balance adjustments" are coming designed to make both thinly-spread and highly condensed Empires viable styles of play. Full, monster patch notes after the jump.
]]>A gift! A gift, straight from Mr. Sid Meier himself. If you're quick, you might even get a whiff of mothballs and superglue off it. A couple of DLC packs have just been made available for Civ V- the first, the Mongol Civilization Pack, is completely free, and introduces the Mongols as a civilization and Genghis Khan as their leader. The second, Babylon, which introduces Babylonians and their king Nebuchadnezzar II, actually came with the Civ V deluxe edition and will set you back £3. These aren't just cosmetic upgrades, you know. Each civ in Civ V has their own tiny set of unique advantages and exclusive units.
Alec and I saw eye to eye on Civ V, agreeing that it was a beautiful piece of work with sorely lacking AI. For those who find swallowing someone else's opinion distasteful, a gameplay walkthrough can be watched beneath the jump.
]]>Civ V is out today! And so's the intro movie, which I'm able to embed after the jump because I researched Embedding last turn. Alec and I each had similar criticisms of the game, but maybe you'll think it's the best thing since sliced bread. If you've researched sliced bread, anyway. If you haven't, maybe you'll think it's the best thing since, I dunno, that big stone you found that's excellent for caving people's heads in.
What did you research last turn, readers?
]]>Clearly, we didn't mention the Civ V demo last night because Alec's opinion carries much more weight than your own. Why would you need to "try before you buy" when Alec has crafted the one true objective opinion* to guide your buying hand? No reason at all. Therefore, this Steam-requiring demo is of no interest to anyone. The launch trailer beneath the cut is equally uninteresting, for it can convey nothing which has not been conveyed in the definitive Wot I Think. Quake before our majesty.
*Quinns offers a secondary one true objective opinion over at Eurogamer.
]]>It's out in the US now, but in Europe we've got another two days on the clock. We have a different internet here, you know. It tastes of tea, bad teeth and snootiness. Perfectly understandable that they wouldn't want to see its like in America. Anyway, it's Tuesday, it's five o'clock UK time, and that means I'm going to tell you what I think of the latest slice of history-spanning turn-based strategy. I haven't made any Ghandi gags, though. Sorry about that. I know you were expecting them.
]]>First the absurdly long walkthrough video, and now the whole bally manual for next week's Civ V. If you want to get a head start on what path up the tech tree you need to take to build helicopter gunships and exactly how the no unit stacking combat thinger works, have a read on this. It's got a complete unit breakdown for warlike types and buildings and wonders for the more constructively minded, but sadly the entire tech tree chart isn't in there, nor is there any designer commentary. Should give you a decent sense of how the game does and doesn't differ from its predecessors, though. All being well (i.e. if the build I've got starts behaving itself again) we'll have Words O'Judgement for you on Tuesday.
]]>Sid Meier's Civilization Videogame Number V By Sid Meier is out on September 21st, as is the demo, as is our review, making it a grand day for Civilization fans. Until then you'll have to play very a different game entitled Sid Meier's Tantalization. You can play this game by watching the new two hour developer walkthrough video embedded beneath the jump. Alternatively, you could read Alec's two part write-up of his time with the preview code, or my interview with lead designer Jon Shafer.
Some people might think that Sid Meier's Tantalization is not a very fun game. Well, I have to say to those people, that, I mean. Well.
]]>Jon Shafer is a gamer who did the impossible. In January 2005 he was a modder and an active member of the Civilization fan community. Today, he's the Lead Designer on Civilization V, out on the 24th of this month. I met up with Jon today to ask him about boardgames, how he managed to reach this position in just a few years, what alternatives there were to the improvements coming in Civ V, and seriously how did he manage to reach that position so fast. Blackmail? Gotta be blackmail, surely. Jon found out that Sid Meier coded a satantic message into Railroads! or something.
Click through for the interview. The truth will (probably) shock you.
]]>I'm picking up right where I left off, so please forgive my brusquely providing you with this link to my initial Civ V post rather than summarising.
This time, I wanted to chat about one of the larger (if optional) changes to the age-old Civ formula. To whit (I keep saying "to whit" lately. What's a decent alternative), City States. These are small, static nations which don't compete with you - but they can help you. Alternatively, you could crush them.
]]>'Art Deco' is basically the only school of design I'm at all familiar with. My own approach to design in any regard doesn't go any further than "make most of the colours the same." So when I see something that's Art Deco, I become slightly excited. I recognised a thing that I know! I can sound very vaguely learned! So has it been with Civilization V, a beta build of which I've cuddled up to over the last few weeks. "The menus are Art Deco," I say whenever anyone asks me what the game is like. Then I nod wisely. Then they ask me about hexagons, and I punch them in the teeth.
]]>Oh, boo. Boo. Around 20 people have lost their jobs at Civilization developer Firaxis, reports the K-monster. Apparently those going include members of the quality assurance team, the user interface art team, animators, programmers and designers.
Boo.
]]>An epic Civ V trailer sits below the click, and it contains plenty of game footage, as well as featuring the dev team talking about their plans for the fifth in the absurdly popular strategy series. Interesting that modding is at the forefront of their angle of attack this time, something that they say was inspired by modder responses to the previous game. Anyway, go have a look, I think this is one of the more interesting videos we're going to get this week.
]]>[Boom]. RPS inbox explodes. And so it should - Civ news is always enormous news. Hooray, hooray! Despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth by Civ fans in concern that last year's super-streamlined Civilization Revolution on console meant the end of Civ tradition, the freshly-revealed Civilization V (CiV?) looks about as PC as PC gets. By which I mean, "hexes."
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