And we continue the Civ5 GOTM series also in April. This time you play as Gajah Mada of Indonesia on a standard size donut map on Warlord level. You need to win via a culture victory, and prevent all other civs from achieving another victory! You have until May 1 to complete this GOTM. For all details, please check this thread.
The bussiness magazin seems to have strayed a bit away from serious bussiness, and has published an artilce about the Top 8 strategy games out there. The selection is a bit random, including Football Manager and Starcraft II, but is topped by one of our favourite titles, Civ6.
An excerpt:
Civilization is perhaps the most iconic strategy game series in the world. With over 30 years of history, it’s the series that many people go to for their strategy kick, and while there have been countless imitators, none have come close to topping it.
For the Easter Civ3 GOTM you play as queen Elizabeth of the English on a normal size archipelago map with raging barbarians on Monarch level. There is a special rule for this GOTM, all harbours for all civs are half price, so that it is easier to conquer the seas! As usual for the Civ3 GOTM you get 3 months to finish it, until June 30. For more information please see this thread.
Breaking news!
According to latest news, as reported by Kotaku, PCGames, and others, 2K has announced that it is buying Paradox Games, and that the next part of the Civ series is actually the just released Millennia.
The articles say that 2K has been actively looking into expanding their portfolio (as also shown last week’s purchase of Gearbox), and given that many people who play Civ also play the grand strategy games from Paradox, this is surely a welcome addition.
Regarding Civ7, internal sources said the following: “We finally started work on Civ VII in 2023, despite not being really satisfied with the ideas we had for it. Then in February we tried the Millennia demo, and realized it was way better than what we had internally. So we made some inquiries, and are now pleased to announce that we have bought Paradox Interactive!”. The original “Civ7” team is said to now be working on Millennia DLCs. At least one article mentioned that the highest priority DLC was for customizable GDR skins (most likely part of the Atomic Ambitions DLC), as they would be especially noteworthy on Millennia’s combat screen. The GDR has been a favourite of the civ community for years, so the sales of this DLC are expected to be considerable.
Sid Meier himself is said to be particularly fond of the alternative ages. This would allow further alternative choices, like generating an actually flat earth in the Millennia universe. Flat earths have been for a long time well represented in Civ, ignoring all issues with map projections. The devs hope that an in-world flat earth will finally satisfy people who have been critical onf the grid-based movement, which does not scale well with the latitude on a globe, but does not cause issues on a flat earth.
Among the more usual details are that beloved leaders like Gandhi and Napoleon will be reintroduced into the now leaderless Millennia game, and that new civs like the Maya, Poland or Australia will be available as future DLCs.
Sources:
– https://www.kotaku.com/2024/03/2K-buys-paradox-millennia-civ7/
– https://www.pcgamer.com/Firaxis-Paradox-merger/
– https://en.ign.com/civilization-7/979615/news/millennia-next-civ
Please join us for the discussion here.
And we are now at the 16th dev diary for Ara: History Untold.
This time the devs talk about scouts and exploration. They are apparently busy with finishing the game, the dev diaries are therefore a bit shorter. This dev diary also tells us mostly some of what you expect, that there is wildlife, that you can find resources, etc. But it seems that you also need to equip your units, and that resources which you find are visible to all nations, so there will be a lot of competition!
Check it out, and discuss it with us here.
The new history-themed game developed by Paradox, Millennia, has been released today.
We made a whole forum for this game, and you might want to check out the following threads:
We are looking forward to many interesting discussions.
This game has been in development and alpha-stage for a while, as you can see by the above video by GamerZakh, which is now 2 years old. But today it has been released, so it’s worth a thread!
This game is a side scrolling city builder, which I am not sure is a usual thing. Instead of looking down on your city, and planing from the bird’s eye perspective, you’re looking at it from the side, and planing houses into a pixel art landscape. There seem to be multiple stages of each house, you can upgrade your buildings, and even build wonders like the pyramids or the colosseum, if you just have enoug resources!
Due to the pixel art the game runs also on rather old computers. The price is normally 14.99, but has been discounted until April 1 down to 10.49.
The first reviews for Millennia are in!
The verdict seems similar to what the Civ-Fanatics crowd has noticed during the demo: The game has interesting ideas, and can fascinate you for a while. The graphics aren’t pretty though, and there are things which do not connect nicely, gameplay wise. The civs are bland, but the ages and economy are interesting. Overall probably a solid game, which needs some more work (patches, tweaking and expansions), to make it potentially a great game.