Even in 2025 we continue to provide you a new Civ4 challenge each month!
If you want to compete this month for the crown of best Civ4 player, then we want you to play the following game: You play as Bisma…. Weihnachtsman from the magical kingdom on a cold standard size Earth2 map on Monarch difficulty. The deadline for this game is February 3. For more details please check this thread.
The whole title doesn’t fit into the name of the thread, but it’s “Civilization 7 senior historian prays it’ll be a ‘gateway drug’ into textbooks: ‘I teach undergraduates in my other life, and my God, man, they don’t read'”.
Our Firaxis forum resident @Andrew Johnson [FXS] told us about it, and he’s also the name-giving historian.
For most of our other forum residents it’s at least a well-known idea that Civ games can spark someone’s interest in history. It seems that actual historians (even if employed by Firaxis) hope for the same, as apparently there is currently a trend to read less books which results in less knowledge, and maybe Civ7 can be again another trigger to be more interested in history.
Andrew also talks about how the game could lock you into a specific perspective, which Civ7 tries to avoid better, although he dislikes one of the very concepts necessary for games, the “winning” part, which doesn’t exactly go well with history.
For more insights, please read the article here.
Our member @Isengardtom also pointed out that this month’s PCGamer (the physical edition) has an article about Civ7 which is not yet online, but seems to be pretty positive. We’re afraid that for now, to get all this spicy info, you’d have to buy the magazine, as only some sparse details are online.
Join us here to discuss the latest info from PCGamer.
Our eternal Civilization IV Hall of Fame has been updated – 9 games were accepted since the previous update.
Congratulations to nocho for the highest score of the update with a Tiny, Marathon, Emperor, Space Colony game for 539,238 points.
nocho and fizbankovi were the most active players during this update, submitting 2 games each.
Only one player was brave enough to take on Deity this update:
​New Number One Entries:
A number of players gained number one positions:
– Lcpl Jack Jones with a 2050 AD, Large, Epic, Immortal, Time game for 18,758 points.
– nocho with a 1374 AD, Tiny, Marathon, Emperor, Space Colony game for 539,238 points.
– Alexfin with a 1160 AD, Standard, Normal, Prince, Cultural game for 91,118 points.
– donsig with a 2050 AD, Small, Quick, Settler, Time game for 7,115 points.
​
Gauntlet Updates
G-Major 192
Congratulations to nocho for winning this with a score of 440,603 followed by Lcpl Jack Jones with 108,421 and Noble Zarkon on 13,970.
G-Minor 280
Congratulations to nocho for winning this with a date of 1442AD followed very closely by Conquistador 63 in 1454AD and then zbgayumn in 1897AD.
If you want to congratulate the winners, then join us here.
We also start the new year of 2025 with a new challenge for you to play! In this Civ6 GOTM you play Yongle of China on a standard size hot and wet Continents & Islands map with low sea level on Prince difficulty. You get a legendary start, Barbarian Clans, Monopolies & Corporations, and you need to use this setup for a scientific victory. As usual you get one month time until February 1. For all the details please check this thread.
The Baltimore Banner, a news website dedicated to Baltimore, has just before Christmas ran a title called “How Baltimore County became a hidden world of video game companies“.
As many of you know, Baltimore is the home to our most important gaming studio, Firaxis, but not only that. Its predecessor, Microprose, responsible for Civ1+2 was also situated in Baltimore, and more recently also many things have happened there. Firaxis personnel has spawnd other studios like “Big Huge Games”, which were responsible for “Rise of Nations”, and very recently Oxide Games, which has developed “Ara: History Untold”. And we don’t know yet what games will come from 2 other studios founded by Firaxis employees, Bit Reactor and Midsummer Studios.
If you want to read a bit more, then check out the article by the Baltimore Banner here, and discuss it with us here.
GamesRadar has today published an article called “Civ 5 caused a commotion at a space agency its creative director used to work at“.
It seems that Ed Beach had worked as a contractor for the NASA, working at the Hubble Space telescope.
It seems that the institute who’s dealing with the telescope is sitting in Baltimore, where also Firaxis is, and when Hubble was added in BNW, this made quite some people happy.
Read the article here, and discuss it with us here.
Firaxis has released another short video, this time about one of the natural wonders, the Redwood Foreset. The ingame wonder reaches over 3 tiles, and will give quite some massive yield gain. Check out our discussion here.