April Fools’: 2K buys Paradox, Millennia is the “next civ game in development”

By | April 1, 2024

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.

Ara: History Untold: Dev Diary, Ep. 18 – Scouts

By | March 27, 2024

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.

Millennia released!

By | March 26, 2024

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.

New indie game release: LakeSide

By | March 26, 2024

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.

Buy it here, and discuss it with us here.

Millennia – the reviews

By | March 25, 2024

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.

Discuss the reviews with us here.

PolyCast 431: Daylight Savings

By | March 24, 2024
PolyCast Logo

The four-hundred-and-thirty-first episode of PolyCast, “Daylight Savings“ is now available for streaming on the PolyCast YouTube Channel. This episode features regular co-hosts CanusAlbinus, Stephanie “Makahlua”, and Jason “MegaBearsFan”. Topics for this episode include:

News
– 00h02m50s | March Challenge of the Month: The Ides of March
– 00h12m45s | Latest Information on the Civilization Mobile Game
– 00h14m46s | Millennia Release Date and Ages Dev Diary
– 00h22m06s | AI LLM Simulations Often Choose Violence and Nuclear War
Forum Talk
– 00h32m52s | A Comparison Between Civ4’s Nationality and Civ6’s Loyalty
Research Lab
– 00h50m41s | Possibilities for Group Victories

NOTE: This Episode was recorded on March 16, 2024.

PolyCast is a bi-weekly audio production recording live every other Saturday at 12 Noon US Eastern Time throughout the year, in an ongoing effort to give the Civilization community an interactive voice.

The next episode is scheduled to be streamed live at 12:15 PM EDT on March 30, 2024.

Come and discuss this episode with us here.

Millennia Developer Diary – Art of the Ages

By | March 23, 2024

We got another developer diary from the new Paradox game Millennia!
This time the diary is about the art style. As we are already used from civ, most items, no matter if technology, unit, improvements and others have their own customized icons, as well as 3D models. The ages also have their own art style, obviously. This diary contains a range screenshots, which are better suited to provide any more information, so please check this thread.

CivBattleRoyale Season 4 (CBR X4) – Episode 1

By | March 22, 2024

The Civ5 Battle Royale is huge but the concept of the show is pretty simple! On a massive world map, 61 AI Civilizations got at it to see which one can be the last one standing. All Civilizations are chosen by the audience of the civbattleroyale reddit group and part of the fun is helping narrate the story collectively along with original content and putting your support behind one of the competitors. No human intervention in the show as a several months long game is recorded and then curated into episodes across the action. Episodes are narrated by members of their 10k+ sized community cheering on the AIs on their unpredictable route to victory. Three seasons have been recorded so far, and the 4th one has just started, the first episode you can find above. If you are interested in following or discussing, then join us in our thread here.