The dem of the new (semi) historical 4X game by Paradox games is available for 1 week longer, until February 19. The demo will be single player, and you will be able to play at maximum 60 turns up until the 3rd age. This allows you to explore the age system of Millennia, which allows you get into alternative history, giving overall more interesting options for the game.
For nearly Valentine’s Day Firaxis is giving us a new monthly challenge: The Head Of Cyrus. You play as Tomyris on a duel size hot and arid inland sea map. You get Barbarian clans, and you must win via Domination against an obvious foe. You have the option to play on Prince or Emperor level, and the challenge runs until March 12. For more information please check this thread.
To celebrate Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri 25th Anniversary this week talented fans at CivFanatics have been creating some excellent SMAC content for us all to sit back and enjoy the read below!
Firstly UniversityBase has just released the start of a stunning short film series retelling the story of University faction leader Prokhor Zakharov’s journey to Alpha Centauri. The CGI & animation work is outstanding and Civilization fans will also get a kick out of this as the video begins with the Civ1 intro sequence that started it all for us all those years ago! This is only the first episode so there’s more to come too!More info here.
Secondly ZombiVoziKombi has created a lovely high quality audio & visual album of all of SMAC’s cutscenes, audio & visuals curated and presented under different categories (eg factions). More info here.
Thirdly Axis Kast & MysticWind are continuing their huge SMAC Fan Fiction Photo Essay project producing pages of fascinating info about the planet, the factions, and their leaders. Seeing all the cool images they collect often takes us right back to those first moments landing on planet. More info here.
Fourthly nj666 has continued work on his excellent open-source OpenGL/SDL2 reimplementation/remake of SMAC recently releasing a new version with functioning multiplayer lobby & connection, however despite his rapid progress there’s still a while to go before it’s fully playable. More info here.
Fifthly there’s been plenty of other cool SMAC related things going on over the last year such as the continuation of…
Lastly sadly the beloved AlphaCentauri2.info resource website for all things SMAC has been down for a few months now due to technical problems out of it’s owner Buster’s Uncle ‘s control. The decades of excellent content on that site is irreplaceable so we hope BU can get it going again eventually. In the meantime we’ve got a thread on CivFanatics keeping an eye on the situation.
Well that’s everything we know about! If you know of something else awesome and SMAC related from recent times that we haven’t covered then please let us know in the comments and if it’s your project please make thread about it so we can follow your work! Happy anniversary SMAC fans! Join us here for the celebration!
We are currently having technical issues preventing us from updating the ThePolyCast.net website, so the most recent episodes are not available there (yet). We hope to have this resolved soon, and to get the website updated. Also, I want to apologize for the lengthy hiatus, and for the radio silence on our part. We kept intending on returning to our regular schedule, but factors outside of all of our control kept forcing delays. We hope that’s all behind us now, and we will do our best to maintain our regularly-scheduled programming.
NOTE: This Episode was recorded on 6 January 2024.
And obviously we also have a new GOTM for Civ4 in 2024! This time we let you play Sitting Bull of the Native Americans, and you play on a standard size hub map on Emperor level. You have time until March 11 to finish this new GOTM. For more information please see this thread.
Until February 12 you will be able to try out a free demo of Millennia, the new (semi) historical 4X by Paradox games! The demo will be single player, and you will be able to play at maximum 60 turns up until the 3rd age. This allows you to explore the age system of Millennia, which allows you get into alternative history, giving overall more interesting options for the game.
This time we would like to highlight not a historical game, but more some food for the MoO fans among us: Interstellar Space Genesis.
As with the game we all know, also this one is a turnbased sci-fi 4X in space. It has been out for a while, and in the meantime the 4th DLC is about to be released. The base game includes 6 races with their own special abilities, has a randomized tech tree, planet management, and all the other things you’d expect from such a game. It is also currently discounted by 67% down to 9.23 (Steam, GOG). And you can obviously join us for a discussion here.
And we continue to conquer the year 2024, also in Civ6! For this GOTM you play as Hojo Tokimune on a standard size Archipelago map with high sea level on King level. You get a disaster intensity of 3 together with barbarian clans, and you need to win this game via culture or diplomacy. You have until March 4 to form a great island nation! For more info please check this thread.