Masters of Magic is one of the strategy classics out there, dating back to 1994, and having also been described as a fantasy version of Civ. The wargaming publisher Slitherine is working on a remake of it, to be released this year. The game seems to include a hex-based overview map, turn-based combat, city management and spell research. In their latest dev diary, Slitherine has announced that they are looking for beta-testers. If you are curious about this game, you can sign up here for the beta-test.
Christopher Tin has pointed out the above medley on Twitter. The Punk Rock band “Punk Rock Factory” was apparently asked to produce this medley by SXSW, and they included Baba Yetu in it. For everyone interested, it’s at 4:22.
An excerpt: “In another part of the talk, Johnson argued that while some players may say they want AI opponents to behave like human opponents, they typically don’t. When the AI starts metagaming—for instance, by ganging up on whichever player is winning for no reason other than to stop them from winning—the player can perceive it as unfair or out-of-character. In Johnson’s experience, players want AIs to act according to their fictional context rather than picking the optimal strategy like a person would.”
“Every time the AI got new technology they would [use the bargaining table to] contact all of their friends, rivals, even enemies to see what they could get in return by trading it away, which cost them nothing to do, but would get them a little something in return,” said Johnson. “From the human’s perspective, it looked like the AIs were a giant tech cartel and were selling techs to each other at bargain prices, but the AI was simply pursuing the optimal strategy.””
During the talk Soren Johnson, the lead designer for Civ4 and also for Old World, has covered parts of the presentation on Twitter. We have collected theset Tweets, have a look in our forum to read and discuss them.
We continue our series about potentially interesting games for Civ-fans, and this time it’s about Hexarchy. Hexarchy is a civ-like game, it plays on a hex-grid, turn-based, and you build cities, units and wonders. The main difference to Civ is that it is a deck-builder: You have each round a certain amount of cards (units, buildings, technologies, etc), which you can use, if you have enough production and resources. Non-used cards you may discard or keep for the next round, whereas used cards vanish and will be replenished from the card stack. It is set up for a lot shorter games than Civ though, most should be over in one hour.
Our long term user alcaras has made a video about some basics in Old World. Have a watch if you want to get to know some of the mechanics deeper, and discuss this video in the Old World video thread.
For the celebration of Women’s history month, Firaxis has released some great artworks for some of the female Civ leaders. The artworks were drawn by 2 employes of 2K and a freelance artist, some are more in the style of Civ, some less.
Christopher Tin has shared on Twitter this video by the Avon Indoor Winds, who are apparently performing at a flight-themed show called “Murmuration”. Their performance features “Sogno Di Volare”, with parts of “Iza Ngomso”, among other songs.
