Mohawk Games, the developers of Old World, have released the latest patch for their game. This update includes that hot seat and PBC games on the same computer store the hall of fame, changes to the units “Zone Of Control”, the option to disable events which significantly impact the game, and more.
You can read all the info and discuss this patch in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/old-world-patch-87.676128/
GOG has a 48h giveaway. The game “Thea 2: The Shattering” is freely available for everyone for 2 days.
The game is a turn-based strategy game on a hex grid. On first glance it reminds one of “Heroes Of Might & Magic”.
The self-description on the GOG webpage is:
“Thea 2: The Shattering is a follow-up to the successful Thea: The Awakening, which brings the idea of innovative genre hybrid, with elements of turn-based, 4X strategy, survival, RPG and a card game, to entirely new and thoroughly polished level.”
Get the game for free here: https://www.gog.com/en/game/thea_2_the_shattering
Discuss this game in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/gog-free-giveaway-48h-thea-2-the-shattering.676123/
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.
Discuss this game in our forum here.
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.
Discuss this video in our forum: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/punk-rock-factory-sxsw-gaming-medley-with-baba-yetu.676093/
Soren Johnson has given a talk at this year’s “Game Developers Conference“, titled
“My Elephant in the Room: An ‘Old World’ Postmortem“. In this talk, he apparently also coverd the Civ3 bargaining table, since PCGamer has an article titled “Soren Johnson says Civ 3’s bargaining table was a ‘big mistake’“.
In this article they cover how Soren thinks that this design as a big mistake, since it basically turns diplomacy into a min/max strategy, without much actual diplomacy.
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.””
This article is well worth reading, just click here: “PCGamer: Soren Johnson says Civ 3’s bargaining table was a ‘big mistake’“.
You can discuss this article in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/pcgamer-soren-johnson-says-civ-3s-bargaining-table-was-a-big-mistake-gdc22.676073/
Anton Strenger, the lead designer of the Civ6 “New Frontier Pass”, has given a presentation at this year’s “Game Developer’s Conference“. His presentation was titled “Ahistorical Accuracy: Bringing New Myths and Representation to ‘Civilization'”, and you can find the summary here. The talks were recorded, but he does not yet know if the recording will be freely available.
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.
You can find a demo on Steam right now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356810/Hexarchy/
There are also a lot of videos on the dev channel, and Civ-streamer Sassy Gamer Lady has also played the game in one of her videos.
The latest development is that you can also support this game on Kickstarter, where you can also find a lot more information, and you may also ask the developers on Twitter.
(please note that backing a game on Kickstarter does not guarantee that a game succeeds, and in case of failure the money could be lost)
Discuss this game in our forum here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/hexarchy-a-deck-building-civ-like-game-now-on-kickstarter.675971/
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.