Hello everyone,
Shorter one today I think. Maybe. We shall see ! What’s behind the door ?
I do have a list of games to talk about prepared for this advent period but I will shift it around a bit as appropriate … Like yesterday when I wanted to talk about the author Ben Bova, which gave me a convenient link to Mars and space programmes. Spookily, today linked straight away …
Yep. I reckon that’s a tea cup there in his left hand which can only link to …
Civilisation !
I’ve played most of the Civilisation games over the years, although I’ve gone away from the series lately.
Quick check … yep. I do actually own the latest ones. Never installed Civ VI though and I bounced off Civ V. (I must have got them from Humble Bundle bundles or monthly things.
Like, this month’s Humble Choice games and my opinion of them are :
Will acquire : Crying Suns. Space strategy, looks promising. Rover Mechanic Simulator, gets the oddball choice.
Nope for various reasons : Darksiders III, Yakuza Kiwami 2. They just aren’t games I would want to play.
Something I should grab : Imperator Rome. Paradox can make great games like Stellaris but I saw videos of this when it came out and it looked like the mechanics under it were terrible.
Bundle fillers to ignore : Darksburg, Little Misfortune, Smile For Me, Darkwood, Tsioque, Youropa, Townsmen. I have no idea what these are and the brief blurb made me even less interested in them.
But they usually have something that makes the bundle worth it, the bundle comes with a discount across the site and they’re good for charities.
And it makes Tashnarr jump out of her skin when I buy stuff on Humble Bundle using her code (linky) and the alert goes off. Perhaps a bit mean, definitely comical. (Link to Tash’s Stream page) And she gets a bit of the sale price, which helps her keep streaming, which is always a good thing.
I really need to make the links lists happen as well. I’ve been a bit delinquent there :-D.
This is going to be one of those posts where I talk about anything but the subject isn’t it. Those happen occasionally.
Civilisation – you start as cavemen and the object is to nurture and grow your tribe into a civilisation that spans the globe and perhaps, beyond. It was a remarkable entry into gaming with the first one. I played that on the Atari ST.
Simple graphics, well presented for the time. We have a top down presentation on a square grid with ice caps at the top and bottom and a wrap around map. This had all the original concepts of cities, units, buildings and an epoc spanning tech tree.
And spearmen that could occasionally stop tanks.
Civilisation 2 moves this into an isometric pattern. Friends at uni played this but I was still hooked on Master of Magic and Master of Orion. Besides, I knew that it had some blatant AI cheat bugs in it which somewhat put me off the game. (Plus asking price!)
The manual there is for Civilisation III and an expansion. I can’t remember too much about this one. Civilisation IV was the last of the series to allow doomstacks, where you’d have 20+ tanks and artillery on a square that would batter anything around.
Civilisation V re-engineered most of the movement systems and eliminated the doomstack. I should probably know more about Civilisation VI !
Looks pretty. They’ve steadily evolved the gameplay in the series from eliminating doomstacks, including Civic progression, adding a Culture route to victory and expanding how cities work.
I did enjoy playing the original, enjoyed playing MoM and Moo2 more (these will be in a later post)
I think that’s it for this one, the internet spaceship seat is calling. I haven’t done much in the stars lately … it feels due :-).
PS I do like the jumper.
Stay safe, be well.