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Unciv is a free, open-source take on Civilization 5 that's coming to Steam

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When is Civilization not Civilization? When it’s Unciv, a free to play, open-source reimagining of Sid Meier’s Civilization V that’s being developed by volunteers on GitHub. After nearly three years in development and releases on Android, Linux, and through itch.io, Unciv’s now moving its units onto Steam. You'll be able to play multiplayer Unciv, but that involves using Dropbox for syncing, which isn’t free to use. Read more

The best Civilization games: every Civ game ranked from worst to best

by editor@pcgamesn.com

So, you want to know what the best Civilization game is? Sid Meier's classic line of 4X strategy games is quite long in the tooth now, and that's not even counting all of the spin-offs. With a series this old, and a fan base so engaged, players can't help but ask the ultimate question: which Civ game is best? Luckily - considering we're all sitting around waiting for Civilization 7 at the moment - we've not got anything better to do, so we've put together a guide to answer this very question. As you're about to see, before subsequently spitting your coffee over your screen like a sitcom character, we've included the Call to Power games in this list. We've also omitted Beyond Earth and Alpha Centauri, even though the former carries the Civ nomenclature and the latter carries the Meier name. Why? Because Civ games, to us, are about guiding a people from prehistory to the future, journeying through recognisable periods of human history and doing it on Earth. While CtP deviates from that f...

Civilization fan creates Civ DnD using hotseat multiplayer

by editor@pcgamesn.com

There are many ways you can play strategy games, but playing a game of Civilization V, with twelve factions, and a single person playing all twelve in order to direct the course of history for that game, is certainly a new one. It's not one I've heard about often, at least. But hey, since Firaxis isn't announcing Civilization 7 any time soon, the Civ player base might as well find new ways to enjoy the games they have. User MartinChatski on the Civ subreddit has been sharing one especially galaxy-brained way they like to enjoy Civilization V using hotseat multiplayer. "I've played multiple really long hot seats games against myself from the Ancient to the Information Era where I built the world essentially from scratch!," they explain. Hotseat is traditionally a way that people on the same machine can play games against each other, with play formally shifting from person to person - since the advent of the internet, it's not a mode of high importance. But for MartinChatski, it's a way ...

Civilization 5 mods - the best Civ 5 mods

by editor@pcgamesn.com

What are the best Civ 5 mods? Even though it's no longer the most popular Civilization game, there's still a lot of love and respect for Civilization 5, and it carries a respectable playerbase even today. 4X games like Civ are largely sandbox in nature, so replayability isn't always a concern, but it also helps to have a thriving and active mod scene. Civ 5's mod scene is more settled now, with fewer new ideas coming through, but there's still plenty of decent mods to check out if you want to keep your games fresh. Like our Civ 6 mod guide, we've browsed the internet to cherry pick some of the more interesting and popular user mods available. We'll keep looking at this list over time, perhaps add more as we find them or as they are floated to us by the community. In the meantime, check out this initial offering of Civ 5 mods to sink your teeth into - we've got a mix of utility mods, visual packs and overhauls to give you a wide range of options. Read the rest of the story... RELATED LI...

The best civilization 5 civs and leaders

by editor@pcgamesn.com

A classic by any measure, Civilization V allows you to guide your nation from inception to world domination in any way you see fit. Providing one of the broadest list of victory conditions in any strategy game, Civ 5 can be slightly challenging when trying out new things. Civ 5 civilisations are slightly more niche than in the newer Civ VI, creating a clear focus that allows specific nations and specific Civ 5 leaders to achieve their chosen victory condition more easily. There are also more strategies not tied to specific win conditions as well. In order to help our readers get better at the game and figure out the best way to achieve their goals and desired play styles, we built this guide to single out the best Civ 5 civs for a range of play styles. Below each entry, you'll also find a summary of what they do best. Alongside this, we've also included their unique faction ability, and how it affects the game. That will hopefully make your game a better experience, and allow you to ha...

Civilization's Sid Meier talked to RPS all about his brilliant career at PAX X EGX

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Imogen Beckhelling)

Sid Meier, that legendary game dev whose name sits before the names of Civilization games, had a lovely chat with our very own Nate Crowley this weekend, as part of PAX Online X EGX Digital. The pair talked all about some of the most notable parts of Meier’s career – including, Railroad Tycoon, Pirates!, and Civilization – as well as chat about his upcoming book, Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life In Computer Games. And thanks to computers, you can watch their whole chat in full below. (more…)

Five of the Best: Villains

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Five of the Best is a weekly series about the small details we rush past when we're playing but which shape a game in our memory for years to come. Details like the way a character jumps or the title screen you load into, or the potions you use and maps you refer back to. We've talked about so many in our Five of the Best series so far. But there are always more. Five of the Best works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you - probably outraged we didn't include the thing you're thinking of - can share the thing you're thinking of in the comments below. Your collective memory has never failed to amaze us - don't let that stop now! Today's Five of the Best is... Read more

How video games consistently fail Gandhi

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Nikhil Murthy)

Gandhi is one of the most unique figure in history. His adherence to non-violence, his establishment of a full-fledged philosophy behind it and, above all, his success, are practically without precedent. Kings, empires and leaders can often blur into each other. The locations change, the dates are different and the numbers differ, but the essence remains the same. Gandhi was something completely different, and yet games try to represent him with the same pieces they use for everyone else – and so they always make him something far less than he was. (more…)

The best games of the decade on PC

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (RPS)

It’s been an eventful decade for PC games, and it would be hard for you to summarise everything that’s happened in the medium across the past ten years. Hard for you, but a day’s work for us. Below you’ll find our picks for the 50 best games released on PC across the past decade. (more…)

MacOS's 32-bit-breaking Catalina update is live, wreaking havoc on classic game collections

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Natalie Clayton)

Well, it’s finally happened. On Monday, Apple released the feared MacOS “Catalina” update, killing compatibility for dozens of 32-bit games. From this week onwards, updated Macs just flat out won’t run ’em. In the constant churn of developing newer, faster, and sleeker operating systems, the Mac makers have given curators of older games a simple choice: put in the work to bring your games up to speed, or we’re leaving them behind. For some publishers, updating countless classics simply isn’t worth the effort, leaving many 32-bit hits in the ground for good. (more…)

Will It Harvest Moon? a beginner s field guide to rehabilitating inferior games

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Kim Neilson)

To this day, the jaunty static of the opening jingle to Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town brings me back to a simpler time. Summer evenings spent hunched over my Game Boy SP, a pane of glass between me and nature s suburban bounty as I tilled my little squares of land, pet my happy little chickens, and bribed a town s worth of reticent heartthrobs into falling for my little blonde avatar, Pepper, with an onslaught of ores, animal products, and various culinary delights (but never cucumbers, ya gummy-mouthed fish-man). Harvest Moon was about as wholesome as wholesome gets, my first videogame love, but as the days turned to years, we grew apart. Since then, I ve filled the hole in my heart with the usual suspects, (Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and so on) until there was only one thing left to do: make my own Harvest Moon. And so began my ongoing personal quest to turn every game I own that is unfortunate enough to not be Harvest Moon into the farming simulation game they were...

Podcast: What game is the biggest time sink ?

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (RPS)

Your time is important. And you know what? So is mine. Here s this week s podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. It s about how your life is dripping away every second you play Stardew Valley. (more…)

Firaxis dev releases mod that makes Civ 6 look like Civ 5

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I love Civilization 6, but sometimes I pine for the art style of its equally wonderful predecessor, Civilization 5. Civilization 6's cartoony vibe is all well and good, but when you've got an entire civilisation's worth of people resting on your every decision, a serious look is sometimes required. Thankfully, there's a mod for that - and this one's from a developer at Firaxis. The Environment Skin: Sid Meier's Civilization 5 mod for Civilization 6, by the game's art director Brian Busatti, changes the visuals of the game to better match the colours and tones of Civ 5. Read more

Civilization 6 artist mods it to look more like Civ 5

by contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Ah, 2010! Lady Gaga and Beyonc were tearing up the dancefloor with Telephone, Inception was fuelling one million drunk ‘philosophical’ conversations, Jackass had gone 3D, and Civilization V had yet to reach that point in every Civ game’s lifespan where it’s declared superior to its successor. If you wish to party like it’s 2010, you might enjoy a new Civilization VI mod made by actual Civ 6 art director Brian Busatti. It aims to make Civ 6’s landscape, buildings, and units look more like Civ 5, less vibrant and more ‘realistic’. Yeah, but like, what if we’re still dreaming we’re playing Civ – does the game ever stop or will “one more turn” keep going forever? Makes you think, maaan. (more…)

How a five-year game of Civilization 5 became a meaningful part of my personal history

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For the first 5000 years, nothing much happened. We must have embarked on our epic enterprise sometime in late 2013, though neither of us suspected we were about to spend the next five years embroiled in a seemingly never-ending coop hot-seat game of Civilization 5. If we had, we'd probably have played something else instead. It was folly, but by the time we realised, it was too late; we had become thoroughly invested, the game had taken on a life of its own, and there was nothing else but to see it to its (eventual) end. On and off, we kept chipping away at our task, sometimes meeting every few weeks for a couple of hours, sometimes once every couple of months. But soon our time with the game had to be measured not in months, but in years, and our game of Civilization had become a sort of parallel history to our personal lives. When I sat down to prepare this article, it felt like historical or archaeological research. My friend and I compared notes, trying to reconstruct what had hap...