New from ex-Civilization project leaders
 

Oldest news first: Jon Shafer, aka Trip, lead designer on Civ5 in the past, has founded his own game studio, Conifer Games. There he has started developing a new 4X game, called Jon Shafer's At the Gates. The game will be ready for Windows, Linux and Mac in late 2014. The Kickstarter campaign in early 2013 was very successful, scoring at 265 %. The gameplay mainly involves Barbarians trying to take over the declining Roman Empire (hence the name).

Now a more recent news: Soren Johnon, lead designer on Civ4 in the past, has found his own game studio as well, Mohawk Games (hence his hair cut). He has also started working on a new idea of a game, currently code-named "Mars", which should be more of a fast-paced RTS with economics as a focus.

What is interesting is the current trend for successful game designers of the industry turning to independent studios.

Ah, our hero Trip...

Himself! :D

http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4ba9852...7e4881af?s=200

Well Trips game is rather... erm... retro in the graphics department. I hope the game play outshines the art.

I bet you can get the good graphics with DLC.

Good to read Soren is getting back in game development.

Very CivII indeed.

Like in he was away from that for a while? Anyway I garee, I still think Civ4 was very well designed from the start.

I don't mind these graphics at all. http://straland.com/images/smilies/old.gif

Thanks for the update, kryszcztov! :D

RTS with focus on economy sounds nice.

One of my favourite games on Amiga was a Real-Time-Economy game (Dynatech) It had its flaws but it was fun...

Usually they produce complete crap. Which makes me think that this is done to pimp their ambition and get some free cash out of their previous endeavors without actually making anything worthy.

Wait... you weren't talking about Trip, were you?

Himself! [:0]

http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/4ba9852...7e4881af?s=200

No, of course not. He is beyond such petty scrubniness.

Pantzer General in a Roman setting, wonder how that will pan out. He's sticking with the hexes I see.

Do you think that's wrong, out of any contextual consideration?

Not at all, just an observation. In fact if it turns out to be a good TBS game I'll be more than happy about it because I'd like to play a good TBS again. The only TBS game I play now is hearthstone, and although it is a really good game it is a CCG and thus nothing like Civ.

Only if you're able to program an AI that can cope with it.

Is it a known fact that hexes are more difficult for an AI to handle? :confused:

well now this is going OT into a discussion about the pro's and cons of hexes in CivV I might as well chime in. :)

I don't think the hexes are what made the AI struggle in Civ V but more the 1 unit per tile rule. Also I don't think it's more difficult for a computer to handle hexes over quadrangles or 1 unit per tile over 1 SoD per tile. But it definitely proved more difficult for Firaxis to program a decent AI for the 1 unit per tile rule compared to the older SoD rule per tile. And that probably has to do with the fact that they had years to adjust that rule and the AI over 4 iterations of Civ. I remember Civ 2 where a whole SoD would die when you killed the first unit in that SoD. It allowed for so much abuse it wasnt even funny any more.

Also the infamous "Spearman defeats Tank" from Civ1 and the ICS strat in various iterations... Hopefully we will not get these in Trip's game. :D

Well, we did get a great icon from the spearman and the tank :)

interesting blog I stumbled on when reading up on Civ: Alpha Ce... I mean Beyond Earth. Jon Shafer talks about the Civ V design choices and how he feels about them now. Great read, I think he has some great insights why some choices didn't work out as he hoped they would.

So it looks like both games are out for playing now. Anyone tried?

It looks nice, I wanted to give it a try. First it'll have to come down in price though. What kept me from buying is that it was in a Steam sale... while it was in Early Access. Somehow that feels wrong.

Alright. Now go publish my front news about that other, little game in version 6. ;)

I had to push a button I have never pushed before, in a part of the admin interface I have never seen before. So. The universe didn't end, but I'm not sure I didn't accidentally ban everyone.