Sonic 4 Episode 1 and Civ IV Progress [Game Overview]

In news that you never thought you’d ever hear again, a new Sonic sidescroller for the home consoles is set to hit this summer!

After countless missteps by Sega, it seems like they’ve finally listened to the fans and decided to release a sidescrolling Sonic game. Insane. Will it be any good? God help Sega if it isn’t. It will finally prove that the franchise should stay dead, but if the revival is successful, we could have a lot of fun headed our way soon.

Civ IV Game Progress

Progress has been somewhat hampered by busy schedules, weather, and partying, but we’ve started to move along in our respective Civ games and things should start to get busy soon. In the first game we started, Eric named me Zara Yaqob, a default name, and I was randomly selected to be the Ethiopians. I don’t have a lot of experience with these guys, but their Unique Unit (UU) and Building (UB) both come in the early game, so I’d better hope I find some opponents quick so that I can start attacking as soon as possible. I intelligently built a worker in this game first, so I’ll be able to start chopping down forests to speed up the production of my settler and start claiming some resources.

I may have the lowest score now…

The little bit of exploration I’ve done shows that this is a very strange map type. It’s a flat world with no wraparound, so the leftmost border is it. Since I’m so close to it, this might be hell on my logistics if I try to wage a battle of any kind, but if I have plenty of opponents between me and the other edge of the world, I might just do ok.

My second game has me as the Khmer empire. If you observe closely, you can see the black outline of a city from the Holy Roman Empire (which was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire) crowding my borders.

That bastard Justinian is gonna have to die…

Unfortunately for me, the Khmer’s UU doesn’t come until closer to the Middle Ages where it replaces War Elephants. That’s not to say that I won’t immediately try to conquer Justinian if I get the chance. Taking an extra city is just the boost I need to get a strong head start on Eric.

The third game has me playing as the Portuguese, Eric’s nemesis in his last major single player game. A civ definitely geared toward the middle to late game with its naval UU and Custom House UB, I’d actually be more than happy not to encounter too many AI before I have a chance to build up. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t see things my way.

Lisbon!

I’ve met both the Persians and the Mongolians…great. At least I’m dealing with Kublai instead of Genghis, but that means that I’ve got two Civs with strong early-game UUs nearby. I’ve located the Mongolians, but I’m going to have to act fast to claim territory and conquer at least one of these guys if I want to stand a chance.

I see you Mongolia!

Also note that my score is way less in this game thanks to me taking an extra turn to optimize the location for Lisbon. We shall see what that extra turn of production will cost me. Should I get that settler out quickly enough, I can start to optimize my economy for war and make short work of at least one of these enemies. If I don’t, there’s no guarantee that Eric won’t come steamrolling in and conquer the three of us.


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3 responses to “Sonic 4 Episode 1 and Civ IV Progress [Game Overview]”

  1. Eric Mesa Avatar

    Sonic: Listening to the latest Giant Bombcast – I think I somewhat agree with them that this is a bit of a slap in the face of any team that worked on the earlier Sonic games. At the same time, it could be awesome.

    Civ:
    With how much of a difference the early game makes in setting up the player for missing out on early techs (leading to founding religions) or early Wonders such as The Great Wall (handy for keeping out those barbarians), I am always torn about whether I should just plop my first city whereever I spawn or if I should move over to a better location.

    You will likely have a tough time of it in the Portugal game as the AI seems to have been made more aggressive (although not more intelligent) in these games if the leader has a tendency towards war. I’ll wait to comment more on the actual game until I read the next post. Currently in my blog catch-up tab queue.

    1. Dan Avatar

      After listening to the Bombcast I feel foolish for even thinking that this might be any good. They’re absolutely right. They’ve said they’re returning to their roots far too many times for it to be be believable. They should have no cache with me.

      Portugal is the game that freaks me out every time I boot up our games. I don’t have good resources!

      1. Eric Mesa Avatar

        It’s pretty rare to be stuck without resources. Then again, your territory isn’t that big yet. There may be some nearby.

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