Weekly eXchange #230 – Articles And Other Stuff!

  • 11/10/2025
  • Rob Honaker
  • Age Of Wonders Planetfall, Ashes Of The Singularity, Blood Bowl 2, Civilization 6, Dungeon Of The Endless, Endless Legend, Endless Space 2, Halcyon 6, Siege Of Centauri, Stellaris, Thea 2 The Shattering, Xcom 2

Join Nate, Troy and Joshua as they bring you all the important information on all of your favorite 4X and strategy games! This week they talk about Civilization 6, Age of Wonders: Planetfall, Endless Space 2, Stellaris and much much more. As well as continued coverage for your other favorite 4X and strategy games.

Music for eXplorminate by Mangadrive

Show Notes:

  1. Civilization 6 update and Antarctic Late Summer Game Update Coming Soon – 01:42
  2. Age of Wonders: Planetfall update – 08:20
  3. Endless Space 2 update – 15:21
  4. Stellaris update – 19:11
  5. Siege of Centauri update – 24:35
  6. Warcraft and Warcraft 2 are now on GOG! – 27:21
  7. What is… Star Renegades – 30:21
  8. EU Copyright Articles 11 and 13 update and What Article 13 means for Twitch and Youtube – 33:34
  9. Online Privacy Is Real? – 51:03
    • TheGameThatNateDoesNotSpeakAboutAnymoreNeverEver!
    • YouKnowTheBirdThatRisesFromTheAshes
    • AndTheMarkThatEndsEachSentence
  10. Crime and Punishment – 53:39

Games we are playing / Things we are doing – 57:58

  1. Hearthstone webpage
  2. Via Nebula on BoardGameGeek
  3. New Super Mario Bros. U Deluxe
  4. Stellaris Steam page
  5. World of Tanks Blitz Steam page
  6. Thea 2: The Shattering Steam page
  7. XCOM 2 Steam page
  8. Blood Bowl 2 Steam page
  9. Endless Legend Steam page
  10. Monday eXcursion: Warhammer – Vermintide 2
  11. eXplorminate Patreon Support page

 

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15 Comments

BloodyBattleBrain 7 years ago

The mark that ends each sentence is a full stop!
Or, occasionally, a period (damned Americans!)
“Point” is only ever used, afaik, to show a decimal value, i.e. a part relating to 10, e.g. 10.4.
So, the game that cannot be mentioned by name needs a better clue!

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BloodyBattleBrain 7 years ago

Also, point is a verb, or could be a noun. Shouldn’t need to point that out, but it makes my point quite clearly.
I’ll stop now.

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Joe Kundlak 7 years ago

…you wizeguyz you…!

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BTAxis 7 years ago

That’s a lot of enthusiasm for the classics, Troy. I can respect that. For my part I’m never going back to Warcraft 1 and 2 because I never had more than a passing interest in Warcraft in the first place, but I can still come back to X-COM (well, OpenXcom) anytime, and you’ll pry Doom from my cold, dead fingers.

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GermanDad 7 years ago

thanks for another great show!
star renegade looks interesting….you guys sure it’s not epic exclusive?!

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Commander Killswitch 7 years ago

I’ve been binging on OpenXCom lately and I have to agree. Those guys did a wonderful job perfecting a near perfect game.

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eXplorminate 7 years ago

How does Xenonauts compare to it?

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BTAxis 7 years ago

You have to realize that Xenonauts is a bit of a different animal at heart. It’s newer, which means both that it’s made with more modern technology and with more modern game design sensibilities, so on its face it might be a better fit to the gamers of today. On the other hand, OpenXcom is a retrofit of a classic game that aims not so much to compete directly as a game product but rather to open up a hit game to fan tinkering and modding.
And boy, have the fans done tinkering and modding. There are plenty of mods, big and small, that spice up an already excellent game with new ideas and challenges. On the conservative end of the scale you find Hard Mode Expansion, which keeps the game content in line with the original, while at the other extreme you have X-Piratez, an absolutely massive mod that demands weeks of your time for one playthrough.
To me that’s what makes OpenXcom great. Fan creativity expressed as mods is one of the things I like best about PC Gaming, and this is a fine example.

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Gamling 7 years ago

I ofc agree that the fake phone call was very dangerous and wrong thing to do but it´s interesting that you Americans don´t feel it necessary to mention the fact that cops shoot at people before making sure that they do have weapons and is threatening lives is the most remarkable thing of that story.

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Joe Kundlak 7 years ago

I think (being a Central-European) that U.S. gun laws and the overall gun-ethics are a bit overkill. Yes, for personal defence you should be allowed to own a small non-automatic handgun, but buying all those semi- or full-auto rifles, UZIs and assault guns should not be allowed at all. But based on all of this the U.S. cops have a different baseline for deciding on what to do with a suspect… try even the slightest movement and you might be endangering them with a hidden semi-auto, so they rather act. Which indeed looks like trigger-happiness to us Europeans. But I see their point of view as well. Hence I hope I will never be the subject of a U.S. cop’s nervousness and would abide by any of their commands rather quickly. In this particular case it’s hard for me to judge if these cops were or were not more eager to shoot, or whether they could have chosen a more diplomatic course of action…

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eXplorminate 7 years ago

A thoughtful and considered comment. Well done!

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eXplorminate 7 years ago

We mentioned it before, but this piece was about the consequence of that stupid bet.

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Cadfan17 7 years ago

If I’m understanding this correctly, the issue with the EU rule is that automated filters can’t tell the difference between fair use parody and regular use. That requires a human. So if a company like Youtube has to create an automated filter in order to stop themselves from getting sued by record labels, it will probably end up filtering out parody materials. And if the company in question has the money to pay a human being to review situations where the uploader responds to the removal by insisting that the material was fair use, the human who gets hired is probably going to be a not very well paid outsourced worker, perhaps less experienced with nuances of the many cultures from which materials are uploaded, and trained by a company who’s primary goal is to not get sued, meaning, trained conservatively.

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Cadfan17 7 years ago

The Nunes thing is kind of weird because he’s a “legitimate politician” in a sense, but not in another sense. Even his fellow Republicans insult him behind his back, but when he manages to get himself elected they play nice and give him committee roles and let him act out as much as he wants.

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eXplorminate 7 years ago

Such is politics.

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Weekly eXchange #230 – Articles And Other Stuff!