Our weekly news recap is back and better than ever! Our focus will be on any and all 4X news, with major strategy and tactics news included.
After all, we’re a 4X-focused site, even if we still love our strategy and tactics games!
This Week’s News:
Amplitude Studios showed off its Avatar mechanic for Humankind and outlined its modding goals in this post here. You can see the Avatar system and its capabilities in this feature video:
Slitherine, Matrix, and CodeForce formally unveiled Distant Worlds 2 in a variety of ways. First, there was our very own article that shared the highlighted features. Second, there was an early info dump at Strategy Gamer/PCGamesN. Lastly, they revealed gameplay footage in their lengthy stream here:
HeroCraft PC has released a new version of their alpha for Revival: Recolonization. Those interested in trying it should sign up with the link provided. For a list of the changes, see our running list of changes provided by HeroCraft here: Revival Changelog List Doc
The extremely talented Blackbox and Combined Arms mods team for Stardrive 1 officially released their latest complete build of the Blackbox mod, titled Venus. You can find it here: BlackBox Mod “Venus” Build on ModDB. Rob has started playing it here:
L30 has begun to publicly talk about their next project, Horizon 2. Horizon was a pretty solid 4X game, if not a bit underwhelming, so the fact that development is in full swing on Horizon 2 is a reason to be cautiously excited! We’ll check in with them as time progresses and see if there’s anything we can waterboard wrangle out of them.
Firaxis Games and its Civilization 6 team released its newest patch and DLC, part of its ‘Season Pass’, bringing many fresh changes, a new faction, and a couple of new leaders. You can find more on that here:
Paradox Interactive released this week’s Stellaris Dev Diary #198, which discusses an upcoming spy/infiltrator ability called ‘Provocations’. These acts are nefarious ways to wreak havoc on opposing factions, occasionally leading to a nasty series of events that can be difficult to overcome. Sounds absolutely delightful!
Mohawk Games continues to plug away at Old World, reaching v 0.1.46614. The changelog, found here, shows many balance changes, but the biggest change appears to be the removal of the Religion Screen for a more streamlined way to access religions in Religions/Families tab. If you want a quick breakdown of some of the highlight changes to Old World since release, look here:
Stardock also announced that it has brought Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation to v3.0 this past week. In the forum, Stardock outlined the changes made, including performance improvements and graphical upgrades. You can read the full post here.
Arcen Games are making a lot of progress in their Beta branch of AI War 2. You can follow their changelogs starting here and see what they’ve been up to. Stay tuned to eXplorminate’s channels for a reeXamination, coming soon!
Creative Assembly is hinting at something coming for Total War: Warhammer 2 (or 3?), with a very cryptic trailer being posted on their social accounts and on Steam. You can find it here:
And perhaps the strangest news of all…
Zero of ZeroSum Games has returned and is frenetically patching Stardrive 2. Players are reporting massive improvements to many of the game’s systems, including performance, and a drop in crashes. We’re not quite sure what to think of it, but we won’t complain. Expect some video of it soon, as we intend to check in on the progress. In the meantime, you can check the half dozen changelogs, starting here: Stardrive 2 Updates on Steam.
Before we go, we’d like to take a moment to thank Ray Fowler, the lead developer of Remnants of the Precursors (RotP), and Petar Penev, the artist behind RotP, for allowing us to use their wonderful art for our new header of this feature. Please consider downloading RotP. It’s completely free and easily among the best 4X games in existence.
Anything we missed? Be sure to let us know below! eXplorminate members are hard at work on some great features, coming soon. We have a reeXamination of AI WAR 2, a preview of Door Kickers 2, a reexamination of Civilization 6, a Starter’s Guide to the Stardrive Blackbox and Combined Arms mods, and much more, so stay tuned!