2021 continues to be a busy year for 4X, strategy, and tactics game news, so let’s dive right into what’s been going on!
This Week’s News:
Paradox Interactive announced their latest expansion for their incredibly large (bloated?) Grand Strategy game, Europa Universalis 4, titled Leviathan. You can read about its features in this Steam Announcement, but we feel like we need to ask if it’s becoming too much? Let us know in the comments below.
Abbey Games released a new content patch for their god-simulator, Godhood, which you can read about here. Along with some fixes and balances, it also added distinct class abilities, new tenets, new traditions, and more. We’re glad to see Abbey Games continue to improve this game and be sure to watch our YouTube channel for another Let’s Play of it soon!
Kube Games released yet another update to Imperiums: Greek Wars, this time with some nice improvements to the strategic view. As they detailed here, not only are you able to see infrastructure connections in the strategic view now, but they’ve also added other quality of life upgrades, along with Japanese and Polish localization updates. Great stuff!
Stutter Fox Games released a new video showing off improvements to the upcoming Falling Frontier. Below is footage of the improved exploration system, which looks rather amazing:
Slitherine and Black Lab Games announced their new upcoming story-based tactics game, Warhammer 40K: Battlesector. Battlesector looks to sport many different units and abilities and Black Lab Games impressed us with their latest game, Battlestar Galactica: Deadlock, so we’re eager to see how this turns out.
Paradox Interactive released this week’s Stellaris Dev Diary #200, which discusses the Custodian pathway, the answer to the “End-Game Crisis” path that you can now embark on, too. There’s a whole slew of new mechanics that accompany this endeavor, so click the link and read more, if you haven’t already.
Speaking of Stellaris, Reddit User u/Anonim97 compiled all the changes announced so far for Stellaris’ upcoming update and made images to list off these changes, shown here (with permission):
Mohawk Games continues to plug away at Old World, reaching v 0.1.47212. The changelog, found here, shows many balance changes, but the biggest change appears to be that scouts now create permanent spy networks and are returned to your city (after they become agents and infiltrate a rival city). If you want a quick breakdown of some of the highlight changes to Old World since release, look here:
Arcen Games is making a lot of progress in their Beta branch of AI War 2. You can follow their change logs starting here that basically outline AI War 2.5, as they are incredibly extensive and detailed. Again, stay tuned to eXplorminate’s YouTube Channel for a Let’s Play, coming soon!
KING Art Games has released a rather extensive patch for their superb RTS Iron Harvest, improving unit response times and offering a whole slew of changes and fixes that are so extensive, they invalidate saves for in-progress missions.
Tlön Industries is hard at work to overcome their initial “Mixed” reviews of Per Aspera. Though we’d disagree with the player sentiment, we did think there was room for improvement in our review. The newest patch, version 1.1, has added so many improvements that it’d be difficult to pick just one to highlight, so be sure to read all about them here.
It’s been a while since we last caught up with Lavapotion and their upcoming Songs of Conquest. In their latest dev diary, they provide an update on many fronts for this very promising strategy game and we’re champing at the bit to learn more and get our hands on this one!
Pawley Games made an announcement of an announcement, stating that they plan to go into Early Access with Star Dynasties later this year and will announce that date and more details at a later time. We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop, as Star Dynasties recently made our list of Most Anticipated Games of 2021, so we’re keen to keep up with it.
Lastly, Ray Fowler, the lead developer of Remnants of the Precursors (RotP), dropped Beta 2.13, which among many other improvements, now provides a beautiful background for the strategic map. We’ve said this before, but you’d be hard pressed to find a better 4X game in existence and that it’s free is absurd. Well, absurdly good, that is.
Anything we missed? Be sure to let us know below! eXplorminate members are hard at work on some great features, coming soon. We have final thoughts on Shadow Empire, a review of Creeper World 4, a review of Gem Wizards Tactics, a reexamination of Civilization 6, a Starter’s Guide to the Stardrive Blackbox and Combined Arms mods, and much more, so stay tuned! In the meantime, come join our Discord server or Steam Group and speak with like-minded fans of these great games!
Also, be advised that in March, eXplorminate will have to go offline for a few days as we update our backend and upgrade our servers. We’ll provide more information on that as we get closer!