And the winner is.... OzzyKP!



Apolyton Civilization Site congratulates OzzyKP for winning the Civilization 5: Gods & Kings review contest.
OzzyKP wrote a lengthy review of the latest civ expansion and dressed it up with pictures and screenshots. It's clear that a lot of work has been put into this piece of work. OzzyKP tries to give a nuanced write up about the latest civ incarnation and is able to stay away from both mindless hate and fanboy love. His conclusion shows this off quite well: "Overall the expansion is decidedly an improvement. But not enough of one to ultimately fix a flawed game. That said, I did enjoy the few games I played."

OzzyKP will receive a free copy of the game by having Apolyton pay for his Gods & Kings purchase.
Congrats again, OzzyKP! And Keep on civin...!
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Greg 'Greg 2K' Laabs will broadcast a 2 hour lasting demogame live on the interwebs on monday June 18th! "My favorites are the ones where the person running the Let's Play takes requests from the audience for how to proceed in the game. There's a strange amusement in seeing someone try to carry out your wacky (or maybe even wise) request and finding out where it leads." Greg states on the 2K Games blog

The livestream will start around 1pm PDT and can be followed on Twitch.tv 2K channel. All be sure to login and ask your questions to Greg! ...

UPDATE: DLGamer.com is now offering Apolyton members a 26% discount!

DLGamer.com is offering all members of Apolyton a 26% discount on Civilization V: Gods & Kings during the pre-order period! If you'd like to take advantage of this offer, pre-order the game at DLGamer.com and use the voucher code: "Apolyton-10%OFF-CIV5GK". ...

VideoGamer visited a Civilization V: Gods & Kings 'behind-closed-doors' presentation during GDC 2012. They posted an article that sums up a couple of details about the new Civ5 expansion pack.

Religion:
• There are 20 different Pantheon beliefs to choose from, such as the God of War or the Goddess of the Hunt.
• Your pantheon choice rolls into your religion, and you'll also get to choose between two more bonus abilities. The first is the Founder belief, which gives you rewards for spreading the religion to other cities, and the second is the Follower belief, which will confer bonuses to any city (and any civilisation) that follows your religion.
• Certain units, like Pictish warriors for the Celts, generate faith when killing other units.
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The earlier announced Civilization V Expansion Pack Gods & Kings gets explored more in dept by online game magazines Gamespot and Kotaku.


Both sites discuss the unexpected XP with Ed Beach, Lead developer of Gods & Kings.

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The Civilization V Expansion Pack Gods & Kings has just been announced on 2kgames.com.



The expansion comes with "Tons of New Stuff" like "27 new units, 13 new buildings, 9 new wonders, and 9 new playable civilizations. Among the new civilizations are the Netherlands (William I, Prince of Orange), the Celts (Boudicca), and the Mayans (Pacal the Great)."
Most important of course are the new game elements. Religion is back! Back in September 23rd 2010 Apolyton Civilization Site already discovered that Religion was was removed from [vanilla] Civilization V. Today the official announcement of 2K Games reads: "Using the new "Faith" resource, you'll be able to found your own religion and grow it from a simple Pantheon of the Gods to a world-spanning fully-customized religion."
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Martin Gühmann becomes new co-owner of Apolyton Civilization Site on June the 1st 2011. Martin is known for modding Call to Power 2 and maintaining the Apolyton CTP2 Edition. He has been a Senior Staff member of Apolyton since the site has been moved to its new environment in 2010. Since then he contributed substantially to Apolyton. He restructured and imported the entire Call to Power 2 section, he imported Apolyton's Archives into Apolyton's new forums and fixed the attachments from Apolyton's old environment. These are just a few of his contributions.

When Jeroen Schweitzer and Arno Zwaag departed the Apolyton Administration the only left over owner and admin, Robert Plomp, knew that Martin was the right choice to co-lead Apolyton with. "His technical skills and knowledge and his ability to learn anything he doesn't know yet, combined with his friendly nature and his reliable and pro-active attitude make him the perfect choice for Apolyon" Plomp commented. Plomp and Gühmann will both be co-owners of Apolyton, both will share ownership and responsibility, equally. Martin will mainly care about the technical issues like server administration, software maintenance, and site configuration. Robert will mainly be responsible for the community, staff, content, and PR.

"This way we will turn Apolyton into what it once was and should be again, a home for all civers" Martin Gühmann commented.

We are looking forward to improve Apolyton and make it a primary source for all civ-related things!
Keep on civin' ...

After 2 years of giving enormous important contribution to Apolyton's move from it's old environment into the future, Jeroen and Arno are leaving Apolyton's administration. Jeroen designed and configured the entire new Apolyton look and feel, based on a concept of Rutger van Overbeek. After that Jeroen migrated and imported the Apolyton forums. A hell of a job considering the old age of a lot of the data. Arno set up the new servers and configured the environment to host Apolyton in a very convenient way. Without the input of Arno and Jeroen Apolyton would not exist today anymore.

Both Arno and Jeroen picked up new responsibilities that made it more and more difficult for them to contribute to Apolyton. That lead to the decision to leave the Apolyton administration and transfer all ownership rights to Robert Plomp.
Apolyton owes a lot to Jeroen, Arno and Rutger (who left a couple of months earlier) for all their work. As a sign of our gratefulness they will receive the honorary member title on Apolyton. ...

"2K Greg" Laabs of 2K Games has announced a hotfix for Civilization V on the 2K Forums. The fix will arrive today and fix "a few issues with the most recent major patch."

The patch includes a fix for various rare crashes, a modding fix and a couple of gameplay changes.
Click read more for the complete list.

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Jon Shafer, Lead Designer of Civilization V has left Firaxis. Jon joined Firaxis in 2005 after being a Civ Fan and Civ Modder before. Jon has always been a respected member of Apolyton where he was involved among many other things in Civ3 demogames. Jon Shafer worked on Civilization IV, when Soren Johnsen was the lead designer. For Civilization V Shafer became the lead himself.

According to the Escapist Jon left Firaxis himself and was not let go by the company. "It appears that the departure is amicable to both sides as Shafer made sure to say that he left willingly and was not fired or pushed out."
Jon Shafer's response is quoted on Flash of Steel saying: "I very much enjoyed my time Firaxis, worked on many projects that I’ve very proud of and got to know a lot of amazing people. I’m appreciative of the opportunities provided by Firaxis and 2K, and hope to see (and play) more great games from them in the future."
Firaxis games comment on this same website: "We are grateful for Jon’s contributions to Firaxis and the Civilization franchise and wish him all the best in the future."

It is unknown what the future for the still young developer holds. Neither is it known what the impact will be on Civilization V and future patches or DLC. Apolyton hopes that Jon will not be lost for the Civ community! We wish you all the best for the rest of your career Jon!!

Discuss Jon's departure from Firaxis in our forums

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This is just only a test message.
It should be written in Spanish, but I don't speak a word Spanish, so it's in English.
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Civilization V has been out for quite some time now. It has received mixed reactions from the Civ-fanbase. On Apolyton about half of those who bought the game, have already put it aside. On CivFanatics about 1 out of 3 players rate the game lower then 6/10 while approximately the same number rates it higher then an 8/10. On WePlayCiv veteran civ players claim to 'lose interest' in Civ5 already, while others at the same time enjoy it a lot.

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At http://civilopedia5.com you can find the entire Civ5 Civilopedia online! The online version is a complete copy of the in-game version, now available for everybody day and night! A site to add to your bookmarks!

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Firaxis is now looking for a Multiplayer Programmer. Not for new systems, but to "[m]aintain, improve and/or refactor existing systems" and "[s]upport existing matchmaking systems". Good news for Civilization V!? Since it's release Civ5 has suffered from many issues in multiplayer games. So far Firaxis and 2K Games have promised to look at these issues in the future, but not in the patches that are currently in development. This future may start as soon as this new programmer has been found.

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