PC games have produced some beloved music, but there's a tiny irony in the fact that the technological advantages that the PC held over other platforms in the 1990s have actually hindered a music scene from forming around that original work.

We had CD-ROM, hard drives, and discrete soundcards years before anyone else, and those advances pushed many studios toward not only full-motion video but elaborate, orchestral music rather than the chiptunes possible on the NES, SNES, and other sound palettes—a sound that has become a beloved aesthetic and genre in and of itself. Nintendo s (and even Sega s) platforms inspire a ton of affection, but there s still a lot of worthy professional and amateur PC gaming floating around the web.

Mines, Spelunky

Songe is an unbelievably talented multi-instrumentalist, mixing everything from flutes, drums, and ocarinas (when appropriate) to multiple guitars and piano, to his own vocal backing, like on his terrific takes on Warcraft II s Orc theme or the Skyrim Dragonborn theme. Among his dozens of tracks, his Spelunky Mines Medley stands out as a reverent interpretation of a song heard thousands of times by any dedicated Spelunker.

Performed by: Songe Original composer: Eirik Suhrke Buy on  Loudr.fm

Baba Yetu, Civilization IV

The only piece of game music to win a Grammy, this performance by a Los Angeles choir is my favorite among the many that have been recorded. Composer Christopher Tin was, interestingly enough, the roommate of Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson.

Performed by: Angel City Chorale Original composer: Christopher Tin Buy on  Amazon

UNATCO, Deus Ex

This rock-metal cover of UNATCO (the organization of which Deus Ex s JC Denton is a member) was one of the favorite things I found online, mainly due to how restrained it is. So many of the metal covers of game music fall drift dangerously close to parody with over-applied kick pedaling and overlong guitar solos. Skilton keeps it simple here while producing an exciting take on what was a pretty sedate, austere tune originally.

Performed by: Tim Timofetus Skilton Original composer: Michiel van den Bos

FTL Theme Epic Rock cover, FTL: Faster Than Light

We really like Ben Prunty s stuff around here—so much so that we asked him to compose an original song for our podcast—so it s great to see an FTL track covered so well by Canadian guitarist James Mills. Give Mills System Shock 2, Hearthstone, StarCraft, and Dragon Age: Inquisition tracks a listen too.

Performed by: James Mills Original composer: Ben Prunty

I m Your Medic, Team Fortress 2

From the Weird Al genre we have this rap from Captain Spalding, a regular on the PC Gamer TF2 server circa 2008-2010.

Doom: The Dark Side of Phobos

Way back in 2005 OCRemix, the web's biggest game remix community, assembled a team (that included Super Meat Boy composer Danny Baranowsky) to produce a massive two-disc, 23-track tribute to Doom. The best way to get it is by downloading it through OCRemix's official torrent.

Performed by: various Original composer: Bobby Prince

Suicide Mission, Mass Effect 2

There s an insane amount of Mass Effect covers out there paying homage to Jack Wall (and others ) incredible work. Sadly, an uncomfortable amount of it is dubstep. Tim Skilton s take on the wonderful Suicide Mission theme isn t, thank goodness.

Performed by: Tim Timofetus Skilton Original composer: Jack Wall

Hunt or Be Hunted, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Tidwell is well known to fans of game music covers (you can find a lot of his stuff on Spotify), but he rarely covers songs from PC games.

Performed by: Daniel Tidwell Original composer: Marcin Przyby owicz Buy on iTunes

Super Meat Boy! - Choice Piano Cuts

Danny Baranowsky is absolutely prolific, having most recently composed for musical dungeon crawler Crypt of the Necrodancer. With his style of mixing modern composition with instrumentation from the 8- and 16-bit era, it s no surprise that Baranowsky got his start on OCRemix. Super Meat Boy remains his essential work and while the official Super Meat Boy album contains a bunch of covers, I love the official piano collection by Brent Kennedy, a 10-track set that can be had for $5.

Performed by: Brent Kennedy Original composer: Danny Baranowsky Buy on Bandcamp

"Act on Instinct," Command & Conquer

A list of PC gaming music wouldn't be complete without Frank Klepacki. Almost two decades after its release Red Alert's "Hell March" track gets the most play, but rather than recommending one of many, many takes on that boot-stomping classic, I think stuff like "Act on Instinct" represents Klepacki's grinding, industrial oeuvre much better.

Performed by: Tim Timofetus SkiltonOriginal composer: Frank Klepacki

X-COM: UFO Defense theme

You won t see X-COM getting a lot of recognition for its music in remixing communities, but this track from Fnotte manages to make something good out of the memorable intro sequence to UFO Defense.

Performed by: Fnotte Original composer: John Broomhall

I remember there being a lot of anger when Civilization V launched. It just wasn't Civ IV, the glorious, glorious Civ IV. But a few expansions (and a lot of mods) later, has public opinion changed? With the help of a thousand-plus survey respondents, I ventured to find out.

First, some caveats. I left out Alpha Centauri, because A) it dropped the Civilization name and B) it isn't fair to put a horse in a toddler race. Though I would love to see a horse absolutely smoke a bunch of dumb toddlers, who can barely walk, never mind run. It's a funny picture. 

Anyway, I also left out any game not in the main Microprose and Firaxis series, which includes Civilization: Call to Power. We're left, then, with Civilization, Civilization II, Civilization III, Civilization IV, Civilization V, and Civilization: Beyond Earth. Among them, which is the best?

The best Civilization game

According to my survey, Civilization V is the best Civilization. It seems public opinion did change. After a couple big expansions, a bunch of map packs and new civs, plus a ton of mods on Steam Workshop and otherwise, the majority like what Civ V has become. I have to agree: I still love Civilization IV, but if I were going to recommend any Civ to a friend, I'd have to start them with Civ V.

Civilization IV, of course, came in second with 21.6% of the vote. No other game in the series came close, which I first assumed was because most people in the survey started with Civ IV or Civ V. That's not the case: only 17% of respondents said that Civ IV was their first Civilization, and 22% said Civ V was their first. Many of you started with Civ III (22%), Civilization II (18%), or Civilization (18%).

As expected, several survey takers mentioned Civ V's easy-to-use mod support, expansions, hexagonal grid, and lack of unit stacking. "This one started out a bit uneven, but the two expansions ended up giving this one the most interesting choices per turn," said one person. "Also, I loved the addition of one-unit-per-tile and hexes—can't live without them now." That sums it up neatly.

On why Civ IV is the best, however, Leonard Nimoy came up (of course), as well as unit stacking and the expansions. It seems there are two camps: the no-stacking hex camp and the stacking square camp. It's one or the other, friends—declare your allegiance.

The worst Civilization game

This is no big surprise. According to my survey, the worst Civilization is Civilization: Beyond Earth. Had I included Alpha Centauri, I'm certain it would've been voted the best, so it's extra sad that its spiritual successor fared so poorly. A whopping 56.3% of voters declared it the worst Civilization, saying things like: "It's ugly, lame, and boring," "It's simply a space expansion for Civ V," and "It lacks personality." My goodness.

Civilization and Civilization III were the next worst, but each only gathered about 12% of the total vote. It's pretty clear that Civilization V is the absolute favorite, followed by Civ IV, and that Beyond Earth is the loser. We can roughly order the rest by considering the ratio of 'best' to 'worst' votes each got:

1. Civilization V (11.58)
2. Civilization IV (3.72)
3. Civilization II (0.61)
4. Civilization III (0.53)
5. Civilization (0.13)
6. Civilization: Beyond Earth (0.04)

Other results

86.3% of respondents said they've put over 100 hours into their favorite Civilization. 16.8% said they've played over 500 hours, and 11.3% say they've put in over 1,000 hours.

Most of you have won a game of Civilization by achieving a victory condition—only 3.9% said they haven't.

The most popular victory condition is Domination (44%), followed by Science (30%), Cultural (18%), and Diplomatic (6%). Almost no one likes the Time condition, in which you try to achieve the highest score within a certain number of turns.

51% of respondents agreed to make a Joint Declaration of Friendship with me, while 49% said that "making such a declaration at this point in our relationship would be premature." So, people are pretty split on joke questions.

Civilization stories

I also asked survey takers to share a story about a really good game of Civilization they've played. Here are some of the best (lightly edited for clarity).

"I'm not sure that this is my favorite game, but probably the proudest I've been. It's the game in which I gained the Bollywood achievement on Emperor difficulty in Civ 5. That requires that you win a cultural victory as India with just 3 cities. It was a real race to the finish line, because I was up against some serious powerhouses like Brasil (culture) and Korea (science). In the end I had to bribe several nations to wage war against Korea and nuked them myself for good measure to prevent them from building their final spaceship part in time. My waves of rocking musicians got me to culture victory probably only a turn or two away from Korea's science victory. It was my first game on Emperor difficulty and I couldn't keep the AIs in check by taking their cities due to the achievement I was going for, so I was very happy to get it just in time."

---

In Civ 3 I had an epic tussle with Cleopatra in one game with our empires at war for nearly 2000 years until all my horses suddenly became tanks and I rolled her over.

---

"In Civ IV, a grueling gunpowder-era war left me with 40-45% of the map, but technologically behind my two remaining rivals. Attacking either would ruin me and give the game to whoever was left alone, so I had to transition frantically into tech and a peaceful victory condition.

As I hit the modern era, my captured and reorganized territories from the last great war were finally turning profitable, but then disaster stuck - when, in last place, I hit modernity, it turned out that not one single pip of aluminum spawned on my half of the map! Double building time for all modern units and wonders when both my rivals had the aluminum bonus was untenable. I was finally catching up in research, but I couldn't build any of the fruits of my research.

When my general espionage bar revealed that both rivals were working on their Space victory, I made a plan - I signed a ruinous trade deal with the one that was further behind to give me that sweet sweet aluminum I needed, and sent a wave of Spies to sabotage the mine and SS part production of the leader. The last 100 turns of that game was one if the most vicious wars I've played in civ, all without a single shot being fired, a brutal race against time and resource shortages by all sides. When I launched the Alpha Centauri mission just three turns ahead of second-place China, it felt like a glorious accomplishment, not the admittedly dry usual endgame."

---

Kamehameha wouldn't be my friend right after I discovered him. After a few thousand years of a successful and booming trading relationship I nuked him for that.

---

"Civ 5, playing as Russia and I started on a mostly mountainous peninsula. I ended up out-expanded and out-teched by the Carthaginians and that evil slime Ghandi. With the navy of Carthage at my doorstep I went all in for naval tech. After a grueling 100+ turn war against a larger and more advanced foe I emerged victorious, and with a massive and advanced navy to boot.

With all of Carthage fallen the next logical course of action was to sail my great armada around the great sea taking every port I could find, while my inferior ground forces held the neck of my peninsula against all the remaining factions. In the end, I lost when Ghandi completed the science victory, but that massive struggle and the ensuing Great Sea Crusade was some of the most fun I've had in any Civ game."

---

Gandhi is an asshole.

---

"I was once caught in between two friends of mine. My territory was in the center of the continent, and theirs were above and below me. I befriended both of them since I was playing South Korea and not interested in domination at all.

Both of them were, however, and it wasn't long before they started sending me messages to band together and kill the other. Before I knew it both of their armies were gathered at my borders, requesting open borders and ready to mess the other one up. It eventually ended with me opening borders to both of them, but not declaring war on either. I let them slaughter eachother and began mass-producing military units. This eventually led to me seizing both capital cities. Good stuff."

Developers interviewing developers? This will not stand*! Actually this chat between Sid Meier and XCOM: Enemy Unknown designer Jake Solomon is funny and interesting, and a rare chance to see Sid Meier in the wild.

Solomon initially tries to establish whether or not Meier is a Canadian spy, and moves on to quiz the Yoda of strategy design on his origins and inspirations. It's particularly charming to hear about the humble origins of Microprose. This anecdote reveals how much the games industry has exploded since the early days of the medium, though tools like Game Maker and Unity have kept this spirit alive.

"When people ask me 'how do you become a game designer?' well you just sit down and type a game into your computer and you're a game designer. That's really the way it was back then. I did all the art, the sound, the programming, printed the manuals on my printer and put them in a baggy, and sent Bill off to sell them... we did games in about two months back in those days, maybe three if it's, like, in depth."

The video was recorded at Firaxicon, a convention for fans of Firaxis' long line of strategy games.

*When devs interview devs the results are often interesting. Check out the Tone Control podcast for more of that sort of thing.

James ‘Lycerius’ Moore played a single game of Civilization II off and on for ten years, extending far into a dystopian future that he described as “a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”. The story caught fire, spreading from reddit to the specialist games press and national media before returning to reddit as /r/theeternalwar, where fans trade fiction, music, and art.

Last week, I spoke to James about his experience of the game, the rationale behind playing the same campaign for a decade, and what it’s like to have your cool gaming anecdote capture the imaginations of so many people. You can check out our previous coverage of The Eternal War here.

You said in your initial reddit post that the campaign is about ten years old?

Yeah.

Do you know exactly...?

It’s about nine and a half, something like that.

Presumably there must have come a point when you decided that you were just going to keep on going. How did that come about?

Well, I’d played the game far into the future, and there were some issues and I was just curious to see how long I could keep going. There’s this misconception that I’ve played the game non-stop for ten years, that’s not the case - I play it often, but over the years it’s every other day or so.

I play lots of games, do lots of other things, but this game - it just kinda kept going and going. I noticed that, over time, nations were swallowing up other nations and there were these environmental factors and it was just really fascinating to muse on where it was all going. I just wanted to see what the eventual endgame would be. It was for my own edification, I never imagined that so many people would take interest in it.

Was there something specific about the way this campaign went that allowed you to get into the kind of situation you got into?

I imagine that you could start up any Civ II game and do this. The thing is, Civ II was a little bit more balanced than the other games, and you’re able to prolong and enjoy the world around you a little bit more, and in a little bit more detail - for example later games don’t really have global warming. Well, they do, but it’s maybe a single tile that’ll turn to desert instead of four.

In Civ II, things like that had enormous consequences. All of the coasts would flood and farming would be useless, and it happened over and over again - it happened two or three times before I started questioning, well, what would it be like if this kept going on? Eventually all the world’s land - the mountains and tundra - became flooded swampland. It was really neat.


Image: m00nnsplit's 'Celtania Archives' newspaper.

You found yourself in a fascinating situation at the end.

It was just morbid curiosity, you know, and I think that’s why it was so popular with all these other organisations. I think people in general have this morbid curiosity about the world and where it’s going, and I think they saw this and just kind of latched on. You know, it’s by no means an accurate simulation of world affairs or anything like that, it’s just a game roughly based on such things, but I think it really captured a lot of people’s imaginations.

You ended up in a situation with the three superstates, and people immediately said “oh, it's 1984” - this Eternal War thing. How much of that basically came from the mechanics of Civ II?

Oh, almost all of it. As time goes on, in most Civ games - well, Civ II and Civ V, now, that I’ve noticed - over time, throughout history, larger countries will envelop smaller countries until there are a few remaining superpowers. That seems to be a pattern in Civ II and Civ V in my experience, so the longer you play the more likely that outcome is going to be. Whether or not that’s part of the game design - whether they had that in mind, I cannot say - but it’d be pretty neat if that was their intention.

You said that it only maps onto real politics to a very limited extent - but it really has captured people’s imaginations because they see, for example, the story you told about having to shut down democracy. That’s interesting in and of itself. Am I right in saying that the AI factions are both theocracies?

Yeah, I believe so - a fundamentalist type of government.

Would that have been a more practical decision for you as well, that you didn’t take for other reasons?

Some people had argued that that might be the best way to go, but the person that was able to complete it in 58 years was able to do so with the communist government. In fact, the communist government worked out very well for them.

What was the key in the end, to beating it?

A mixture of units - for example, the Howitzer unit. I was primarily throwing tanks at the situation, and people who had a bit more tactical depth as far as the game is concerned were able to amass armies that my economy... well, I was concerned about saving but they just spent the entire treasury on one big push and rebuilt from there.

It’s not a particularly optimistic message, is it?

Yeah, precisely. It really wasn’t my intention to conquer the world, necessarily, but it appeared that this was the only way that peace was going to be a realistic option. There was a glitch I believe when playing on newer operating systems that the AI became much more aggressive and I believe that was what was causing my issue with the Vikings. Because of that it seemed like the only possible solution was total conquest. Were I able to vent that then I would.


Image: GildedDuke's Civ V Eternal War scenario.

The reaction to it has clearly been way and beyond what you were expecting.

No kidding!

What was that like?

It blew my mind. It was only on reddit for two or three hours before I was getting all these calls, seeing it online - it was incredible, absolutely incredible.

People have really taken to it, creatively. Solving the puzzle is one thing - thinking “how do we fix this” - but the fiction and the art, what’s that been like?

It’s a very strange sort of vindication. I’ve been playing this game for ten years. This game was very important to me personally - it had this nostalgic, sentimental value because I’d been playing it for so long. I’d been playing this one game of Civ II since I was in high school and it just grew on me. I had this narrative in my mind about how this world went and I was really content for the longest time just seeing where went. Then to have this happen, to have so many people show interest in something I had so much value and so much time invested in - it just felt really good. It was a really good experience.

Have you played any of the Civ V scenarios people are putting together?

I have not yet. I’ve seen two so far, and I do plan to play them. That in its own right is also great, that someone will do something like that.


You said that you had your own sense of what that world was like.

Yeah, after a certain amount of years of playing this it, I was just like, “wow... I had to do away with democracy”. There were so many things that happened, I couldn’t help it.

Did you document it as you were going, or was it just in your head?

It was just in my head. It was like, well, yeah I’ll return to this cool game I’ve been playing for a while. I just kept on playing, I suppose, and I thought it was pretty neat and I’d share it with reddit - and wow, the response was incredible.

Do you feel like it belongs to that subreddit community now, or are you tempted to do something else with it yourself?

I’m really not sure, but I put it on reddit and people have created art out of it - that’s incredible, and it’s the community’s at that point.

When I play Civ, my civilisations are always modelled after how I would like the world to be. But I’ve also got friends who play these games mathematically. They’re not worried about the connotations of turning to fundamentalism, say.

I’m on the opposite end of that spectrum, I would argue.

In what regard - that you play mathematically?

No, I play... romantically, I suppose.

How much do you feel like you had to break down that romantic approach to Civ to keep surviving beyond a certain point?

I think that, in its own right, was somewhat romantic. The democracy that I’d strived for was becoming a liability and the best course of action was to switch to a communist state. My ultimate intention was to restore democracy when the war was won, but that was romantic and adds to the narrative of the whole thing. Tragically so.


Image: 'Neo-Viking Spec Op', by Gauntes

Turn-based grand strategy is having a bit of a resurgence at the moment. Civ V: Gods and Kings is doing very well, Endless Space is doing very well - do you think there’s untapped potential for narrative in that genre, given your experience?

I would certainly argue that there hasn’t been enough attention in grand strategy games, or at least the ones I’ve played - Civ, GalCiv. I haven’t played Endless Space, that’s the new one, isn’t it?

Yeah. They’ve got an interesting approach to narrative, where their factions are really asymmetrical. You can be regular space dudes, but you can also be omniscient amoeba people that can see the entire map the entire time.

Interesting!

Your Civ story reached the point it got to because of the hard balance of the game. Would imbalance ultimately break that, or does it create better stories?

I think it can go both ways, depending on your interpretation of it - for example, in Civ IV I played as the Holy Roman Empire, built the Apostolic Palace in my capital, was the Pope, was able to set policies to have different Christian countries vote on it. That was great, because I was playing the role of the Vatican and that was a wonderful game, I really enjoyed it even though I was probably the weakest militarily. Because of my influence in the dominant religion I was able to be quite successful. I think that’s a great example of imbalance working in my favour. I think Civ IV was really great for that.

When I’m talking about balance I’m talking about the mathematical balance of Civ II, where empires were so enormous at that stage of the game where each country has at least fifty cities and taking three or four cities is nothing. In Civ V, if you take three or four cities you’ve likely destroyed the enemy empire.

Is game design something you’re interested in taking further?

I’d love to take it further, certainly. It’s an art form, and ultimately that’s where my interests lie. My day job is as an insurance agent - dare to dream, right? So yeah I’d love to take it further, see what comes along.

You mentioned the roleplaying element of playing as the Holy Roly Empire in that Civ IV game...

Yeah, it was incredible. I have an enormous love of history - I’m an enormous history buff. Of course the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman - but you could play as the Vatican in Civ IV and that was as close as I came.

That drive to - not recreate history, necessarily, but to re-enact certain parts of it - do you find that makes the experience more satisfying, to have certain elements that you know you’re doing ‘right’?

Yeah, absolutely. You’re following these historical tropes that seem to play out over the course of human history. When you see them repeated in the game, there’s a wonderful sense of accomplishment.


Image: infectedmanz's 'Celtania Propaganda'.

Do you think there’s anything developers could be doing to encourage that kind of creative engagement? It seems to be the thing that creates all the best stories.

Absolutely. In fact, I think there’s a lot they can do. I’ve really enjoyed what they’ve done with Civ V in bringing back religion and espionage. If they pursued that further, and implemented internal politics - I remember in GalCiv II, if you were a democracy you had to choose a political party, and there would be an element of internal politics which was incredible. Civ II had something like, if you took over the enemy capital there was a chance their nation could fracture into two opposing factions. There was also an interesting element like that in Civ IV where if you founded cities on another continent you could grant them independence and they’d become a colony - a vassal - of your empire. That was beautiful. If they reintroduced those elements - things like vassalship, colonisation - a little bit more complexity, perhaps, when it comes to running your empire.

I understand that they’re focused on conflict and making warfare as interesting as possible but things like inflation, interest rates once you’ve built a central bank - I can understand why that might put off some more casual players, I understand that completely, but I think it should be an option. You should be able to increase the complexity of the game.

I guess the deeper and more technical mechanical aspects of these games, despite sounding really dry, really enhance the game’s potential narrative depth.

I think it really does. There’s also things on the other end of the spectrum. Perhaps the game could write its own history. The war between Egypt and Arabia in, say, 1770AD - that could be recorded somewhere in the game for you to review, for it to somehow affect relations or policy in the future just as diplomacy between the West and the Middle East today is still marred by the Crusades - a thousand years later! I think that’d be really interesting. Keeping track, every game of Civ having its own timeline, it’s own story tell - just as real history has.

This kind of story is great for Civ and Firaxis. You can expect developers to be thinking, “how do we get this to happen, how do we get a guy to drop a story on to reddit that just blows up interest in the game.” The key to that seems to be including storytelling within the game itself - so it doesn’t need to be something that people only share on blogs and reddit. Making it something that the game keeps track of.

Yeah, exactly that. And if you go to civfanatics.com there are people who have done this before, who have written stories based on individual games. If the game itself did that, and rewarded you for doing so, for creating this real history - I think it’d be incredible. The storytelling potential is just totally untapped in that regard.

Many thanks to James for his time, and a tip of the hat to the /r/theeternalwar community for their excellent work.

The Massachusetts institute of technology have been experimenting with their computers' AI. Specifically the way they deal with the meaning of words. You might think that the best way to analyse this kind of thing would be with a human to PC conversation, like in Short Circuit. That's not the case.

Instead, the boffins handed over PC classic, Civilization, and let the AI get on with it. They sucked - winning a mere 46 per cent of the time. The difficulty setting the machines were playing on has not been specified.

Then the researchers handed over the instructions and taught the PCs a "machine-learning system so it could use a player's manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy." They didn't teach the PC how to play Civ, but they taught them how to read about it. The system had no pre-programmed notion of turn-based strategy or even what the objects in the world represented. The system was a noob.

The AI continued to button-mash but, this time around, when words appeared on-screen the software compared them to text in the manual. It searched for other related words close-by and tried to guess what it all meant. The computer started "reading" the manual and impementing tactics in-game, just like we used to before the days of streamlined tutorials. Its win ratio was boosted from 46 per cent to a reasonable 79.

Associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, Regina Barzilay, offered insight into why they used a game manual to prove their point. She reckons game manuals have “very open text. They don’t tell you how to win. They just give you general advice and suggestions and you have to figure out a lot of other things on your own.”

Civ was picked because it's a really fun game, and they didn't want the computers to get bored during the testing.



Not really. The researchers picked Civ because, “every action that you take doesn’t have a predetermined outcome, because the game or the opponent can randomly react to what you do." It forced the computer to develop a "technique to handle very complex scenarios that react in potentially random ways.”

These kind of systems could make developer's jobs a lot easier. Computers could start automatically creating AI algorithms that perform better than the ones that us stupid humans spend months creating. Alternatively, they could just write the manual and hand it over. Maybe.

What's the best AI you've ever played against? Most of us vote for SupCom's Sorian AI mod. Craig goes for the original F.E.A.R. - but he's never read an instruction manual in his life.

(via Reddit)

Steam are throwing a Civilization sale this weekend. Civilization 5 is available for £17.99/$29.99 and the Civilization 4 complete pack is available for £3.75/$7.50. The Complete Pack comes with Civ 4's three expansions, including Beyond the Sword, Warlords, and Colinization, which is a massive slice of top strategy gaming at an excellent price. If you've always wanted give Civ a go, now's as good a time as any. The games are on sale on Steam now.

Recently, Civilization 4 became the first game to win Grammy with an award for its theme music. For more on Civilization, have a look at our pick of the ten best Civ 5 mods, and our guide to making your own maps.