#Civilization 5

[aurianavaloria]

Baldwin IV, the... Gamer King?

Something I've found interesting - and rather surprising, tbh - is the increasing number of games and game concepts in which Baldwin IV features, and not simply as inspiration for the characters' designs, but as himself.

Here's how many places I've found him and the accompanying artwork of him (all very obviously inspired by - you guessed it - Kingdom of Heaven)

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First, the actual games...

1) Evony: The King's Return

This article from One Chilled Gamer gives the details on his statistics.

2) Blood of Steel

You can find the details in this news announcement on the game's Steam hub.

3) European War 7: Medieval

It's a little harder to find information on this one, but there's a discussion thread here on him.

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Baldwin also makes an appearance in the mods for several games, including...

Sid Meier's Civilization V

This mod adds the Kingdom of Jerusalem as a civilization to the game, with Baldwin IV as its leader. There's info on him on this wiki page, including his war and peace themes ("The Holy Land" and "Siege of Kerak" from Crusader Kings 2, respectively.)

Sid Meier's Civilization VI

This mod also adds the Kingdom of Jerusalem into the next game of the series, again with Baldwin IV as its leader.

Crusader Kings III

This mod overhauls CK3 to allow the player to assume the role of any leader present in Kingdom of Heaven (as well as their contemporaries around Europe and Asia), including Baldwin IV - although you won't get to play as him for very long before his death.

==================

Finally, I've found some concept-style art of Baldwin floating around out there, too, although I'm not certain they are for an actual game or simply intended for a potential game if they happen to grab a developer's interest.

This one is by ShawnFox on Artstation:

And this one is by XuanHan Chen, also on Artstation:

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This is all I've personally been able to find so far, but there's probably more out there I've missed. If anyone has run across any other game-related art of Baldwin IV, please share!

[asha-mage]

"Sid Meier's Civilization is actually about a group of immortal god kings condemned to forever struggle against each other in a never ending cosmic game in which their empires and nations are but pawns" gets brought up as a funny 'ha ha' joke about Civ, but the thing is that is the most supported reading of the game's mechanics, writing, art direction, and even trailers.

But what's really funny is that each new installment leans harder into this idea then the last. With Civ 7 making it so that leaders aren't even tied down to their 'historic' civilizations (meaning you can't even argue the 'national personification' thing anymore) and since Civs can change while leaders can't, that means that leaders are also the only constant across an entire campaign.

This means, for example, in the universe of Civilization, the likes of Gaius Octavius, Hatshepsut, Napoleon, and even Gandhi are constantly reborn, take up leadership of a small singular village, live for uncountable eons (unless slain by another Leader or dethroned), rebuild the same nation, people, empire over and over and over again with only slight variations, until one achieves victory over the others (be it by sending their people into the stars, building a society that culturally subsumes all others, conquering the world, or otherwise somehow 'winning history' by the metrics they held dear in their mortal lives) and gains...nothing as far as we know.

We don't know if they wither to dust instantly Gothel style, or reign until the heat death of the universe, or begin aging and live out a mortal life for however long remains to them. All we know for certain is that they are right back there again at the stone age as soon as the next game starts, becoming chiefs of a tribe of thatched roved houses on some unrecognizable landmass, with nothing to do but start all lover again from scratch. Build the same walls and monuments and wonders, fight the same endlessly shifting battles against the same rivals. Maybe this time Rome is stamped out in antiquity, and maybe this time is launches the first space colony. Maybe Egypt raises up the pyramids once more, and maybe they raise up the Colossus, or the Hanging Gardens, or Statue of Liberty, or the Sydney Opera House. Maybe Napoleon's France finally achieves perfect ideal democracy, or maybe his warring ways lead a coalition of Japan, China, the Gauls, and Sumerians facing off against him all over again. Maybe Gandhi decides mutually assured destruction is the only way to protect world peace. The names change, the lands and continents change, the ages change, eventually even the civilizations themselves change- Gaius finds himself the Emperor of Egypt and Hatsheput the Queen of the United States of America- but the only thing that doesn't change is the leaders. Their configurations vary and sometimes they face off against a newcomer they haven't before, but always it ultimately comes back to a group of immortal rulers- the great and the good, the wicked and the genius, the mad and the unlikely, and the just plain lucky that one and all ended up in the history books- who keep trying to take one more swing, one more run, one more turn at fulling the ambitions of their mortal life, and leading their people to glory.

Because the only way to break the cycle, to the end the game (both in universe and out) is to stop playing. Give up. Stop pushing that glowing little arrow button. Stop following the ambitions, the ideals, the dreams, the hopes that lead them here in the first place.

But just like Civ players and just like humans in general, they never do.

[bacony-cakes]

(trying to flirt) if you were a city state in civilization 5 i would not siege you with my battleships and artillery

[memesnotwelcome]

Let’s be real: the only way anyone can truly be distracted enough tonight is to start a game of Civ. 1000+ turns baby.

[very-uncorrect]

just bought civ v because I've heard it's a really good game

[jools-vga]

Isabel la Católica

[hickorydaisy]

Continuing on to my fics on Soft Hiatus, please inform me which of these you would want to read!

WAR WIFE

Shu and Nazuna are married, but Nazuna’s in the navy and must go off to war! Oh no! Shu also has a new apprentice named Mika… fantasy steampunk AU.

IMMORTAL NATIONS

I turn my Civ5 game into a political drama mostly about Ryuseitai. NO REGRETS! (Some. Some regrets.)

MISMATCHED STARS

Star Wars AU staring Jedi Mika and Mandalorian Suzu. Set before and eventually during the prequel trilogy.

ELECTRIC TOUCH

Shu is a living doll. Mika’s a ghost. Nazuna has rabbit ears and a tail. Things go a bit sideways.

THE KILLERS OF ENSEMBLE SQUARE

Massive multi franchise crossover reincarnation AU starring serial killers and apocalypse starters. No-one in this story is a good person.

DREAM WOVEN

Natsume uses magic to tie together Ex-Valk’s dreams.

ITS GOING TO BE FINE

Mika commits a murder.

LAVENDER HAZE

Autodale AU. In true Autodale fashion, no-one gets a happy ending.

DO YOU LOVE ME STILL?

Soulmate AU with lots of Nazuna angst.

[its-a-hil]

aw. my civ 5 scenarios are broken :(

admittedly only one of them is actually fun to me, but. i enjoyed the asymmetry of defending against the japanese invasion of korea

i even fully reinstalled, but. alas

oh well. there's other games

[o5-17-ii]

shoutout to that city i set up in bumfuck nowhere in civ just so i could get three(3) coal that has a population of two and the only buildings there are a stable, factory, granary and a monument

[zoanzon]

cw Civilization V

Why did I redownload Civ V? Why did I do this to myself?

Played for the first time in years and took a game from the start all the way into Modern Era. I finally 'put it down' on turn 355, 6-8 hours after I started the round. My head hurts, my stomach gurgles, my bladder nearly (metaphorically) wept tears of joy when it realized I was finally paying attention to it.

Parents, don't let your kids play Civ V, it's not worth it.

[gean-grey-blog]

Christopher Tin leading the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra and ~1,200 audience members singing along, in his music from Civ 5 at the Kennedy Center

I'm from the DC area, I've seen a lot of shows at the KC. This one was special. It felt like magic we made together

[tehdoctah]

Hello again!

Streaming again as usual this week!

Early Saturday/Late Friday slot is going to be some more Civ V! I'm going to try and get the Apocalypse Now achievement, something I've wanted to do on video for years.

Late Saturday slot is good old Sun Haven. That quest marker on Lucia is bugging me, so I'm going to oblige her and take her on a date. After that we'll be up to our usual shenanigans, no doubt.

And lastly, we're doing Sneaky Sunday again! I'm having fun with Hitman, so I'm going to keep at it. I've also made a playlist of the other Hitman streams, so you can check those out first if you want. Again, we'll only do the one mission to hopefully keep things brief.

Hope to see you there!

[foremanissleepy]

No, I don't see anything wrong with building the Hagia Sophia in London

[hydralisk98]

Civ 5 CE vanilla Horus playthrough #1, first stage, after two sessions (-4000 BC to 1912 AD, then to 2020 AD)

Got some Civ 5 CE vanilla for you! I am still fixing the mods, maps, scenarios and savestates as to bring it to a beta release of my constructed world pipeline with samples.

But yep, my "alpha" release is 80% done as far as designing the first-order priority timelines go. And yet though I got to note down all the remaining details explicitly, I do have a quite detailed idea for the timeline derived from several sources, including alternate history, alternate futures, fantasy & sci-fi works and even actual OTL Earth things. Cool, eh?!

I reached actual doomsday year in Mayan calendar (2012 was without a certain key offset) of my first two/three sessions of gameplay. And still got sharp memory of most key occurrences.

Don't worry, there are a handful of screenshots, saves, maps and WIP notes to document that stage. No video recordings yet but that's fine, I simply got to connect my pipeline to my Devuan Linux x86_64 PC with some remote view program and recording such screencast into OBS Studio with proper fixes and all and I should be good for further play sessions. And that does include my Nth daring attempt at a "Endekrieg" challenge thing where I just own all of the map by the 2200 AD aka no other Civs, no City-States, no Barbarians, possibly minimal-istic use of nuclear weapons but idk I will see, depends of what I decide over Stellaris and enjoyable gameplay matters. (Synchronizing such with Stellaris in case I really want dive my toes in such a meta-campaign, but that's for later.)

Yes, I still got to convert and "clef"/"key" map chart elements from Civ 5 CE back to my timeline rendition of what I seek, including the geography, the religions, the technical progressions, the event chains and Azgaar stuff before going to a FreeCiv total conversion & QGIS w/ GeoPython. But suffice to say that I do have many elements figured out in both scripture, thought patterns and visual aesthetic components.

Sorry for the latency and little responsive-ness over the Mosi update thread process (I still got to update the 288x144 tiles [both hexagonal and square] maps to my world geography and design the ~twelve elements tileset), at least the cool Source map is now underway and I have a improving, fair enough balance between sleep, healthy habits & my creative pipelines. I kinda am still slow considering I don't sleep 6-8 hours at once, still got some (self-reflected) gender-related action to do and following up on my many things within my tasklists but I do feel great about what I got now and I am improving over what matters to me, sharing the relevant bytes left to you all people.

Thanks for sticking around, cya soon! ^*^//

[rosenthorn98]

My steam workshop, with almost a decade of mods for Civilization V and VI. My longest running hobby, by a large margin. I've flit between interests over the years, but this was the most consistent. I loved the historical research and the challenge of turning the cultures into acceptable ingame representations.

I created a lot of original art and 3D work over the years that I used in my mods, and its my proudest thing that I can say I've done. Unfortunately, not many people really understand what I mean when I bring up "modding".

https://steamcommunity.com/id/600606/myworkshopfiles/

[thewitchness]

The Pope Wars have culminated in nuking Puppies.

I didn't realise I could get this invested in someone else's CIV game.