I've been extra late at picking up this year's slate of EA football games. By the time I finally got around to ordering a pre-owned and pre-played copy of College Football 27 (and saved myself over $20 in the process!), Madden had just released. In the meantime, I took another dive into my PS5 and PC backlog. The beneficiary of my PC backlog dive is a colony-builder from a couple years ago named Land of the Vikings.

As the name suggests, this game is a city/colony-builder with a viking theme. Not only are you expected to build a thriving Norse colony, but you'll also have to send ships out to trade with and raid neighboring villages. I was hoping for "Manor Lords, but with vikings". What I got was far less.

Manor Lords with vikings? Sign me up!

Roads less travelled

The greatest strength of Land of the Vikings is that it is a little more expressive than some other colony-builders. First and foremost, it is a grid-less colony-builder, meaning you can place buildings and roads anywhere on the map, at any angle, and the roads can curve organically. This immediately sets this game apart from something like Farthest Frontier, which is constrained to a grid and 90-degree angles, and suffers for it.

Land of the Vikigns also offers a decent number of decorative objects, and these objects even have various functions. This game doesn't have the customizable, modular buildings of Foundation, which is a shame. Being able to at least customize the Longhouse would have been nice. Instead, you'll have to settle for being able to customize your trade ships and warships, which is sadly a feature that I can't review, because it didn't work for me when I played the game. I bought the customization upgrades in the technology tree, but the button to customize my ships was still grayed out in all my docks. So one of the big selling points of the game just flat-out didn't work for me.

Thankfully, the regular decorations did work, and I was able to place these in my village. Decorations are broadly divided into 4 functional categories. Some decorations make villagers happier, others improve the village's defenses, others increase the storage capacity of buildings, and still others make the village appear wealthier. These decorations don't need to be specifically placed next to the buildings that they upgrade, as they can be placed anywhere you want, giving you quite a bit of freedom to make the village look how you want.

There are some disappointing limitations to the decorations. There aren't any chairs, tables, or benches, so I couldn't make any kind of outdoor dining area for my tavern, or any kind of communal hang-out spot outside the Longhouse.

I particularly like the idea of placing signs and banners along roads to speed up movement along those roads. This is a feature that I would love to see implemented in other colony builders. They look nice on their own, but the fact that they actually do make travel along the roads faster and more efficient is a really cool feature.

Signposts, banners, and wagons will speed up movement along roads.

Placing wooden carts along roads also supposedly improves movement speed. Presumably, this is an abstraction for the villager using those carts to move goods. Personally, I would much prefer if the game had a wainwright building to make useable wooden carts and wagons, but I guess I'll take what I can get.

The game also requires that you build torches and braziers to light the village at night, which is an idea that I also really like, and which I think more games like this should employ. Without enough light, villagers will actually complain. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really give any feedback (that I could find) that tells the player where light is needed or how much light should be provided. I was also disappointed that the braziers didn't act as a source of heat to relieve villagers from the cold of winter.

The functionality of decorations gives an element of strategy and planning to how you decorate your village. You also need to put some planning and thought into who is going to work where. Each villager has different ratings for each of 4 different skills, as well as a set of randomized personality traits. The personality traits are easy to forget about or ignore, but the skills determine how efficiently a worker does their job. Some jobs require a single skill, while others can require a combination of 2 skills to be most effective. This would be a really cool system, if not for the fact that it is completely undercut by other under-developed logistical systems (which I'll talk about later).

Furthermore, different types of military units also have different skill requirements. So when you mobilize villagers for raids, you may have to pull them away from certain jobs, unless you have enough general laborers or builders to pull your vikings from.

Your village must be lit at night, or else villagers will complain.

After coming off of playing Foundation, and while jonesing for the Manor Lords castle update, I picked up another medieval village-builder: Farthest Frontier. I played this game while it was still technically in Early Access (and cheaper to buy), but its 1.0 release was only a month away, so I was basically playing (and reviewing) the release version. So for once, I'll actually have a review of a game out on the game's release! (Instead of weeks or months later, when everybody has stopped caring).

Farthest Frontier is another city-builder that's been on my radar for a long time, but I always figured that it would have a hard time competing with Manor Lords. Sure enough, I don't think Farthest Frontier is a good as Manor Lords, but it does have a lot of features and ideas that I really like, and which I would love to see ported or adopted into Manor Lords (and to other medieval survival city-builders.

I feel like the winters in Farthest Frontier look worse than they actually are.

Frontier fog

If anything, I think that fans of Banished should really like Farthest Frontier, as it feels very similar to that game. Both are grid-based city-builders, which stubbornly refuse to allow building on diagonals. One of my pet peeves with grid city-builders is when they generate maps that have diagonal features, and allow road-building on diagonals, but do not allow buildings to be placed on diagonals.

Both Banished and Farthest Frontier also put a large emphasis on logistics and trade. They also both have harsh winters -- though I did not find Farthest Frontier's weather or winters to be nearly as threatening as I remember them being in Banished.

Instead, Farthest Frontier plays up its "frontier" nature by including a fog of war that conceals potential threats and hazards. Even though the weather never posed as much of a threat to my village as I expected it to, I always had to be careful about exploring or expanding into the fog of war. You just never know what's out in that fog. Builders, loggers, hunters, or foragers who wander out into unexplored territory may run into bandit camps or wild predatory animals. If you send them out at the wrong time of year, they can also potentially get caught in a summer drought or winter blizzard, which could kill them from dehydration or cold if they can't get back to the village quickly enough.

The fog of war can hide dangerous wild animals or bandit camps.

Bandits and predators can also wander into your village or outposts from the fog of war, and can attack villagers, plunder resources, or damage or destroy buildings. You need to be sure to keep visibility of the perimeter of your village and satellite hamlets, and be prepared to defend it on a moment's notice. Watchtowers are therefore very important, but keeping them staffed takes precious population away from other jobs.

Villages in Farthest Frontier also never feel like they turn into full-blown cities or metropolises, like they can in Banished (and other games). Farthest Frontier actually has a hard cap on how high the population can get. This cap can be configured in the game's options (based on your computer's specs), implying that it's a technical and performance limitation (rather than a stylistic choice), and it defaults to 500 people. So unlike other games, you'll never fill up the map in Farthest Frontier (though you may have satellite villages all over the map). This limit may be a technical concession, but it does also contribute towards the "frontier" feeling of the game.

Civilization VII is a considerably different game compared to Civ V and Civ VI. I'm starting with civilization guides while I figure out how I want to tackle the problem of creating guides for leaders that can change civs 3 times in a single game. Unfortunately, the lack of Hot Seat multiplayer severely limits my ability to do specific testing of things like the damage dealt by unique units in different circumstances, certain diplomatic actions, pillage effects, and other things. Hopefully, Hot Seat will be added soon. As always, I welcome feedback. I will probably need a lot of feedback as I learn the new game and experiment with the format of these guides. Of course, you can also support the creation of this content by becoming a Patron.

As has been my tradition with these guides, I plan to start by focusing my attention on civilizations and leaders who have never been playable in Civilization games before. So this guide will highlight the rookie civilization of Askum.

The Persian prophet Mani considered Aksum to be one of the four great powers of the 3rd century C.E., alongside Persia, Rome, and China. It's strategic position straddling the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, separating the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean, gave Aksum a de facto monopoly on trade between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, and they were among the first African polities to mint their own coins. They also built impressive stele monuments throughout the kingdom, as well as complex agricultural infrastructure, such as irrigation, dams, and terraces.

The Aksumites in Civilization VII are a naval trade-oriented civilization who also indirectly favor cultural development and wonder construction.

DISCLAIMER:

Civilization VII is a "live service" game, which means it will be periodically updated with new content, new features, and balance changes. I may update this guide if Firaxis updates the game such that it considerably impacts this civilization, or if new strategies are discovered by the community. This guide is up to date as of the 1.2.0 patch on 29 April 2025.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

The Chicago Bears did exactly what everyone expected them to do in the 2024 NFL Draft. They traded Justin Fields to the Steelers prior to the draft, and then used their first overall pick to select quarterback Caleb Williams from USC. They had 2 top-10 picks, and went on to also select receiver Rome Odunze (from Washington) with the 9th overall pick. With their remaining 2 picks in the 3rd and 4th rounds, they selected offensive lineman Kiran Amegadjie from Yale and punter Tory Taylor from Iowa. Lastly, they traded back into the 5th round (by giving away next year's 4th round pick) in order to select edge rusher Austin Booker from Kansas.

Aside from selecting a punter in the 4th round (which may have been a bit of a reach), I don't think anybody was surprised by any of these selections. I also don't think anybody can be disappointed by these selections. Williams and Odunze were exactly who I expected and hoped the Bears to take (I was more excited about Odunze than about Williams).

Photo credit: Associated Press, Nam Y. Huh.

The Bears drafted exactly who I expected them to draft with their 2 top-10 picks.

Even the punter is a hard pick to be disappointed with, since he's one of the most elite punter prospects to come out of the draft in a long time, and has the potential to be an All-Pro or Hall of Fame directional kicker. We could argue about whether the Bears reached for this pick. Perhaps they could have traded back, picked Taylor in the 5th round or so, and then also gotten an additional 6th or 7th round pick that could have been used to select a defensive back. I doubt that there were too many teams chomping at the bit to pick a punter in the 4th round. Usually kickers don't start getting drafted until the 6th round.

It is, however, humorously ironic that the Bears invested so heavily in offense (in both free agency and the draft), only to use a 4th round draft pick to select an elite punter.

The announcement trailer for Sid Meier's Civilization VI made me very excited. Not just because there was a new iteration of my favorite PC game franchise, but also because the message of the trailer made me excited for the possibility that Civilization VI would take a much more humanist and globalist approach to its gameplay and victory conditions.

The Civilization games have always had a very optimistic tone, treating human development as being constantly progressing forward. Growing your civilization and building more things is almost always better. For the most part, Civilization treats human history as a constant forward march towards a better, more prosperous tomorrow.

This is despite the games including mechanics for "Dark Ages", climate change, nuclear fallout, occasionally pandemics and plagues, and so forth. Regardless of these mechanics, the civilizations of the game never regress, unless it's by the sword or gun of a conquering civilization, in which case, that other civilization is glorified. Climate change or nuclear winter can run rampant and render the surface of the Earth borderline uninhabitable for modern human life, but a civilization can still accumulate enough science or tourism or faith or diplomatic votes to win one of the various victories, or they can be the sole surviving civilization, presiding over a barren wasteland. But it's still a win.

Civilization is a game about cutthroat nationalism.

Despite vague gestures towards diplomatic cooperation and solving global crises, Civilization is, at its core, a game of competitive, cutthroat, zero-sum nationalism. This design ethos is probably the result of Civilization's inspirations coming from competitive board games like Avalon Hill's Civilization and Risk. "Our country is better than your country," and the whole game is an exercise in proving that. Further, one civilization's success must come at the expense of every other civilization's failure, even if those civilizations are friends or allies. One civ wins; all others lose. Every decision made is done to move your civilization closer towards one of those victory conditions, and every diplomatic agreement, trade deal, or alliance that you strike is only a temporary means to that end.

So what did Civ VI's trailer do to change my expectations for that game?

The trailer

Well, first, it's important to know how previous trailers and intro cinematics for Civilization games had introduced their respective games. Usually, they emphasized a single nation or leader doing great things. Winning wars, building wonders, developing advanced technologies, and so forth. And they usually ask the viewer: "How will you run your civilization?" and "Will your civilization stand the test of time?"

The trailer for Civilization VI takes a different approach. Let's take a look:

"We are the explorers, the inventors, the architects of change, the builders of a better tomorrow.
We strive, we dream, we inspire, always towards something greater.
All the odds we defy, the risks we take, the challenges we endure, only make us stronger.
There's no end to our imagination, and no limit to civilization."
   - Sean Bean narrating Civilization VI announcement trailer

Notice the language that is used. The Civ VI trailer uses plural language such as "we", "us", and "out". "We are the builders of a better tomorrow.". "the challenges we endure, only make us stronger." "There is no end to out imagination, and no limit to civilization.". And so forth. The trailer for Civilization VI isn't a celebration of one civilization or leader rising above all others and being crowned the "greates" civilization; it's about the collective achievement of all of humanity -- not a civilization, but all human civilization!

It's a beautifully humanistic expression that emphasizes plurality and doesn't elevate any one culture or race or nation above any other. It celebrates the collective technological advancements, engineering, art, and struggles of all of humanity, without implying that any one nation or group has the best stuff. It emphasizes that we can overcome challenges by working together, and come out the other side stronger for it. It implies that when we cooperate to build something or solve a problem, the result will be better than what any individual entity can accomplish.