Great moments in PC gaming: Painting the map your color in a strategy game

GamesStrategyGreat moments in PC gaming: Painting the map your color in a strategy gameWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Sega)

A map of the Old World turning red.

Great moments in PC gamingare bite-sized celebrations of some of our favorite gaming memories.

‘Painting the map’ has a bad name among some players, becoming synonymous with the kind of strategy game where it’s the only thing there is to do. Which, for sure, can be boring. When there are no options for politicking and diplomacy, no interesting alliances or trade negotiations or paths forward that don’t involve building up a bigger army than that other guy over there then forcibly taking his land, that’s dull. But it doesn’t have to be.

Painting an actual house is boring, sure. But doing the same to a map of the world doesn’t really compare. The Shimazu clan aren’t preventing me from getting above the door jamb. There are no vampire pirates protecting the skirting board.

Watching continents change color over the course of hundreds of turns may be a base pleasure compared to strategy campaigns with more options for cunning and decisive action, but it’s still got some of that completing-a-jigsaw joy, that sensation of looking down from a distance at a world you’ve changed the shape of and saying, “Yeah, I did that.”

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Alan Emrich, the game designer and writer who coined the term ‘4X,’ has diedCivilization 7 senior historian prays it’ll be a ‘gateway drug’ into textbooks: ‘I teach undergraduates in my other life, and my God, man, they don’t read’

Alan Emrich holding a Nemo’s War tabletop game box at a 2018 gaming convention

Alan Emrich, the game designer and writer who coined the term ‘4X,’ has died

Cropped Civilization 7 concept art featuring Amina, Queen of Zazzau, pointing a sword menacingly.

Civilization 7 senior historian prays it’ll be a ‘gateway drug’ into textbooks: ‘I teach undergraduates in my other life, and my God, man, they don’t read’

LatestToday’s Wordle answer for Friday, January 10See more latest►

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