The French have always been a mainstay of the Civilization series, guided by legendary leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte, Louis XIV, and Charles de Gaulle. Civilization VI will bring the debut of Catherine de Medici.
Born of Italy’s powerful de Medici family, Catherine exerted a strong influence on the French court in the latter half of the 16th century, as wife to King Henry II, intermittent queen regent, and mother to three subsequent kings of France. Retaining power in the French monarchy during a period of great social, political, and religious upheaval, some historians have called her the most powerful woman in 16th century Europe.
France’s unique ability is called Grand Tour, which provides a boost for constructing midgame wonders and a tourism bonus for all wonders built. Their unique tile improvement, the Chateau, must be built next to a river, but provides culture and gets additional bonuses for proximity to wonders.
The Garde Imperiale is France’s unique unit. It helps defend all of those wonders from jealous neighbors. They receive a combat bonus for fighting on the capital city’s home continent, and generate Great General points from kills.
Lastly, Catherine is the first leader revealed so far to focus on espionage. Her ladies in waiting serve as a bonus spy network, providing additional diplomatic information about newly met rivals by listening to court rumors. Catherine will also receive an extra spy once castles are researched.
Unlike China and Egypt, whose abilities encourage them to build a lot of wonders early and then snowball that early lead into victory, France is geared toward peaking around the medieval and renaissance periods. The culture and tourism bonuses point toward a cultural victory, but like all of the other civilizations revealed so far, there is a lot of flexibility in their features. With most of the obvious French leaders in history already covered by the series, Catherine is a really interesting choice as someone that had a strong hand in the leadership of France for an extended and important period, even if she only explicitly ruled it for some of that time.
Civilization VI arrives on October 21 for PC. We will be getting more hands-on time with the game in the next few weeks, so stay tuned for our ongoing impressions.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.