Worlds of Magic and Civilizations

Daily Ramble 119: Worlds of Magic and Civilizations

Today’s ramble follows on yesterday’s look at the Magician: Master novel by Raymond Feist. Our hero Pug is trapped as a slave on a foreign world with little chance of returning home, but he tried to make the best of it. Meanwhile, I learn of the recent release of the full port of Civilization VI to the iPad and I am jumping for joy. With these two, I can continue to let my imagination roam through worlds of magic and civilizations. This should make playing Civ VI much easier than having to log into my computer from my iPad.

Pug Four Years Later

As I mentioned last time, Pug was captured and taken over to Kelewan where he became a slave to the Tsurani. For 4 years he’s worked the plantations of one of the great houses and tried to stay out of trouble. He’s decided it’s best to pretty much forget about his former life since there’s not much chance that he’ll ever see Midkemia or Crydee again. And that means he also won’t see the Princess Carline.

But as things unfold in the first few chapters, we see that he’s grown up somewhat and is pretty intelligent. So much so that he was able to turn bad circumstances to his advantage on the plantation and eventually become “friends” with a noble. They travel from the plantation to the Shinzawai household where he and a fellow Midkemian, Laurie, teach the local Tsurani their language and horse riding. And once he gets over the idea that the princess has probably forgotten him, he falls in love with a Tsurani slave girl, Katala.

Fortune smiles upon Pug again when a passing Great One recognizes the magical gift he had previously been exploring in Crydee. But, unfortunately, once he sees Pug’s talent, he teleports him away to magician training.

Now we’ll have to see if he will ever see Katala or Carline again.

Civilization VI on iPad!!!!

Wow – I never thought I’d see this – a full port of Civilization to my trusty iPad. Ok, it’s not technically complete since multiplayer can only be handled with hot seat our on the same local network, but that’s a small difference for the latest 4X game by Sid Meier. I even see that they’ve got an announcement for the Rise and Fall expansion.

I heard about this from a podcast that was horrified that they were charging $60 for the full game and I say – huh? When was the last time you paid less than $60 for a full fledged triple A 4X title? Sure, iPad games are cheap, but with that low price comes so many tons of crappy games that you can’t filter through to get to the good ones. With Civilization VI, you know what you’re getting – a top notch game that takes advantage of over a decade of previous work.

I’d gladly pay full price for the opportunity to play this great game on the go, but for a short time more, you can still get it at half price – $29.99. I didn’t think twice about jumping on that and loading it up.

I just have to figure out if I can afford the extra external battery that I’ll need to keep playing one more turn.