In light of the Civ 4 expansion pack coming out this week, I decided to brush of Civ 4 and finish a huge (for me) game I had in progress.  Man, I forgot how addictive Civ can be.  I had previously opted not to go for the Space Race victory, so I was invading the evil German / Mali alliance who narrowly outscored me.  The war was going quite well and was really down to the wire... 2039 or so, when my erstwhile allies the Romans launched into space!  So distracted was I with the my grand continental invasion plans that I completely failed to notice that the Romans had overtaken the Mali as the closest to a Space victory.

I'm hoping (though I haven't seen anything to indicate this) that in the expansion the Space victory will be a little harder to achieve.  It's just so much easier to pull off than any of the other victory modes by a good degree, I fear I would never see the others if I don't disable it.

Of course, it was slightly fitting that the Romans won in light of the other game from Firaxis coming out this week: CivCity Rome.  I am such a sucker for city building games, and Firefly (who did the actual development of the game) has a permanent place in my heart for amazing games like Space Colony and Stronghold... enough that I'll even overlook the fairly miserable Stronghold 2.

Certainly it promises to be a good week for PC strategy gaming...