"Players can even create high-resolution PNG files from their maps and dungeons to print out and use for tabletop strategy games or RPGs, a feature inspired by the Campaign Cartographer software Wardell used to use in his Dungeons & Dragons-playing days."

As someone who once considered using Civ4 and Dwarf Fortress as mapping utilities to aid in story writing, I greatly appreciate the inclusion of such a unique feature.

Fascenating.... doesn't say much about my big issue of Blender compatibility, but the near-complete modding freedom is veeerryyyy happy news!

If I remember correctly Civ4 originally launched with a python based AI, but they had to put it back into the C++ and everyone was thankful. The time between turns was absoutely brutal. You could hit the end turn button and go run errands before your next turn started. The end game was pretty much unplayable. Python does entail a performance hit. No doubt about it. If you want to get fancy with the AI, python might be a hindrance.

Thankfully, we had access to the Civ4 C++ source code, so we could still do AI modding.

It's been mentioned before somewhere, but I think the problem was how it did the python execution, not the execution itself. Something like starting a full on python process with every exec of a python script, versus pawning it off on a python shell that always stayed running.

Or something like that anyway.