One of the cool things about Amplitude's Endless games is that, despite their vastly different settings, they inhabit a shared fictional universe. A universe that's about to get a lot closer as a faction from Endless Legend makes the jump to Endless Space.

Amplitude are the creators of beautiful (and excellent) strategy games like Endless Legend and Endless Space. Today we're looking at the work of two of their artists.

Sometimes you'll find yourself out of the house, with nothing but a laptop and a whole lot of time. And while laptops are getting more and more powerful, most are still low-spec machines when it comes to gaming.

But just because you're living out of home with an integrated GPU doesn't mean you have to be bored. Here's 13 games you can play on the potato-powered productivity device that is your laptop.

Since June, Chinese players have been bombarding strategy game Endless Legend with poor reviews after developer Amplitude Studios removed a mod for Chinese language support that linked to a pirated version of the game. Last night, other players took to Reddit and organised to vote the game's rating back up.

XCOM 2 isn't coming out until 2016. Rising Tide didn't revitalise Civilization: Beyond Earth. Endless Space 2 isn't out until next year. Master Of Orion isn't playable yet either and Galactic Civilizations 3 ... there's something not quite there. What on earth is a 4X fan to do?

One option is to hit up Endless Legend, the fantasy-themed 4X from Amplitude Studios. And if you're looking for something meaty to dive into over the holiday break, the game just got a massive update.

I've played a lot of Civilization, and I've played a fair amount of Endless Legend (for a relatively recent game). And I'm ready to make the call. I just like the latter better.

As part of our recent shift in focus, I've been playing (and thus writing) about Civilization even more than usual. And for a while, it seemed every time I did, someone deep in the comments section would be whispering about another game I should try that, *gasp*, might be better than Civ. So I did. And whaddya know, in a lot of ways, they were right.