Financial
Apparently the Warhammer video game people do an annual event in the spring, called Skulls, and put things on sale and announce new products for pre-order.1
This year (2026), the event runs from May 21 through 28.
On Steam, Gladius – Relics of War is free.
Obviously, they are hoping you’ll want to buy their DLC packs2
I didn’t know this game was going to go on sale, so I’d bought it on Good Old Games (gog.com) about two weeks prior. I went the GOG route because the Steam price was really quite high in comparison. But really, GOG was simply discounting it early because they knew that it would be going on sale.
I think I got a very fair deal. And I’m pretty sure the DLC packs I bought were 12% less expensive than the price on Steam, although of course, I paid GOG $5 for the base game, and Steam two weeks later was giving it away for free. Steam does have the achievement badges, which are fun.
Gameplay
I am definitely a fan. If you like the Sid Meier’s Civilization series, you’ll like the gameplay of Gladius – Relics of War. It is a classic 4X game: explore, expand, exploit, and finally exterminate the enemy.
Gladius – Relics of War came out in 2018 – eight years ago as of the time of this post. The advantage here is that it doesn’t assume that I’ve got super advanced hardware. It runs very smoothly because it was originally written for hardware a little on the puny side, by today’s standards.
The tutorial and the user interface aren’t as good as I’d hoped. There wasn’t an explanation of what the user interface is trying to tell me.
I’m early enough that it will take me a while to figure out what map features and what factions to play to not wipe. But the game is both interesting and soothing. I know what I’m doing, even if I don’t yet know the best way to maximize the faction that I am playing.
One thing I definitely don’t miss from the Civilization series is its woke politics. I was tremendously disappointed when Civ 6: Gathering Storm added climate change as an obstacle to manage. I’m old enough to have seen the furor over Global Cooling, and then Global Warming, and then eventually for the shysters to call it Global Climate Change because who the hell can say if the disaster will be one of warming or cooling? Still: doom! Doom! DOOM!!!3
Anyway, Gladius – Relics of War has none of that. Thank goodness.
It also doesn’t do diplomacy. I like that in a 4X game.
I suspect that I will get to play this game for a long time, and I will continue to enjoy it immensely.
Music
I love the music.
In fact, I’d read that the music score was excellent, so when the Steam Summer Sale showed up in 2025, I bought the soundtrack. I didn’t know anything about the gameplay at that time. I added it to my MP3 stream of whole-house music and like it a lot.
The only thing that is a little weird is that because it is a video game soundtrack, the data for it in MusicBrainz is a little off. I guess this is because it’s not like they went to a record publisher and said, “Hey, let’s make a CD of this and sell it”. There’s no “album” so MusicBrainz doesn’t really know how to deal with that.
Still, I like the music from the game well enough that sometimes I’ll add the entire playlist to my queue, and get 4 hours 50 minutes of play time out of it.