Back in 2004 or 2005, Firaxis decided to use Python as their embedded scripting language. They used something called “Boost Python”, a then reasonably easy to embed fork of Python, to embed Python2 in their Civilization 4 gaming engine.

Soon after this, Boost Python got abandoned and Firaxis ended up having to use an outdated version of Python by the time they released their final Civilization 4 expansion.

For Civilization 5, Firaxis instead used Lua, since they wanted an actively maintained code base.

For my own “embed a scripting language in a DNS server” project, I went with a slightly modified Lua 5.1. The entire DNS server, including the Lua scripting engine, is a 103,936 byte sized Windows service. The stack was a little hard to grok at first, but I was able to fairly quickly get used to it and have a Lua script set up configuration for the server, as well as parse DNS queries. [1]

To Python’s credit, the Python2 code used in Civilization 4 is 100% compatible with the final 2019 release of a Python2 interpreter, to the point that I can run map scripts for Civilization 4 -- compiled for x86/32-bit -- on a 64-bit ARM Raspberry Pi and have them generate the exact same maps. Useful when I wanted a particular kind of map for a Civ4 mod, and had to iterate through 300 different random seeds on my Raspberry Pi to find the desired kind of map. After about a month, I had over 180 map seeds meeting my criteria.

[1] https://github.com/samboy/MaraDNS/tree/master/deadwood-githu... for the record