Attention Civ fanatics, Firaxis and 2K have released a massive patch for Civilization 5. It is now available on Steam for update.
I think a lot of people will be happy with this one. There’s a “restart map” feature now, improved performance, UI revisions, better AI and diplomacy are also announced and lots of nice balancing tweaks.
The patch release note is huge, so big that it should make for a nice weekend read :)
Anyway, my personal favorite changes are the following:
- Many performance improvements, particularly in the renderer
- Added “Restart Game” option to game menu. Only available at Turn 0
- When a unit is promoted, do NOT cycle immediately off that unit
- Resurrecting a player will have both sides forget any denouncing
- Reduced Happiness a bit from Mercantile City States
- Pillaging tiles now awards +25 hit points to the pillaging unit
- Reduced espionage notification spam (only informs about CS you have relations with)
- The AI will now liberate cities and resurrect players
- “We attacked your protected City-State” statements now triggered by damage done
- Tactical AI Improvement: Spend more gold on defense
- AI builds units for sneak attack at slightly higher priority in high difficulty levels
- AI will now consider annexing cities it has conquered
- Advanced settings are now persisted across multiple single player games
- More aggressive AI offshore expansion
- And much more here.
People are reporting faster turn processing and smoother gameplay.
This seems to be it people, or at least more than enough for another Civ5 run. Let’s just hope that the AI got smarter and is now able to do proper naval invasions, and do sneak attacks more also.
Remark: Civ patches usually apply to the latest version available, or expansion pack. In the case of Civ5 the latest expansion available (and only till now) is Civ5: Gods & Kings, so, expect the patch to apply to that version. It’s still to be confirmed if these changes also affect the original version or not, or in which extent.
By the way, here’s our Civ5: Gods & Kings review in case you’re wondering what the differences from the Civ5 vanilla are.
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I haven’t enjoyed the vanilla version of Civ5 enough to warrant the purchase of the G&K expansion. So I guess I will have to wait and maybe spring for the expansion when it goes on sale for a ridiculously small amount.
I find that I fully enjoy Civ IV much more than V atm. =(
I logged into Steam and it says Civ5 Update Released. So maybe vanilla got some love as well?
But, Kyle, if you didn’t play G&K you don’t know what you’re missing.
I played Civ5 vanilla for a little while and then put it aside. I only resumed playing Civ5 with G&K and, if you read my review, you’ll see that I think it fixes most of the problems found in the vanilla version (although not all, the AI could be much better in war). Civ5: G&K is a great game, one I recommend for all civ fans. Probably not as intense as Civ4:BTS was, but close.
Civ4: BTS is one of my favorite games of all time, but now I play only Civ5: G&K, and don’t see myself coming back. It was a great experience, but I think it was time to move on.
I guess that strongly depends on which issues you have with the first part.
The quarter to three review about G&K resulted in a 2/5 rating. A “more of the same” expansion. Can be found here: http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2012/06/18/gods-kings-adds-gods-and-spies-instead-of-fixing-civilization-v/
I was disappointed by Civ5 as well and would prefer playing Civ4 any time, especially with all these great mods out there – which are still continued as lots of modders apparently stick to Civ4.
The quarter to three reviewer surely has his reasons. If you use the same rating scale, G&K scores 4/5 on Metacritic, with many 8.5/10 and 9/10 scores (which for an expansion pack is quite a lot), although the user score is lower than that: 7.3.
As an hardcore fan I was also disappointed by Civ5 and would prefer Civ4:BTS any day. But, G&K fixed Civ5 for me, but of course it may not fix it for everybody although I’m convinced that the majority of Civ fans would be happy with G&K, and not willing to go back. It’s not just me, it’s a host of other people at Civfanatics.com, including other veteran Civ fans I know.
\Edit: Of course, if you happen to hate Civ5’s 1UPT (one unit p/ tile) gameplay feature I guess you will never like Civ5, no matter how good the expansions may be.
Ignore Qt3 reviews in favor of true reviews. If what you want is Tom Chick’s opinion, you’ll get that. If what you want is the answer to whether or not you should buy the game, you won’t get that.
Hey Jennifer,
I get what you mean. But the thing is that Tom Chick has the same view on the game as I have.
Most of the initial Reviews of Civ5 gave the game an awesome rating. Probably because they just played it for 20 hours and during this time all the problems didn’t really come into view. But these were the so called “true reviews”.
Tom Chick took lots of the points I hated about Civ5 and checked if these became any better. And they didn’t. And that is enough for me to say that I should stay away from that game.
I’m going to have to occur with Kyle, Civ IV is way more enjoyable than Civ V. I saw some recent statistics at some uber numbers website and Civ V has lost alot of loyal Civ players. Undoubtedly because of Firaxis/2KGames’ decision to junk it up with DRM, not to mention their greed to “DLC-only” the hell out of it. Yeah, the Civ series gets no more of my money until they come to their senses (and hopefully, they get a new distributor) With so many mods for Civ IV, I can play it for many more years to come. Right now I’m playing the Alpha Centaur mod.
nuts!! Should read – “I’m going to have to concur…” [Adam, you really need an edit function for people that post]
I’ll have a look at that. Thanks for your suggestion.
I grew up with Sid’s games (developed or produced). Railroad Tycoon, Civilization, Master of Orion, X-COM: UFO Defense, Colonization, Alpha Centauri. I feel that I will always be in dept to this guy for the amount of fun he was directly or indirectly responsible for providing me with. But, I’ll try to be the most unbiased as I can be (I always do) in my next assessment.
I don’t own any Civ5 DLC and I don’t feel I’m missing something.
Civ5 vanilla was way worse than Civ4:BTS, no way around that. It’s practically a fact.
When you say “junk it up with DRM” you mean Steam, right? Well, that’s been talked to death, no point in elaborating further.
Then there’s the 1UPT and Global Happiness mechanics, the ones that are radically different from Civ4. Either you like them, or get used to them, or it’s hopeless, and you should get back to playing Civ4:BTS or any Civ4 mod because there’s no way you’re going to like Civ5 if you hate those features, if you can’t get used to them.
But, I think the really hot topic here is about the state of Civ5’s release and Firaxis and 2K’s expansion business model.
New Civ installments are never great at release. Civ3, Civ4 and now Civ5. Heck, Civ3 was missing art assets and they did a terrible job at balancing issues like corruption, etc, etc. Civ4’s release was not smooth either. Civ4’s pinnacle, in my opinion, arrived with the Beyond the Sword expansion (2nd expansion after Warlords), 2 years after release.
That said, Civ new installments are never great at release, and usually you need lots of balancing and tweaking till you make everyone more or less content with the thing. Patches will role in, we all have seen this.
In Civ5 it was no different, but maybe they went a bit too far this time (or better wording, not went far enough). In my opinion of playing all titles heavily is that Civ5’s release was the worst, by far. I’m a huge Civ fanatic and Civ5 was the installment I played the less, by a substantial order of magnitude.
Civ5: Gods & Kings changed the game for me. Why? Because it fixed diplomacy, at least enough for me (it’s really day & night believe me). They also updated combat and the “new” religion and espionage features brought necessary depth. Happiness was also tweaked. So, in the end I think Civ5 and Civ5:G&K are two completely different games, if you can believe that. It’s like Civ 5 vanilla was like Civ 5 alpha, or Civ 4 and a half, and Civ5:G&K is in fact Civ5. But, at release time we couldn’t know, because we were still learning the game, and finding its weaknesses.
And this is the big problem with Civ5 for most folks, I think. Civ5 was not in an acceptable shape at release, at least to satisfy the hardcore fans standards (I know two non-hardcore folks that loved the vanilla version by the way). It took them 1.5 years to fix Civ5 with Gods & Kings. And now with this new patch (that seems to be the “definitive” thing) almost 2 years after.
Is this acceptable? Was Civ5 enjoyable enough for the entry price? Is financing a AAA game’s support with DLCs and expansions perception true and/or ethical (if that’s the case)? In the end its their asses on the line. And yes, till this day we can’t say that Firaxis didn’t made it. They always made it so far. We always got an exceptional product in the end.
Beyond the Sword took them almost 2 years of development to elevate Civ4 to its peak, almost the same time it took them for Gods & Kings. And, Civ games are always excellent products in the end. Civ games it’s what puts food on Firaxis table in the end. But, is this acceptable? Is this enough? That’s for everyone to judge and decide.
I could see myself getting G and K cheap during a Steam sale or something, but, after preordering Civ 5, I still feel like I got burned. As you noted might be true for some of us, I think my biggest issues are structural. I’m not sure how I feel about the hexagon-based 1UPT approach to combat. I just think it misses the point of these kinds of games entirely. I mean, take a game like Warlock. That’s a good game that takes a similar approach (perhaps the -exact- same approach, haha), but it also knows what that approach is good for. Warlock is barely a 4x. It’s basically just about combat. Although it takes the structure of a 4x, it almost feels more like a revved up Advance Wars or Master of Monsters or Dark Wizard than a stripped down Civ or Age of Wonders or Master of Magic. Honestly, I think that -works- for hexagon-based 1UPT. Grand strategy.. not so much.
I also have big issues with global happiness. It basically takes the complexity out of managing a civilization. It’d be like playing Europa Universalis III without province culture or religion. I just don’t get it.
However, if G and K gets cheap enough in the next couple months.. maybe I’ll be able to make a purchase.
I believe this patch is the fabled “Fall Patch” that was announced a bit ago. I read on the Civ Fanatic forums that it also includes DLL so that modding can start becoming more in-depth and customizable. Maybe some good AI mods now? I already have a great time with this game so I’m looking forward to what can be accomplished with the new modding tools.
Yes, it’s the big “Fall patch” Firaxis has been announcing for a while now. And yes, more modding options is also a great plus.
Soon we’ll see fantasy mods akin to FFH! This is huge!
But G&K is already great so any good fantasy mod might make CiV the best game of the franchise :O
Never thought I say that :D
CiV 5 Addon ? maybe for those who say the new Xcom is deep and everybody else is just blinded by nostalgia. Not in 100 years i´ll put money in games which are standing for the whole gaming zeitgeist.
i´d rather stick with the whole kickstarting and indie-dev thing, going back where it was better and looking forward where it should be.
It is a shame that such studio is releasing a game that is barely playable and then it takes 1-2 years to make the game as it should be from the very begining.
My impressions (“-” – means step backwards to Civ 5, “=” – means I do not think it is better or worse and “+” – means it is an improvement over Civ 4):
– I was very afraid of those hexes but they have not change a gameplay for me. (=)
– Global unhappines is a mistake, it should be per city. Step backwards to Civ 4. (-)
– Roads /trade routes should have matter not only between a city and a capital, but also between other cities as well as cities which belong to other countries. This simplification in comparision to CIV 4 is step backwards.(-)
– I am making less cities in Civ 5 which means less micromanagement, that is good.(+)
– Beeing able to focus my city on production / food and so one is a nice feature (+).
– I like improvement in policies and the fact that the more cities you have the harder is to adopt new policy. (+)
– Less units which are more powerfull is a good thing due to reduction of miromanagement. (+)
– Great generals.. hmm I do not like them to much now. They are helpfull to construct a fortress and for expanding border via fortress but I preffered them in Civ 4. (-)
– Cities can defend themselves, a good thing but I do not think that city should be able to bombard unit from distance (after all it have only unskilled people there, not a regular unit). It is quite unreal for me. (=)
– No sickness generated by cities. A simplification in comparision to Civ 4 (-)
– Can discover natural wonders, a little but nice addition (+)
– Religion, a lot of improvement in this area. I lvoe the fact that I can rename my relligion and that I can have multiple bonuses from it. (++ I will give two points cause it is really a big step forward:) )
– Spying, siplified I do not like it. I preffer to have better control on this field and perform more missions (destroying imrpvement, or building in city, polluting water and so on..) (-)
– The fact that after 21 years since the development of Civ 1 A.I. is still stupid. I must punish that with two (–).
– I do not think that new look of Civ 5 justifies the increased hardware requirements. It is not a big step ahead of Civ 4, I would rather preffer to have Civ 4 graphics and the same requirements. (-)
– Each new version of Civ has new rendered movie at the begining, who is watching that? They should spend money on hiring more testers to find bugs. (-)
– 2D view can be toggled after which the game looks like a board game. This is very nice and do not lags on weaker machines. (+)
I probably forgot about something and my pal is here to play with me in Civ 5 so I gotta go:D
8 + and 8 -, it seems to be a tie! :)
The Fall patch downloads all of the mods again, and forces you to reselect all of them again, every single time you start the game.
See http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=03cca50b8816f6b85159c73a5e7022aa&t=479318