It’s becoming a tradition with Firaxis, to release a mega patch in the fall (October/November) for its Civilization franchise. They did it for the Gods & Kings expansion, and now again for Brave New World. But, this time they did it in a slightly different way. They involved the Civ community in the patching process by releasing a patch Beta for feedback accessible to anyone who owned the game.
The changes list is huge, but I’ll enumerate the ones I consider to be the most important, or at least the ones I think have (theoretically) the biggest impact on gameplay, including my own personal favorite. This is a Steam patch, so, you’ll get it automatically the next time you play the game.
Deal history improved: First of all, it’s now (finally) possible to see how many turns it takes for a deal to finish. So, you can know now when that silver deal you’ve done is going to end without requiring you to do the math. Better later than never I guess.
Warmongering tooltip: It’s now possible to see how much an action influences your warmongering penalty (annex/liberate/puppet) via tooltip when you’re at war with that Civ. This penalty is also now halved with other civs that are also at war with the civ you’re about to conquer.
Further Benefits from Tourism: When Influential with another Civ you now get extra bonuses of science when you trade with them, get more favor in diplomacy/espionage and unrest and population loss get a reduction when conquering cities from that Civ.
Germany and Japan Civs boost: Germany gets a Bank unique building called Hanse which gives +5% production for each city state you trade with. Camp conversion was also increased. Japan was given an Ocean start bias. Samurais can now build fishing boats (due to Japan’s fishing culture) and Bushido has a new additional effect: +1 Culture from fishing boats and +2 Culture from atolls. Makes sense. Oh, and the Zero fighter no longer requires Oil.
Science Victory more difficult: Spaceship parts require twice the time to build (or twice the gold to buy).
Diplomatic Victory more difficult: Delegates needed to win increased (2 more on Duel, 7 more on Standard, 9 more on Huge). Numbers are also moddable through XML file. This is an important fix, which proves that they listen.
Religion has now 3 new Pantheons: Earth Mother: +1 Faith from Copper, Iron, and Salt. God-King: +1 Culture, Faith, Gold, Production, and Science from the Palace. Sun God: +1 Food from Bananas, Citrus, and Wheat.
Air units stacks reduced: New stacking limits on air units in cities. Starts at 6 airplanes; increased to 10 when you add an Airport. Thank god!
Military AI should buy more units: The AIs should buy military units with spare gold more frequently now. This should boost the number of early attacks, especially on higher difficulties (lack of early wars was another big complaint). I tried a game with the patch (when the patch was in beta), and quite frankly I don’t think I’ve seen more early wars than before. Guess I need to play more to check this one out.
AI should settle less worthless plots: Apparently, they tweaked the “minimum settle fertility” parameter from 5000 to 20000. What this means is that theoretically we shouldn’t be seeing the AI settleing every worthless piece of land they can get their hands on. I haven’t noticed this change in my game with the patch though, but it doesn’t mean it’s not working.
19 new Great Works of Art.
3 more City-States: Vilnius, Bogota and Wellington (Maritime, Cultured, Militaristic – don’t know in which order though).
Sound modding now supported.
Well, that’s it folks. The list of changes I think were the most critical in this big civ5 patch. Of course, the devs addressed many other balance issues and fixed many bugs. Perhaps these and other changes will justify you giving Brave New World another go? They certainly motivated me to go back.
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Lots of tiny changes and some very necessary ones like the tourism changes.
But as far as I can judge after just a couple of hours the AI agression is still kinda “broken” (too peaceful), and overall it feels pretty much the same.
It’s still a gamble about building troops or not and the faction balancing is still screwed (hello Austria).
I have to say that, like I say in the post, I too didn’t notice anything appreciably different regarding AI aggression in the beginning and early wars. This in Immortal. Everything is still pretty much quiet in the beginning unless you decide to stir the waters a bit.
I only played one game with the fall patch though. But, your experience seems to be similar to mine regarding that particular point.
“Vilnius, Bogota and Wellington (Maritime, Cultured, Militaristic – don’t know in which order though).”
Wellington is the only city with access to sea – Maritime.
Vilnius is an old, beautiful and rich with history city – Cultured.
Bogota is left with Militaristic trait.
Now wonder whether Firaxis had the same idea about those cities :).
My bad. I checked the Civilopedia (why haven’t I done it before?) and Bogota is listed as Cultured, Wellington is indeed Maritime as you suggested, but Vilnius is Mercantile.
So, one point for you and zero points for me :)
Good to see an update. I havent played played in like a month…but its one of those games you always go back to.Been playing nba 2k14 and rome 2.
Where I can downloaded Fall patch?
Steam should automatically download it for you the next time you launch the game. So, if you’ve been playing you should have it already. If you don’t have the patch yet make sure to check Steam’s update settings for Civ5:BNW.