Alright boyz, here we go!!! Civ 5 first impressions & tips thread!

[AFShadow]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Ok, now it's adding up to something serious - almost like a new game. Here are the additions to the list above:

Great news. I have been waiting for this patch to pick the game back up. Any word on when it will be released?

[Ben E Lou]

Patch estimated release date within a week. Full list of changes published.

December Patch - Full Change List

Originally Posted by 2K Greg

[AI]

[TACTICAL AI]

• Proper evaluation of which enemy units can reach my units next turn.
• Sorting enemy targets (within a class) by damage.
• Combine bombardment fire from cities with other ranged fire where possible.
• Never target a city for a ranged attack when they are already at (or going to be at) 1 health.
• Have the tactical AI be more aggressive about fortifying units that aren't moving anyways.
• Make all forms of guarding improvements the lowest priority tactical AI moves.
• Don't mark tiles adjacent to enemy at sea as good for flank attacks -- there is no flanking at sea.
• Update to tactical AI pillaging code - now prioritize enemy land resources and trade routes (never regular mines or farms). Always uses the check to make sure AI is not trying to pillage in an enemy dominance zone. Barbarians will still target everything.
• Never use ranged units to provide flank bonuses.
• Reduce chance of AI civs making "suicide" attacks.
• Changes to better protect the capital or any city with an enemy within 5 tiles.

[VICTORY]

• AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory (bribing City States) if they are wealthy.
• AI will be more aggressive about building Spaceship parts when going for Science victory.

[CIVS]

• Tweak a few leader settings to be more likely to use their traits.
• Adjust Napoleon to make more likely to go for culture.

[COMBAT/UNITS]

• AI will not use Horse as defenders on hills as much.
• AI will often build more defensive troops.
• AI will more aggressively hunt barbs in the early game.
• Slightly more naval units.
• AI will now build ranged and mobile units more in line with the flavor settings for the team - in general, this means more mobile units.
• AI now builds, deploys, and uses air units more effectively.
• Allow AI to build more units if above Prince.
• AI will be more likely to build and bring siege units in a city attack.
• Better nuke targeting by AI.
• Won't build AA if no air threat.
• Allow AI or automated human explorers to move to edge of sight range and then explore again.

[EXPLORATION/EXPANSION]

• AI will emphasize getting an Ocean going explorer unit when the time comes.
• AI slightly more likely to settle off home continent.
• AI should colonize other continents regularly.
• AI second wave expansion more aggressive.
• Improve the AI's chances of setting up protected bombard attacks.
• Settlers: should handle watery maps better.
• AI will grab goody huts on other land masses.
• AI will grab empty barb camps more often.

[WORKERS/CITY AI]

• Large Cities should be more willing to build happiness and gold buildings.
• Workers prioritize repair builds higher than other builds.
• AI will be more likely to build a wall on any city that was an original capital.
• Builder tasking now calculates yields appropriately during golden ages and weighs tiles according to how much stuff they provide overall as well as their maximum yield of a certain type.
• More likely to build up economy early.
• Multiple worker AI improvements.

[MISC]

• Factor GS into flavors more.
• Disband obsolete units even if not losing money.
• Upgrade units a bit more.
• Tweak flavors of policies a bit.
• Have AI factor Grand Strategy into picking policies.
• AI will factor grand strategy into tech choices a bit more.
• AI don't send a barb expedition if defenses are critical.
• AI less likely to pick a city on an inland sea for serious naval production.
• Additional pathfinder optimization.

[GAMEPLAY]

[CITY/BUILDINGS]

• Added "National Treasury" national wonder, which requires Markets in all cities. Provides +8 Gold per turn to the city in which it's built.
• Added “Circus Maximus” national wonder, which requires Colosseums in all cities.. Provides 5 Happiness.
• Library now has no specialist slots.
• Wat now has two specialist slots.
• Public school now has 1 Science per pop, +1 free Great Scientist point, +1 Culture for 3 gold maintenance.
• Observatory now has 1 specialist slot.
• Research Lab has two specialist slots.
• Public school now provides 1 beaker per pop for 3 gold maintenance.
• Watermill now provides +2 good and +1 production for 2 gold maintenance.
• Paper Maker now has no specialist slots.
• Circus now has +2 happiness and no maintenance.
• Theatre now has +5 happiness.
• Stadium now has +5 happiness.
• Reduced production cost and maintenance for the Courthouse.
• Courthouse can now be purchased in a city (although it is expensive).
• Removed maintenance from city defense buildings (Walls, Castle, Military Base).
• City defense buildings now help cities heal.
• Increased city strength ramp-up based on technology.
• Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city).
• Reduced amount of food needed for cities to grow at larger sizes.
• Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this).
• Ironworks now gives 10 hammers instead of a % bonus.
• National College now gives +5 science in addition to the % bonus.
• Hermitage gives 5 culture in addition to its previous bonus.
• Raze/Unraze exploit fixed.
• Cities being razed are unhappy about it (only during the razing process).
• Cities heal more quickly.

[UNITS/PROMOTIONS]

• Cavalry can now go obsolete with Combustion.
• Stealth bombers cannot use carriers.
• Only allow one upgrade per unit from a goody hut.
• Add second embarkation promotion ("Defensive Embarkation").
• Amount of damage done during naval combat increased.
• All melee horse units get penalty attacking cities.
• Increased city attack penalty for mounted and armor units to 50% (from 40%).
• Lancers (and Lancer UUs) upgrade to helicopter.
• Lowered combat value of Horseman and Companion Cavalry.
• Promotions must be picked the turn they're earned.
• Can no longer promote a unit that has fought during the turn (instead, the promotion comes up the beginning of the following turn).
• Catapults and Trebuchets now weaker against units but stronger VS cities.
• Reduced effectiveness of Archers & Crossbowmen (and their UUs) VS cities.
• Reduced some combat bonuses: flanking (15 to 10), Great Generals (25 to 20), Discipline (15 to 10), Military Tradition (2x to 1.5x).
• Remove requirement for aluminum on Mobile SAM.
• Lower open terrain penalty to 10% .
• Marsh is now 3 moves to enter (Chariots do not move quickly through it anymore).
• Cavalry now upgrade to tanks.

[CITY STATES]

• Reduced bonuses from Maritime city-states - Friends: +2 food in capital, +0 food in other cities - Allies: +3 food in capital, +1 food in other cities
• Only the first 3 units gifted to a city-state will earn Influence now.
• Killing a barb inside a city-state's territory now gives a 5-turn buffer where there is no Influence intrusion penalty.

[HAPPINESS]

• If an empire reaches -20 Happiness, it goes into revolt, and rebels start appearing throughout the empire, based on the number of cities.
• Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age reduced.
• Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age now increases as the number of cities in the empire goes up.

[POLICIES]

• Landed Elite (Tradition Branch) now reduces culture cost of border growth by 2/3.
• Monarchy (Tradition Branch) now provides +1 Gold per 2 pop in the Capital..
• Liberty now provides a Settler training bonus to only the capital, and not every city.
• Tradition now provides +50% growth in the capital.
• Theocracy now reduces Unhappiness by 25% .
• Reformation now gives a 10-turn GA.
• Adopting Rationalism now gives a 4-turn GA.

[TECH TREE]

• Add link between Military Science and Dynamite.
• Add link between Civil Service and Education.
• Add link between Economics and Scientific Theory.
• Add link between Chivalry and Acoustics.
• Research overflow now works correctly (extra beakers after completing a tech will rollover to the next tech).

[GENERAL]

• Fixed bug where clicking on a city plot wouldn't select the garrison.
• Natural wonders now award culture (if worked) and happiness (if in border) if that trait is assigned to a wonder in XML.
• Players must now always adopt Policies immediately, and cannot defer picking until later.
• Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). Razing cities will not raise your policy cost ceiling.
• Reduced culture needed for first plot acquisition from 20 to 15.
• 3 new Natural Wonders and rarity code for both base game and New World scenario.
• Reduced points from Wonders (40 to 25) & Cities (10 to 8), increased points for pop by 1 (3 to 4).

[DIPLOMACY]

• AI's attitude towards you is now visible in the diplo screen and diplo drop-down.
• Added info tooltip for an AI leader's mood. Lists things that are making an AI player happy/upset.
• New diplo system: Declaration of Friendship (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions).
• New diplo system: Denounce (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions).
• New custom leader responses (Serious Expansion Warning, Aggressive Military, Luxury Exchange, Borders Exchange, Gift Request, etc.).
• Not agreeing to a friend's request now results in a relations hit.
• Third party AIs can now respond when a player makes a DoF or denounces someone. What they say is based on the situation - e.g. if you make friends with someone they don't like, they'll scold you.
• AI leaders will now sometimes ask their friends to denounce one of their enemies as a show of support, and refusing to denounce someone when an AI asks can now make them very upset.
• AI is now capable of denouncing friends (aka, backstabbing) and added backstabbing info to diplo overview screen.

[UI]

• Add XP bar for air units, do not allow XP for air units attacking a city that is already down to its last hit-point.
• Change ActivePlayer's name to "You" in single player in score list.
• Added game option to disable automated workers from removing features.
• Fixed bug where Happiness from garrisoned units wasn't being listed in Happiness info tooltip.
• Load Map function will now display correct size and type of saved map.
• New “Angry Genghis” loading screen (replaces the “fluffy-bunny Genghis” loading screen).
• Added setup options to allow players to defer choosing Policies and Promotions right away.
• Show the river penalty when attacking city across river (the penalty was there but was not being shown in the preview).
• Global politics screen updated to reflect new diplo system.
• Can no longer Force End Turn (shift-enter) through blocking notifications. CAN now use it to skip over units which need orders.
• Multiple tweaks and bug fixes.

[MISC]

• Fix small bugs with adding long roads around existing features.
• Fixed bombard arrow across world wrap.

[MODDING]

• Parent category counts now include counts of child categories.
• Selecting/deselecting a category now automatically selects/deselects it's children and its parent.
• Tweaked category name truncation to better fit names.
• Hide categories w/ no children and a count of 0.
• Added support for fallback languages (if mod is not translated, fall-back to English so text keys are not showing).
• The pager for the installed mods tab of the mods browser is now displayed in the correct location.
• Long values for properties such as "Special Thanks" will no longer extend past the edge browser frame.
• Categories refresh much faster now in the mods browser.
• Multiple additional tweaks and fixes to the mod browser.
• Support for mods that perform major restructuring of the tech tree including adding, deleting, and updating techs, buildings, and units.
• Added GameEvents system for overriding Gameplay DLL specific functionality.
• Fixed "Reload Landmark System" mod flag to now refresh landmarks defined in "ArtDefine_Landmarks".
• Multiple SDK updates (new version to go live shortly).

[SERIALIZATION/SAVES]

• Fixed save format which causes saves to increase the memory footprint of the game drastically when loading frequently over the course of the game. This heightened the risk of late-game our of memory crashes significantly.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Ton of changes. Looking forward to seeing AI with new fixes.

[Buccaneer]

Full Patch Notes released.

December Patch - Full Change List

Looking awesome, esp. the AI changes and the nerfing of the overpowered Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the City-States ATM.

[Ben E Lou]

Patch is released. Downloading now.

[aran]

I'm quite impressed with this changelist. It looks like they've cut out some of the annoyingly common tactics that pushed me towards shelving the game.

[Buccaneer]

Impressions post-patch?

[Alan T]

Just a note for those that got in on the pre-order deals, I just got a note from direct2drive that my bonus free first DLC is now available to me. The Inca/Spain double civilization/scenerio pack.

[Ben E Lou]

Got a great person from a C-S ally, but because of the lay of the land, the cultural borders of the nearby nation make it impossible to move it out. I haven't made it to the extreme late game due to crashes before now. Is there any sort of airlift that I can do out of the C-S, or do I have only two choices as to how I can get it out of there?

1. Open Borders
2. War

[bulletsponge]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Got a great person from a C-S ally, but because of the lay of the land, the cultural borders of the nearby nation make it impossible to move it out. I haven't made it to the extreme late game due to crashes before now. Is there any sort of airlift that I can do out of the C-S, or do I have only two choices as to how I can get it out of there?

1. Open Borders
2. War

boat. your GP can embark and swim home

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by bulletsponge

boat. your GP can embark and swim home

No. Surrounded on all sides by a civ that refuses to do open borders with me.

[henry296]

Has anyone seen this?

I traded a couple of my excess luxury resources for another luxury resource and my hapinees got much worse? In fact, I lost credit for the items I traded. I'm extremely confident I had extras as I have tons of land and resources.

[Mike Lowe]

This may be a silly question, but is there a reason this game suddenly runs incredibly slow after upgrading to Windows 7?

It's either that or the patch...

[cartman]

Originally Posted by Mike Lowe

This may be a silly question, but is there a reason this game suddenly runs incredibly slow after upgrading to Windows 7?

It's either that or the patch...

I've been getting constant crashes in Civ 5 since the last patch. A search of The Google shows that there are a ton of cases with the latest patch causing issues with folks running Win 7 64 bit. I can't make it more than 10 or 15 turns before a crash happens.

[Coffee Warlord]

It'd be nice if I could play a huge map game without it blowing up / being incredibly slow once it gets to the later eras.

[Jughead Spock]

How's this going for everyone? I've kinda shelved it for now until there's some AI improvements. I still like it a lot, but it gets mundane pretty quickly as it is. For better/worse, it definitely doesn't feel as 'deep' as IV.

I've pondered putting IV back on, but I don't know if I can go back to squares and stacks of doom. Hexes & 1UPT is awesome.

[Buccaneer]

Originally Posted by Jughead Spock

I've pondered putting IV back on, but I don't know if I can go back to squares and stacks of doom. Hexes & 1UPT is awesome.

I cannot go back to squares and SoD (unless playing Civ4:Col AoD2). I am finding the AI to be more aggressive in trying to win and thus, making it harder for me to beat them. For example, if Greece is on the map, they will go hard after city-states, your cities-states and what they can't bribe, they will conquer. That's what happened in my last game in which I tried to win a cultural game (which is challenging to do). Other than that, the AI still has trouble tactically but it's noticeably improved post-patch, imo.

[Butter]

Yeah, I think the CPU is definitely harder to beat now. It's a pretty fun game on Prince difficulty (the even-with-the-AI difficulty). But it's still not matching the fun I had with Civ IV. Still needs some tweaks. Something is definitely still missing.

[Mike Lowe]

Is there a plan for another patch? Seems odd for Sid to just ignore this game!

[Buccaneer]

Even with Jon Shafer gone, 2K announced that new patches were forthcoming (perhaps even an expansion pack?). Sid has left this ship a long time ago and have been working on a facebook version of Civ (ugh).

[Bobble]

Anyone else getting a crashload....I mean, crapload of crashes? There's points in the game, using a large map, that I can't go 10 turns without a crash.

[A-Husker-4-Life]

Originally Posted by Buccaneer

Even with Jon Shafer gone, 2K announced that new patches were forthcoming (perhaps even an expansion pack?). Sid has left this ship a long time ago and have been working on a facebook version of Civ (ugh).

Oh gosh, really... Wow the civ franschise is dieing a horrible death, Facebook really.....

I really hope Sid comes down from his high horse and start to work on Civ6. Maybe in 4 years we'll get a descent CIV game again..

[Jughead Spock]

I don't think Sid's actually been involved since Civ II, if that.

[gi]

Originally Posted by Bobble

Anyone else getting a crashload....I mean, crapload of crashes? There's points in the game, using a large map, that I can't go 10 turns without a crash.

ATI video card?

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by gi

ATI video card?

Why, yes. Talk to me. Solutions?

[Edward64]

I had fun with Civ5 and played it on-and-off for a couple months. It was fun but hasn't grabbed -- in fact seeing this thread again made me feel guilty that I had not played it in a while.

Haven't figured out why exactly. I remember enjoying it for the first month.

Ready for some expansion packs and additional goodies.

[gi]

Originally Posted by Bobble

Why, yes. Talk to me. Solutions?

My wife and I had the same issue, have to up the overclock with a tool I found. The problem was with the card powering up and down depending on resource need. I had to set it to always be HIGH.

I'll get the link to the tool as soon as my kid is taking his nap in a couple hours.

[gi]

Okay:

ATI Tray Tools by Ray Adams

ATI Tray Tools Free Download and Reviews - Fileforum

You can find it else where as well. ATI Tray Tools Public Beta Section - Guru3D.com Forums


After you install it, right click on the taskbar icon -> Choose Hardware -> Overclock Settings

Change Voltage to the highest. On my card it is changed from 0.950 to 1.100

Click Apply

I'm good to go when I do this. Still need to invest time to make this change happen automatically every time I boot the computer.

Hope this helps.

[Ksyrup]

It is hard for me to figure out why, but I haven't had the faintest interest in playing this game since the first week it came out. Of course, I haven't gone back to CIV IV either, so I don't know if I'm all played out of this game or if the new one has soured me on the entire thing. I've played the new one so little that I'm pretty sure I could go back to IV without a problem.

[Bobble]

Originally Posted by gi

Okay:

ATI Tray Tools by Ray Adams

ATI Tray Tools Free Download and Reviews - Fileforum

You can find it else where as well. ATI Tray Tools Public Beta Section - Guru3D.com Forums


After you install it, right click on the taskbar icon -> Choose Hardware -> Overclock Settings

Change Voltage to the highest. On my card it is changed from 0.950 to 1.100

Click Apply

I'm good to go when I do this. Still need to invest time to make this change happen automatically every time I boot the computer.

Hope this helps.

Cool. Thanks. I updated the drivers (thanks, Dell, for making that hard to do) and I'll try this if I continue to have issues.

[Carman Bulldog]

So I've been out of the Civ game for awhile, and in fact the only Civ game that I had really played was the original for a big period of time in the mid-late Nineties.

Recently, I played a bit of Civ Revolution for the Xbox 360 and want to get back into the PC version.

Is there a recommendation for the best version? Is Civ better than Civ IV? From some of what I've read, Civ II is still some people's favourite.

[Jughead Spock]

You will find a religious faction for all of 'em, but I *think* Civ IV (w/ BTS expansion) is the go-to. You certainly won't regret it.

[molson]

I haven't played CIV V yet, but the reaction to it has been underwhelming. And CIV IV with the expansions gets thrown around in "best PC game ever" conversations. And it's not really that old a game - it was perfected with the last patch/expansion within the last 2 years or so.

Meanwhile, this thread is depressing.

[dolfin]

I've been playing Civ V again recently and while I am having fun, I think I'd recommend Civ IV as well. With you mentioning Civ:Rev and wanting to get back to the PC version, I'd think you will get more enjoyment out Civ IV. To me, Civ V seems a little more akin to Civ:Rev than Civ IV

[PadresFan104]

I prefer Civ V as it looks prettier than the older versions. And no, I'm not kidding...

[gstelmack]

Giving Up On Civilization 5 | No High Scores seems to be an interesting writeup on Civ V.

[Buccaneer]

I'm having fun with Civ5 despite its weaknesses. I don't think I could go back to Civ4.

[bhlloy]

Civ 4 with BTS is almost certainly a more balanced game, but I don't think I could go back to stack of doom and the old hexes. If they could just find a way to mix the two, that would be an incredible game IMO.

[Buccaneer]

Speaking of balancing, here are the notes to the next patch

Along with these notes, I have an introduction from Dennis, the Civilization V producer at Firaxis. We wanted to give you a little insight in to the thought process behind this patch's changes, so be sure to give it a read before diving in to the changes themselves:


The upcoming patch will contain some significant balance adjustments to Civ V. We thought it would be a good idea to give everyone a quick run-down on our thoughts behind these changes and a look at what further balance work lies ahead….

This February patch comes at a great time for making balance changes; The five months since Civ V’s release has given us time to analyze reports of dominant strategies and implement and test deeper changes that will better balance the game in several key areas.

Working with our “Frankenstein” gameplay test group, we have been looking closely at the tradeoffs between building a Wide empire (one with lots of smaller cities sprawling across the map) and a Tall empire (one with just a few highly populous, highly productive cities). With this patch you’ll see a number of changes to the economic side of the game to bring these two play styles in closer balance with each other. City spacing, building effects and the Liberty and Tradition policy trees are where the most extensive changes have occurred. We’re now seeing games where a Tall empire can match or even exceed a Wide one in production and science output even deep into the game.

We wanted to improve the effectiveness of buildings. We also wanted to improve how cities interact with the map. Adjustments to terrain have increased production, while buildings that modify production have been adjusted in tune with these changes. You’ll find many buildings to be easier to build, with extra benefits, especially if you’ve settled near beneficial terrain and resources. We've continued to make improvements to pacing, diplomacy, turn times, the AI, and other aspects of the game.

With future patches we’ll continue to iterate through Civ V systems and fine tune the balance of each one. So far we’ve already identified combat, multiplayer, late-game policies, wonders and civilization-unique bonuses as additional areas that will benefit from this sort of attention. And as this journey progresses we promise to keep an ear to the ground for other areas the Civilization community may want us to address. Continued collaboration between community, our gameplay testers, and the development team will be nothing but a win for Civ V.
And so without further ado, the changes:

ENGINE
•Significant turn time improvements.
•Invisible Rivers now display correctly. This caused many issues because the player could not see some rivers, like fresh water showing up in strange places, unit movement suddenly shortened, etc.. Basically, there were certain rivers that did not display where forks occurred, etc.

USER INTERFACE
•Add combat summary when a city bombards a unit
•Add a new diplomatic status "Denouncing" that displays on the turn that an AI civ is denouncing the player
•Embarked units no longer look like they have 500 strength
•User warned if about to declare war on a city state that is under protection of a major power

GAMEPLAY
•Taper off benefit of excess food when building settlers
•City-States now recognize when a road is connected for their road-connection quest.
•Golden Ages now provide +20% production per city rather than +1 hammer per tile

STRATEGIC AI
•Prevent AI from building too many AA units
•Don't allow CSs to build Manhattan Project
•AI calculation of enemy military might are tweaked based on size of enemy gold reserve
•AI calculation of enemy power now takes into account promotions

DIPLOMATIC AI
•Avoid cascades of denunciations against a single player. AI now uses its own current friendliness level with a given power to determine how much weight to place on a denunciation against that power.
•Denunciations expire after 50 turns
•Declarations of Friendship expire after 50 turns

MODDING
•Added support for policies that provide culture from kills
•Added support for policies that provide extra culture from cultural improvements
•Added support for policies that provide extra embarked movement
•Added support for policies that provide free Great People
•Online Panel now displays TOTAL downloads for a mod and not just the downloads for that specific version.
•When you click on a mod in the online browser, you may now use a dropdown to select a previous version.
•Added Line Control for modders to use when creating graphs, etc.

MULTIPLAYER
•Can now use DLC civilizations in multiplayer
•Added Ring, Skirmish and Ancient Lake maps to MP.

BUG FIXES
•Clear up cases where diplomatic status could show as "Friendly" even after that AI power has denounced the player.
•Fix situations where AI demeanor and verbiage didn't match friendliness level shown in diplomatic status string.
•Additional bug fixes and tweaks.

BALANCE CHANGES

Game Rules
•Cities must now have three or more tiles in between them (1 more tile than before), unless separated by a sea/coast tile.
•Cities now only get 1 free production and 0 free gold (1 less in both cases)
•Trade routes get bonus gold based on population of capital; formula changed a bit so minimal gold received for hooking up very small cities
•Bonus production from excess food (used when building settlers) tapers off if excess is 3 or more.
•Allied maritime city states provide 3 food per turn to the capital, not 4
•Balance pass on production and maintenance costs throughout the game.

Buildings
•Aqueduct added (entirely new building). 40% of Food is carried over after a new Citizen is born.
•Palace boosted to 3 gold and 3 production
•Granary gives bonus 1 food for Wheat/Banana Deer; cost reduced
•Market and Bazaar provide 2 gold (as well as +25%)
•Workshop provides 2 production (bonus reduced to +15% but affects ALL production); cost increased
•Windmill now has a +15% production modifier (for buildings only) and provides 2 production
•Stable gives bonus 1 production for Sheep/Cattle/Horse and can be built with Sheep or Cattle; cost reduced
•Lighthouse gives bonus 1 food for Fish; cost reduced
•Ironworks dropped to 8 production (but earlier in tech tree now)
•Factory requires Workshop; add 3 production but boost now just 25%; has 1 more specialist slot (now 2)
•Nuclear and Solar Plants now require Factory but increase to production is now 35% and provide 4 production themselves; these two now mutually exclusive
•Hospital adds 5 food (but no longer retains food), requires Aqueduct
•Forge adds +1 production to each source of Iron
•Reduced Armory maintenance to 2 gold
•Reduced Colosseum happiness to 3, and reduced maintenance to 2 gold
•Reduced Theatre happiness to 4
•Reduced Monastery maintenance to 0 gold
•Reduced Garden maintenance to 1 gold
•Reduced Observatory maintenance to 0 gold
•Reduced Opera House culture to 4, and reduced maintenance to 2 gold
•Removed the Great Person Point from Public School

Specialist Adjustments
•Temple -1 Artist
•Mud Pyramid Mosque -1 Artist
•Opera House +1 Artist
•Bank -1 Merchant
•Satraps Court -1 Merchant
•Stock Exchange +1 Merchant
•Observatory -1 Scientist
•University +1 Scientist
•Garden -1 Artist
•Laboratory -1 Scientist
•Public School +1 Scientist

Improvements/Routes
•Production bonus from Railroads reduced to 25%
•Removed 1 extra gold from Mine on Gems, Gold, Silver, Marble.
•Fishing Boats give 1 food, not gold.
•Fishing Boats give 1 gold with Compass.
•Camps on Deer give production instead of food .
•Remove 1 extra food from Sugar plantations.
•Trading Post gold reduced from 2 to 1 (increases back to 2 when hit Economics).
•Trading Post & Camp gold increases by 1 with Economics.
•Lumbermill production increases by 1 with Scientific Theory (moved up from Steam Power).
•Mine & Quarry production increases by 1 with Chemistry.
•Plantation & Pasture food increases by 1 with Fertilizer.
•Well & Offshore Platform boosted to 3 production (from 1).
•Academy increased to 6 Science.
•Landmark increased to 6 Culture.
•Manufactory increased to 4 Production.

Policies
•Tradition: Culture border expansion discount in cities placed on Tradition branch opener. Discount increases over the course of the game. Also grants +3 Culture in the capital.
•Aristocracy: Wonder bonus reduced by 5% to 20%.
•Legalism: Provides a free Culture building in your first 4 cities.
•Oligarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance, and cities with a garrison gain +100% ranged combat strength.
•Landed Elite: +15% Growth, and +2 Food per city.
•Monarchy: +1 Gold and -1 Unhappiness for every 2 Citizens in your capital.
•Liberty: +1 culture per turn in every city.
•Collective Rule: Settler production increased by 50%, and a free Settler appears near the capital.
•Citizenship: Worker construction rate increased by 25%, and a free Worker appears near the capital.
•Representation: Each city you found will increase the cost of your next Policy by 33% less. Also starts a Golden Age.
•Order: Reduce Order production bonus to 15%.
•Meritocracy: +0.5 Happiness for each city connected to the capital, and a free Great Person of your choice appears near the capital.

Resources
•Fish reduced to 1 food (but can be boosted back to 2 with Lighthouse)
•Marble boosts wonder production by 20%, down from 25%

Technologies
•Scaled up tech costs throughout the game (slight change for early eras; close to double for Modern)
•Move Lumbermills up to Construction
•Move Bridge Building back to Engineering
•Move Ironworks to Machinery

Units
•Workboat cost increased
•Settler cost increased by 25%

Wonders
•Colossus no longer goes obsolete
•Angkor Wat now provides a 25% discount for the costs (both culture and gold) to gain plots empire-wide.

Civ Unique Bonuses
•Reduce Chu-ko-nu from 10 to 9 ranged strength
•Doubled culture from kills for Aztecs
•Krepost now provides a 25% discount for the costs (both culture and gold) to gain plots in the city.
•Paper Maker only provides 2 gold but no longer requires any building maintenance

Map Generation Changes
•Increased Oil quantity per resource.
•Minimum Uranium is now 2.
•Cut Deer Appearance in Arctic regions.
•Adjusted Sheep placement so it is more spread out.
•Decreased Wheat appearance in Plains.
•Increases Cow appearance overall, including adding up to 2 Cow tiles to heavy grass start positions.

[Buccaneer]

Patch released. Some changes to what I posted above.

[Big Fo]

I just hit the Industrial Age in my first game with the new patch (and my first game in months). I haven't fought enough battles to comment on any combat AI improvements (I defeated the only other Civ on my continent in the spearmen/knights/crossbowmen era) but the balance between early techs and midgame techs seems better and various aspects of the economy (tile output, building costs/maintenance, building effects) seems better. It's encouraging at least.

[cartman]

The new patch has resolved the issue of the game crashing after 10 or 15 turns for me. Glad to be able to play it again!

[thealmighty]

Recently got the game. Won the first effort on lower end difficulty (I suck at Civ) after 350 turns or so.

Question I have is if/when barbarians quit popping up everywhere, every turn. Quite a pain in the ass to still have them to deal with when a whole continent is under your control.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

Update ready to download......

1.0.1.221a

• Fixed graphical issues on Intel HD 3000 GPU.
• Newly supported video cards – ATI HD 6750, ATI HD 6490, ATI HD 5870, ATI HD 5770, and Intel HD 3000.

ENGINE
• Significant turn time improvements.
• Invisible Rivers now display correctly. This caused many issues because the player could not see some rivers, like fresh water showing up in strange places, unit movement suddenly shortened, etc.. Basically, there were certain rivers that did not display where forks occurred, etc.
• Memory leak – UI – Change the way the UI Manager calculates the hash of a texture so that different ways of specifying the same texture will not load the same texture more than once.

CRASH/TURN SPIKE
• Correct coding error that could cause turn-time spikes, incorrect deployments for protected bombard attack, or incorrect deployments as armies marched across the map

USER INTERFACE
• Add combat summary when a city bombards a unit
• Add a new diplomatic status "Denouncing" that displays on the turn that an AI civ is denouncing the player
• Embarked units no longer look like they have 500 strength
• User warned if about to declare war on a city state that is under protection of a major power

GAMEPLAY
• Taper off benefit of excess food when building settlers
• City-States now recognize when a road is connected for their road-connection quest.
• Golden Ages now provide +20% production per city rather than +1 hammer per tile

STRATEGIC AI
• Prevent AI from building too many AA units
• Don't allow CSs to build Manhattan Project
• AI calculation of enemy military might are tweaked based on size of enemy gold reserve
• AI calculation of enemy power now takes into account promotions

DIPLOMATIC AI
• Avoid cascades of denunciations against a single player. AI now uses its own current friendliness level with a given power to determine how much weight to place on a denunciation against that power.
• Denunciations expire after 50 turns
• Declarations of Friendship expire after 50 turns

MULTIPLAYER
• Can now use DLC civilizations in multiplayer
• Added Ring, Skirmish and Ancient Lake maps to MP.

BUG FIXES
• Clear up cases where diplomatic status could show as "Friendly" even after that AI power has denounced the player.
• Fix situations where AI demeanor and verbiage didn't match friendliness level shown in diplomatic status string.
• Additional bug fixes and tweaks.

BALANCE CHANGES

Game Rules
• Cities must now have three or more tiles in between them (1 more tile than before), unless separated by a sea/coast tile.
• Cities now only get 1 free production and 0 free gold (1 less in both cases)
• Trade routes get bonus gold based on population of capital; formula changed a bit so minimal gold received for hooking up very small cities
• Bonus production from excess food (used when building settlers) tapers off if excess is 3 or more.
• Allied maritime city states provide 3 food per turn to the capital, not 4
• Balance pass on production and maintenance costs throughout the game.

Buildings
• Aqueduct added (entirely new building). 40% of Food is carried over after a new Citizen is born.
• Palace boosted to 3 gold and 3 production
• Granary gives bonus 1 food for Wheat/Banana Deer; cost reduced
• Market and Bazaar provide 2 gold (as well as +25%)
• Workshop provides 2 production (bonus reduced to +15% but affects ALL production); cost increased
• Windmill now has a +15% production modifier (for buildings only) and provides 2 production
• Stable gives bonus 1 production for Sheep/Cattle/Horse and can be built with Sheep or Cattle; cost reduced
• Lighthouse gives bonus 1 food for Fish; cost reduced
• Ironworks dropped to 8 production (but earlier in tech tree now)
• Factory requires Workshop; add 3 production but boost now just 25%; has 1 more specialist slot (now 2)
• Nuclear and Solar Plants now require Factory but increase to production is now 35% and provide 4 production themselves; these two now mutually exclusive
• Hospital adds 5 food (but no longer retains food), requires Aqueduct
• Forge adds +1 production to each source of Iron
• Reduced Armory maintenance to 2 gold
• Reduced Colosseum happiness to 3, and reduced maintenance to 2 gold
• Reduced Theatre happiness to 4
• Reduced Monastery maintenance to 0 gold
• Reduced Garden maintenance to 1 gold
• Reduced Observatory maintenance to 0 gold
• Reduced Opera House culture to 4, and reduced maintenance to 2 gold
• Removed the Great Person Point from Public School

Specialist Adjustments
• Temple -1 Artist
• Mud Pyramid Mosque -1 Artist
• Opera House +1 Artist
• Bank -1 Merchant
• Satraps Court -1 Merchant
• Stock Exchange +1 Merchant
• Observatory -1 Scientist
• University +1 Scientist
• Garden -1 Artist
• Laboratory -1 Scientist
• Public School +1 Scientist

Improvements/Routes
• Production bonus from Railroads reduced to 25%
• Removed 1 extra gold from Mine on Gems, Gold, Silver, Marble.
• Fishing Boats give 1 food, not gold.
• Fishing Boats give 1 gold with Compass.
• Camps on Deer give production instead of food .
• Remove 1 extra food from Sugar plantations.
• Trading Post gold reduced from 2 to 1 (increases back to 2 when hit Economics).
• Trading Post & Camp gold increases by 1 with Economics.
• Lumbermill production increases by 1 with Scientific Theory (moved up from Steam Power).
• Mine & Quarry production increases by 1 with Chemistry.
• Plantation & Pasture food increases by 1 with Fertilizer.
• Well & Offshore Platform boosted to 3 production (from 1).
• Academy increased to 6 Science.
• Landmark increased to 6 Culture.
• Manufactory increased to 4 Production.

Policies
• Tradition: Culture border expansion discount in cities placed on Tradition branch opener. Discount increases over the course of the game. Also grants +3 Culture in the capital.
• Aristocracy: Wonder bonus reduced by 5% to 20%.
• Legalism: Provides a free Culture building in your first 4 cities.
• Oligarchy: Garrisoned units cost no maintenance, and cities with a garrison gain +100% ranged combat strength.
• Landed Elite: +15% Growth, and +2 Food per city.
• Monarchy: +1 Gold and -1 Unhappiness for every 2 Citizens in your capital.
• Liberty: +1 culture per turn in every city.
• Collective Rule: Settler production increased by 50%, and a free Settler appears near the capital.
• Citizenship: Worker construction rate increased by 25%, and a free Worker appears near the capital.
• Representation: Each city you found will increase the Culture cost of Policies by 33% less than normal. Also starts a Golden Age.
• Order: Reduce Order production bonus to 15%.
• Meritocracy: +0.5 Happiness for each city connected to the capital, and a free Great Person of your choice appears near the capital.

Resources
• Fish reduced to 1 food (but can be boosted back to 2 with Lighthouse)
• Marble boosts wonder production by 20%, down from 25%

Technologies
• Scaled up tech costs throughout the game (slight change for early eras; close to double for Modern)
• Move Lumbermills up to Construction
• Move Bridge Building back to Engineering
• Move Ironworks to Machinery

Units
• Workboat cost increased
• Settler cost increased by 25%

Wonders
• Colossus no longer goes obsolete
• Angkor Wat now provides a 25% discount for the costs (both culture and gold) to gain plots empire-wide.

Civ Unique Bonuses
• Reduce Chu-ko-nu from 10 to 9 ranged strength
• Doubled culture from kills for Aztecs
• Krepost now provides a 25% discount for the costs (both culture and gold) to gain plots in the city.
• Paper Maker only provides 2 gold but no longer requires any building maintenance

Map Generation Changes
• Increased Oil quantity per resource.
• Minimum Uranium is now 2.
• Cut Deer Appearance in Arctic regions.
• Adjusted Sheep placement so it is more spread out.
• Decreased Wheat appearance in Plains.
• Increases Cow appearance overall, including adding up to 2 Cow tiles to heavy grass start positions.

[Buccaneer]

That patch is the long awaited Mac patch, similar to the PC patch that was released 7 weeks ago.

[Passacaglia]

But it's still good timing to remind me of this game, which I will want to play after my exam next Friday!

[Honolulu_Blue]

I have finally really gotten into this game over the last 2 weeks or so.

I am enjoying it. I am no Civ expert by stretch of the imagination, but played a TON of Civ IV, so I know the basics.

I can't wait to see what expansions they have planned for Civ V. I really enoy the lack of "stacks of death". It makes the later game combat much easier to handle and it goes by much faster.

[Butter]

Yes, my wife and I are having a lot of fun with this since the last patch. The computer is still pretty inept at combat however, and we are usually able to get by with minimal combat if we choose to.

[Mizzou B-ball fan]

New patch downloading.......

AI
• Economic AI: Tweaks to improve the number of workers built.
• Diplo AI: Correct minor error in calculation by AI to decide if it wants to join a coop war.
• City Strategy AI: Fix flavor broadcast to cities just after they are founded. Player level adjustments since start of game weren't being copied over to the new city.
• Operational AI: If AI sees that WarState is Calm (i.e. no one has troops near enemy lands), still consider launching an attack if overall military strengths are at least even.
• Operational AI: Enhancements to more sensibly pick city from which to launch a naval invasion.
• Operational AI: Slightly relax requirements for naval invasion to be on target (to get them onshore and attacking sooner).
• Operational/Tactical AI: Fix to movement/deployment for naval invasion forces.
• Operational/Tactical AI: Improved weighting and selection of muster and target cities for city attack operations.
• Tactical AI: Early game AI tweak to allow occasional sneak attack.
• Tactical AI: Improvements in civilian and embarked units targeting.
• Tactical AI: Units with defensive embarkation had a combat strength when embarked and were being considered for tactical moves (like making ranged attacks) that they weren't actually eligible for.
• Tactical AI: Improved the logic of how units are chosen for tactical moves so embarked units can now drop into place on land as flanking units, bombard units, etc.
• Tactical AI: Changes to more effectively use Great Generals offensively.
• Tactical AI: Citadels now project danger.
• Tactical AI: Units defending citadels are high priority targets; AI will prioritize trying to take these spaces.
• Tactical AI: AI will now pillage undefended citadels.
• Tactical AI: Be wary when approaching an enemy city; don't close on it if enemy clearly has superiority.
• Diplo AI: Make sure the diplomacy AI doesn't declare war on someone they are already at war with. Prevents confusing pop ups.
• Operational AI: AI will now correctly abort operations against a player that were started during a war (like gathering a new attack), but could execute after a peace treaty was declared. This corrects the occasional “AI declared war during a peace treaty” issue.
• Operational AI: Fix muster radius for gathering a naval invasion. Invasions won't get stuck trying to gather and will get moving to target sooner now.
• Operational AI: Don't allow nuke attacks on tiles that will break a peace treaty.
• Homeland AI: Make sure that flavor settings don't prevent workers from building improvements. This would cause some AI players to have large amounts of unimproved space in later parts of the game.
• Homeland AI: Fixed a problem that was causing workers to ignore pillaged non-resource and bonus resource tiles.

GRAPHICS
• Fixed an issue that was not allowing the Americas building set to display properly.
• If a 3D leaderhead scene cannot be created, fallback to 2D.
• Update to river color, texture, and shader.

GAMEPLAY
• Units: Stealth Bombers can now get promotions.
• Units: Add “Fortify until Healed” option for aircraft. Before, they only healed when inactive, which could cause confusion for the player.
• Units: Prevent units with the "No Melee" promotion from capturing cities (archers, catapults, etc.).
• Units: Air units must be in a city to upgrade, and no sneaky "I'm on a carrier in the city" either.
• Units: Fixed a problem that was allowing units to upgrade in territories that were not their own.
• Terrain Improvements: Allow Moai to be built over top of resources.
• Terrain Improvements: Correct an issue that resulted in double resources if you founded a city on top of an improved resource plot.
• Yields: Fix a load order problem where the lake bonus is not applied to a farm after loading an existing save.
• City Management: When selling a building, ensure that all citizens are properly removed.
• City Management: When assigning a specialist to a building, make sure we don't accidentally assign more citizens than we have available.
• City Management: Fix for an issue that was causing workers to go missing when population went down.
• City Management: After the citizen is removed from working, adjust the unassigned worker count before subtracting from the total population. There were rare situations that could cause the worker to disappear.
• Culture: Keep the current culture level of the city after it is captured. The culture production will go to 0, but the culture level must remain the same or else a large city will be able to acquire tiles at the same rate as a smaller city.
• Exploit: Removed ability to gain additional free settlers/workers by gaming the policy system.
• Units: City States in games started in the industrial/modern era now correctly produce workers as needed.

UI
• Pre-Game: The tooltips for unique items in the Loading screen no longer show up until AFTER loading has finished, preventing potential “stuck” UI.
• Pre-Game: Prevented escape key from being used to corrupt starting parameters while starting a tutorial game.
• Pre-Game: Multi-player maps added to Single-player as well.
• Pre-Game: Fixed a rounding issue in the options menu so that values are always integer based for the tooltip delay.
• Pre-Game: Using ":" in a save filename is no longer considered valid since Windows does not allow this. Players could potentially use this character in a save name without knowing that the file was not created when they exited the dialog.
• Notifications: Fix notifications that arise after a city is liberated so they show the name properly.
• Notifications: Extra DOF expiration notifications removed.
• Notifications: Notifications for denouncement or friendship are only displayed if the active player has met one of the teams.
• Tool-tips: Tooltips for worker/workboat build recommendations now build dynamically by looking at tile yields for these improvements: camp, pasture, farm, mine, trading post, fishing boats, custom house and manufactory.
• Tool-tip: Plot Mouse Over text for Natural Wonders will now display the culture yield as if it was in your borders and being worked, similar to how other yields are displayed.
• Mod Browser: Mod Browser panels now reset their scroll value when a new mod is selected.
• New Addition: Resource Panel integrated into upper-left Info Panel UI.
• New Addition: Specialist slots in buildings are now shown in the info tooltip for both the tech tree, production popup, and Civilopedia.
• Combat Preview: "Bonus VS Cities" is now renamed to "Penalty VS Cities" when it's < 0.
• Combat Preview: Fix bonus display issue when bombarding an enemy unit (if enemy had bonuses that required “friendly” territory, it would show up in the preview even though they were obviously in enemy territory).
• Combat Preview: Show Oligarchy Garrisoned Unit bonus for city ranged attacks.
• City Screen: City Growth meter within the City screen now displays the correct amount.
• City Screen: Fix the display of the current research progress UI, which made research estimates appear to be incorrect.
• In-Game: Fix the display of the movement cost for units that can embark.
• In-Game: Fixed a rounding issue in the military overview (actually, a lack of rounding issue).
• In-Game: Properly hide the Aircraft selection UI if hidden from view (fog of war, etc.).
• In-Game: City State's "Quest" icon is now hidden if that City State is at war with your team.
• In Game: City banner now displays different tooltip for puppet cities that are not owned by the player.
• In Game: Top Panel now differentiates between unhappiness from regular population and unhappiness from specialists.
• In-Game: Selecting a unit in the military overview will now select that unit, selecting it twice will now move the camera to it.
• Victory: Fix UI display of Diplomatic Victory votes (it was displaying votes from dead Civs/City States).
• Victory: UN Voting and Results screens now have better support for team games.
• Multiplayer: Human players no longer show an approachability type since that was meant for AI.
• Multiplayer: Multiplayer diplomacy w/ teams no longer has overlapping text.
• Diplomacy: There's now a confirmation dialog when you publicly denounce a civ.
• Diplomacy: Player cannot publicly denounce a civ multiple times in the same turn.
• Unit Panel: Fixed an erroneous display of a needed upgrade resource if the needed resource quantity was 0 and you are running a deficit on that resource (negative return value).
• Production: In UI for national wonders that have a prereq building, don't list each individual city that needs the building if the prereq doesn't have to be in EVERY city in the empire. Instead just continue to show the count.
• Production: City connected by railroad production bonus now correctly displays across all UI.
• Civilopedia: Multiple updates to Civilopedia functionality and accuracy.
• Pre-Game: Civillization Name in Load Menu is now truncated if it's too large.

DIPLO
• Don't allow research agreements if one party has finished the tech tree.
• Correct opinion code so we can get outcomes of friendly or allied.
• Fix the AI's deal adjustment so that it doesn't accidentally treat your luxury items as strategic items. This essentially prevented the AI from ever countering the deal with a request for a strategic resource from the other player. It just re-submitted the counter offer, requesting more luxury items, which the player could not see. If accepted, the player would realize too late that all their luxury resources were gone.

WORLD BUILDER
• Map Resize: Added controls for adding and removing rows of hexes from the top, build, left, or right of a map.
• Added default “map size” drop-down so that players can set the default number of Civs that they want to play on a map.
• Fix permanent war setting in the WB so that it reflects properly in the game.

MODDING
• Support for disabling the Happiness system.
• Support for disabling the Science/Research system.
• Support for disabling Social Policy acquisition.
• Support for disabling the Tutorial system.
• Properly initialize citizens and trade routes when loading for a scenario with a preexisting empire.
• Correct a problem with the awarding of contacts with minor civs in games created from WB scenarios.
• Add "CityCanConstruct" Lua hook.
• Exposed LoadString to Lua scripts.

ACHIEVEMENTS
• Fixed issue for Lancer that was stopping the Model of a Modern Major-General achievement from firing.
• Fixed issue with building type comparison that was keeping the Tomb Raider achievement from firing.
• Fixed issue that was keeping the Barbary Coast achievement from firing.
• Fixed issue with the Flying Fortress achievement that would cause it to fire when the action was performed by an AI player.
• Fixed issue with the God is Great achievement that would cause it to fire when the action was performed by an AI player.

SCENARIOS
• Mongol: Disable all victory conditions except domination.
• Disable tutorial across all Scenarios.

CRASH
• Additional nil checking to prevent possible Lua crashes due to invalid data in the HoF database.
• Tighten up decal culling to reduce the number of decals rendered per cell (Scroll crash).
• Fix to "Moai on the edge of the map" crash.
• Prevent CvDiplomacyAI:oUpdateEstimateOtherPlayerMilitary Threats from doing a divide by 0 (caused by a city having more damage that hit points).
• Added in additional protections against using invalid player IDs that were causing crashes in community provided saves.
• Fix bad cast of PlayerType to TeamType (and resulting crash).
• Fix random map selection in multiplayer, which could cause a crash.
• Additional crash protections

[Buccaneer]

Post-patch, I've been reading a lot about how the AI civs are playing much tougher, causing some to drop 1-2 difficulty levels.