5981

Giaddon, just FYI there’s a patch coming down the pipe today (June 14) that is going to break save games. So make sure you have Steam if offline mode (or try your luck telling Steam not to update Civ5) if you haven’t finished your game and want to continue it.

5982

Thanks for the warning! It’s no biggy, just limbering up before the expansion hits. I’m more interested in seeing those patch notes! Are they on the forum? I couldn’t find them.

5983

I was just going to post that very question - I couldn’t find them either.

I played my first full game of CiV in ages last weekend and had a blast, but I feel better prepared to see all the changes the expansion brings now. I actually might do another game tonight post-patch. :)

5984

I think they said they would be available later tonight. It’s basically the beta patch that’s been in testing, though, so you can probably figure out 90% of what’s in there based on that.

5985

I must finish my conquest of the Chinese as the Russians before they break the save games then!

I find Archipelago maps to be a nice counter to the endless empires the NPC’s build. I get so caught up in building these massive cities I often forget about expanding :)

~C~

5986

Patch is live:

[MODDING]

  • Steam Workshop enabled.
  • DLL swapping is now possible in-game.
  • Updated mod browser to utilize Steam Workshop.
  • Font Icons are now moddable.
  • Unit art is now fully moddable.
  • Mods are now activated the moment you click “Next” on the mods browser rather than when you click “Single Player.”

[ADVISORS & TUTORIALS]

  • Improved the queuing and prioritization of advisor pop-ups.
  • Unique advisor portraits per era now show up for the advisor counsel screens and advisor info screens.
  • Adjusted advisor levels down a bit so that experienced users won’t see so many tutorials.
  • Fixed several issues with the Tutorials.
  • When selecting “Learn as you play,” all tutorial messages are now enabled despite having your options set to “No Advisors.”

[MULTIPLAYER]

  • When switching players in hotseat, have the new players existing notifications rebroadcast to them. This allows the player to see non-expired notifications such as deal proposals.
  • Fix Diplomacy Deals in Hotseat.
  • Add a few multiplayer error messages to let the player know what went wrong (disconnects, gets booted, etc.).
  • Add invite button to in-game view. (This brings up the Steam Invite list, which is different from the Shift-TAB overlay).

[UI]

  • Main Menu now contains an option to activate/deactivate specific DLCs.
  • Quick combat and Quick Movement options are now part of the Options menu and can be changed during gameplay.
  • Options menu now contains “Skip intro video.”
  • New Loading screens have been implemented.
  • Diplomacy: Disabled modifiers for trying to win the same way.
  • Diplomacy: Layout changes to diplo modifiers for better readability and more information.
  • Mods and DLC used in a game are now stored in the Hall of Fame database (Only games which match currently active DLC are displayed in the Hall of Fame).
  • The “Time Spent” message now displays in the saved replays.
  • Load Replay Menu now defaults to “Sort by Last Modified.”
  • Added a “Retire” button to the game menu.

[GENERAL]

  • In some cases, previous saves may not work correctly after updating.
  • Several text bugs fixed (in all languages).
  • Prevent escape from being used when a leader requests a luxury resource from you.
  • Social policies may not be unlocked unless the player has founded at least 1 city.
5987

Oh, pretty minor.

5988

These two are very much needed for GMR games. I hope the first one means those with the Honor Social Policy will be notified when barbarian encampments pop up.

5989

The new modding features are all major. This is more of a program core update than gameplay update.

5990

It is pretty minor. I was hoping they’d fix a bug where I see cities bombarding a unit 15 tiles away. It’s like watching the spawn of a catapult and ICBM.

5991

Well, I am excited that I can start the game with animations and then turn them off in the endgame when everyone has hundreds of units. That’s definitely nice.

5992

Started up a game after the patch. Woohoo, a new ugly loading screen.

A few minor graphics glitches cropped up, nothing too horrible, but things I haven’t seen before.

AI turns now seem to take around 50% longer, even the first few turns of the game. Since the AI nations have almost nothing whatsoever to decide during the early stages – they’re just scouting – the turns should be instantaneous if there are no animations to play. But on my decent PC (2 years old) early turns take over 5 seconds now in a Small Pangaea world; I think they were more like 2-3 seconds pre-patch.

No noticeable changes in AI behavior to speak of. Viz:

The Iroquois declared war on me in 1500 BC for no apparent reason from 30 or so hexes away with another nation and a city state in the way – I hadn’t even found their location yet – and did the usual stupid thing of trickling units towards me slowly in a sort of queue to be killed by my archers. They didn’t manage to build a single siege unit or to send any consolidated forces the whole time, and a couple of their archers unnecessarily moved in range of my melee units as usual. Every 10 turns until AD they would suggest a peace treaty in which I had to give up all my cash and all my luxury goods if I wanted peace, as if I was somehow in an inferior or desperate position – as if I had ever actually lost a single unit to one of their attacks. When I finally upgraded archers to crossbowmen they gave up and offered an even treaty, not that it mattered either way.

Meanwhile random other distant nations kept randomly denouncing me and offering friendship pacts for no apparent reason. As always, a friendship pact appears not to offer any actual benefits, except that the pact nations will start begging for free gold and luxuries. But they often don’t bother to develop their own extra luxuries to offer something in return: they’re too busy cranking out endless hordes of warriors, and barbarians often poach their early workers – and so they don’t have anything to offer till much later in the game.

5993

Yeah, it doesn’t seem like the AI/Diplomacy updates are in this patch (see patch notes). One hopes with the expansion installed all the pieces fit and work well together.

This does raise the question - is the AI forver broken in Vanilla unless you pony up for the expansion? They claim the changes to combat allowed them to really make the AI work better on that front… does that make it WORSE then for vanilla, or is that unchanged (and then probably forever remain unchanged)? I don’t mind, I’m picking up the expansion, but I was curious.

5994

If I were to hazard a guess I bet they left the AI untouched in vanilla since so much of the changes revolved around the updated combat mechanics.

5995

Yeah, I knew there was nothing in the patch notes, but because AI turns were taking noticeably longer, I figured they must have changed something.

5996

Maybe it’s your PC - the CPU could be choking on some spyware! :)

5997

I had heard a lot of others complain about really sluggish turn times in the beta patch.

5998

If so it was likely installed with the new patch, because I played some last night on the old patch and it was faster :)

5999

Ha! I was just joking around, but I am curious…what difficulty level were you playing at?

6000

I haven’t seen any slowdowns, and I’ve been running a game most of the day (post patch). Standard-sized map on Prince difficulty.