Firaxis Patching Civ V Next Week

Civilization V developers are working on fixing bugs and gameplay issues for its grand strategy game and it may be released next week.

With any modern game, there is always some tweaking to gameplay and squashing of bugs with a patch and Civilization V is no different. A rep from Firaxis Games has said that a patch could happen as early as next week that will handle some basic gameplay problems, tie up exploits and generally make Civ V more awesomer.

The full patch notes are listed below for convenience but I wanted to highlight a few fixes of niggling issues. First, instituting a toggle for workers to no longer replace tile improvements you’ve built is a big fix, as I hated automating workers only to have put a trading post in every hex. Also, workers will no longer heavily lean towards trading posts.

The AI will get a few tweaks to balance production of land and navy units to deal with blockaded cities. You will also see Civs more reluctant to enter Open Borders agreements with more powerful opponents, which never seemed to make sense. Unfortunately, ending a Research Agreement by declaring war will no longer net you a free-tech. Damn, I’d just gotten used to that dastardly exploit.

Improvements to the endgame economy are much-needed and I’m glad they are coming in this patch. You can now sell obsolete buildings to reduce maintenance and puppet cities will now gear more towards making a profit and not constructing buildings which eat up strategic resources. Turning up the Wealth option to convert 25 percent of production into gold instead of just 10 percent will also make that a viable endgame strategy.

Check out the whole patch notes below:

UI

Fix for production prompt that sometimes appears with newly created puppet states that could stop the player from being able to end the turn.
Aircraft banner corrections – now when you rebase an aircraft, the number will move with it.
Resource icons now come up with Ctrl-R again, instead of sharing the same button with Build Roads.
Selecting a great general will no longer cause yield icons to appear.
Added option to disable auto-unit cycling.
Fix for full-screen game when running dual monitors. Previously, the curser could scroll off the “open” side, and not be able to scroll the map in that direction.
Misc additional fixes to mouse controls, and other interface issues.
Rounded out financial information in the Economic Overview screen. Details now provided on the amount of gold provided by each city, the cost of buildings in each city, etc.
Auto-populate save menu with save file name
Allow selection of other cities by hex from within the city screen
Added detailed trade route info to Economic Overview screen
Added new tab to the Economic Overview Screen: “Resources & Happiness.” (new 10/14)
Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for “always up” score similar to Civ IV.) (new 10/14)
The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with each action. (new 10/14)

MODDING

Category list now displays correctly
“Installed” panel now displays ALL versions of a mod but prevents the user from enabling multiple versions. (new 10/14)

GAMEPLAY

Workers – Added option to force workers to ignore manually made improvements (so they don’t change what you decide was best for a plot).
Workers – Fixed bug where number of turns to complete were incorrect in build action button tool-tip.
Economy – Fixed bug where players could disband a single unit, and not see the economic return until disbanding 1 more.
Economy – Increased city wealth setting to 25%
Economy – Multiple fixes to the way trade-routes are tabulated and recognized.
Economy – Can now sell Buildings in a city (to help lower maintenance for obsolete buildings later in the game).
Trade – Found and corrected a Trade problem that could cause your Resource inventory to multiply.
City States – Fixed a bug where you could not gift aircraft to city states.
Military – Medic promotion now only provides healing bonus for adjacent units.
Military – Fix for Minuteman movement.
Military – Correct promotions for “archer-like” units (horse archers, chariots).
Military – Embarked units will no longer slow enemy land units
Military – Improved unit cycling logic. Camera will jump around much less.
Balance – Engineers +1 hammer

AI

Military – Better handling of unit need (navy vs land, etc.) .
Military – AI will tend to build ships to deal with blockaded cities more often
Military – Corrected an issue hampering movement of AI armies, especially when in close proximity to enemy forces
Diplomacy – AI will be more reluctant to offer or accept open border agreements with more powerful opponents.
Diplomacy – Fix for never ending deals (peace, research agreements, etc).
City – City specialization and city focus improvements.
City – Cities that are Avoiding Growth will not grow while that option is selected
Workers – Priority of trading posts reduced, and rebalanced priorities on other improvements
Workers – Improved the path-finding mechanic when building route-to roads improved, including a large performance increase when evaluating road-pathing.
City – Make sure Puppets don’t construct buildings that require Resources. (new 10/14)
City – Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold. (new 10/14)

MULTIPLAYER

Exploit – Fix for gifting unit exploit
Chat – Color-coding, sound alerts, etc., added for in-game chat system, including a larger window.
Deals – Additional deal validation put in place to verify deals before they are committed

MISC

Research treaties that end because you declare war will no longer grant the free tech
Save/Load – Fix for corrupted saves being experienced by some players in late-game.
Map – Huge map crash-during-load fix that were reported on some specific systems.
Map – Terrain caching fix that could cause problems for certain video cards (the “glowing red orbs” seen on the map are an indicator of this).
Map – Fix for the low res terrain that appears the first time the game is run (terrain tiles would not load in anything but low-res the first time you play on some computer configurations)
Strategic View – Crash fix for units rendering in background.
Strategic View – Fix for selecting units either standing on a city plot, or garrisoned in the city plot.
Eyefinity – Better handling of leader scenes when using Eyefinity displays.
Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
Multiple crash fixes.
Taller than wide map crash fix. (new 10/14)