Firaxis releases first major Civilization: Beyond Earth patch

The Civilization: Beyond Earth fall update is now live, addressing various technical problems including the infamous "144hz monitor issue"—the bizarre inability to run the game at resolutions greater than 1280x720 on monitors running at 144hz refresh rates—and making changes to units, the tech web, quest rewards, AI, UI, and more.

To be honest, there's nothing in the patch notes that really leaps out at me in a, "Oh, thanks goodness they fixed that" kind of way. "Revised trade route formula for city-to-city trade, with reduced yields," is one change, selected at random; "Miasmic Repulsor now unlocks on Alien Biology (was Ecology)" is another. The combat strength of Explorers has doubled, from 3 to 6, and the AI will now only pursue Domination once the game has gone into extended mode. Individually, none of this sounds all that important, but collectively it adds up to a pretty major overhaul.

"In addition to fixing these and other issues, Firaxis has also addressed a number of gameplay balance requests from the community—like optimizing trade route yields and doing away with one particular Covert Ops exploit," Community Manager David Hinkle wrote. "This is a substantial update, so please take a few moments to pore over the full patch notes below before you jump back into Beyond Earth."

The Civilization: Beyond Earth update should download and install automatically. If it doesn't, Hinkle suggested restarting Steam.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.