Civilization 5 aims to restore the balance, via giant 'Fall' patch

Civilization V's 'Fall' patch has been a long time coming, but it's crept onto Steam just in time to see the country sacked by the barbarian invader known as 'Jack Frost'. As updates go, it's less of a patch and more of a plaster cast, attempting to perfect the balance of the game with a frankly enormous number of bug fixes, balance tweaks and general spit-and-polish. You'll find the full list here , but we've plucked out a few gems after the break.

Bug fixes include the news that "resurrecting a player will have both sides forget any denouncing that happened before resurrected", while "if you intentionally starve your city by reassigning all your citizens to be unemployed, you won't end up with more citizens than you have population." Which makes sense. Balance-wise, you'll now get 25HP for pillaging tiles, and you'll receive less "espionage notification spam". Additionally, Ultrabook users have been granted touch/gesture support, with a new gesture menu that lets you control the game by tapping and dragging on the screen. Again, that's just the tip of the iceberg - ginormo list of changes available here .

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Latest in Strategy
Mongolian throne room
Crusader Kings 3 saddles up for a long-awaited return to the east with its first Asian DLC, Khans of the Steppe
Manor Lords promo art - knight on horseback looking at a medieval village in the distance, viewed from behind
PCG's best city builder of 2024 is adding a map with a gigantic hill in the middle: the perfect spot for your next castle
Maximillian from Evil Genius 2
Rebellion CEO says Evil Genius 3 could happen but wonders 'what else could we do with it other than a base-building game?'
A city from 1800
One of the best city builders of the last decade is currently 90% off on Steam
Company of Heroes 3
Company of Heroes 3 is free to try and 50% off, so it's the best time to check out the beefy 2.0 overhaul
People swimming in a pool and lying on floats
Planet Coaster 2's spring roadmap splashes down, with 'round-bottomed flumes' coming in March and buildable restaurants arriving in April
Latest in News
Resident Evil Village - Lady Dimitrescu
'It really truly changed my life in every possible way': Lady Dimitrescu actor says her Resident Evil Village role was just as transformative for her as it was for roughly half the internet in 2021
Storm trooper hero
Another live service shooter is getting shut down, this time before it even launched on Steam
Possibility Space concept art.
Possibility Space owners sue NetEase for $900 million over allegations it spread 'false and defamatory rumors' of fraud at the studio that ultimately forced it to close
Valve soldier man on a pc.
2024 was Steam's 'best year ever' of users buying newly released games—but I wouldn't celebrate the end of the forever game era just yet
Money money money.
Valve tracked 1.7 million Steam users who joined in 2023 to see if they stuck around—they did, and they spent $93 million
Closeup of the new Copilot key coming to Windows 11 PC keyboards
Microsoft co-authored paper suggests the regular use of gen-AI can leave users with a 'diminished skill for independent problem-solving' and at least one AI model seems to agree