Civilization 5 patch hits tomorrow

2K are getting ready to unleash a major balancing patch for Civlization 5 tomorrow. The update will tweak almost all areas of the game, adding improvements to the economy and diplomacy, and changing the effects that cities have on their surrounding environment.

In a post on the 2K forums , community manager 2K Greg provided the full patch notes, and outlined the main aims of the patch. "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."

With the patch the terrain surrounding cities should also be more productive. Buildings will be easier to throw up, and yield greater rewards, enabling smaller civilizations to still be productive with just a few large settlements.

2K Greg also outlines some areas that they're planning to patch in future. "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."

[via BluesNews ]

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.