This week brings a wealth of RPGs! We all knew Mass Effect 3 and The Elder Scrolls V were coming someday, but now that they're officially announced we can officially begin the speculation.

Also,  strategist/columnist/podcaster/PhD Troy Goodfellow joins us to give his detailed report on the updates for Civilization V and Elemental, in addition to Call of Duty: Black Ops and Fallout: New Vegas bug fixes.

And in the spirit of getting things done before the year is over, give us a call toll free: 877-404-1337 ext 724 and leave us a question for the next show!

PC Gamer US Podcast - 252 Three Monitors Ahead



Mass Effect 3 trailer

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Trailer

The Humble Indie Bundle 2

MLG's Top 20 StarCraft II replays

A series of maps that were originally included in the Civilization V digital deluxe edition have been released as DLC. The four map packs include a series of real maps designed by Firaxis, which can be played with historically accurate Civilizations or random leaders. The maps can all be tweaked in the World Builder so players can make their own scenarios on the new terrain. The packs cover the Americas, Asia, the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. They'll cost £1.99 / $2.99 each, or can be bought in a bundle for £6.30 / $9.99. if you're interested the packs are available now on Steam.

The Steam Thanksgiving holiday sale has kicked off. A new selection of games will be on offer every day until November 30th. On top of that, 30 users each day will recieve the top 5 games in their wishlist.


Today's selection of offers expires in seven hours at the time of writing, and includes some pretty fine deals. There's 75% off the Deus Ex Collection and Alpha Protocol, and 50% off Borderlands and Prototype. You'll find all of the deals displayed over on the Steam store. While you're browsing, it's worth putting together a wishlist. There's a chance that you could be among the 30 Steam users picked each day to win copies of their top 5 most wanted games. To be considered for the offer you have to have at least ten games in your list. I've already hastily put together my top ten, but more importantly, what's in yours?

Civilization Network plans to take Civilization to Facebook, letting friends team up and forge new civilizations online. The game was announced way back in October 2009, but Take Two have just confirmed that yes, it's still alive, and it's definitely coming next year. Not much is known about the game right now, except that it will be free to play, but more details are set to emerge soon on Civilization Network's Facebook page, where Take Two have announced that they will be looking for some beta testers in future.

Firaxis have set about outlining the content of the next big patch for Civilization V. The next batch of changes are going to concentrate on improvements to the AI and diplomacy, and contains fixes you'd only ever see in a Civ game, like "adjust Napoleon to make him more likely to go for culture", and an "update to tactical AI pillaging code". You'll find the complete list of changes are below.

AI

Worker AI improvements .
Update to tactical AI pillaging code. Additionally, always check to make sure it’s not trying to pillage in an enemy dominance zone.
AI victory emphasis improvements (more efficient end-game when focusing on Science and Diplo victories).
AI should colonize other continents regularly.
AI will emphasize production of an Ocean going explorer unit when the time comes.
Adjust Napoleon to make him more likely to go for culture.
More aggressive second wave expansion (mostly off shore) after initial empire building and consolidation has occurred.
Optimization when finding routes (pathfinder improvement).
Multiple tweaks and bug fixes.
AI will now build ranged and mobile units more in line with the flavor settings.
Multiple defensive AI tweaks.

Gameplay

Cities heal more quickly.
Only allow one upgrade per unit from a goody hut.

UI

Tweaked the single-player score list to hide the civs of unmet ai players.

Diplomacy

AI's attitude towards you is now visible in the diplo screen and diplo drop-down.
Added info tooltip for an AI leader's mood. Lists things that are making an AI player happy/upset.
New diplo system: Declaration of Friendship (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions).
New diplo system: Denounce (public declaration with diplomatic repercussions).
New custom leader responses (Serious Expansion Warning, Aggressive Military, Luxury Exchange, Borders Exchange, Gift Request).

Modding

Parent category counts now include counts of child categories.
Selecting/deselecting a category now automatically selects/deselects it's children and its parent.
Tweaked category name truncation to better fit names.
Hide categories w/ no children and a count of 0.
Added support for fallback languages (if mod is not translated, fall-back to English so text keys are not showing).

Miscellaneous

Fixed save format which causes saves to increase the memory footprint of the game drastically when loading frequently over the course of the game.

There's no ETA for the patch just yet, but the devs are keeping the patch list updated over on the 2K forums.

Deathwing's bringing a fiery cataclysm to World of Warcraft next month, but imagine if instead of a colossal dragon bringing the apocalypse, it was an army of giant robots, supported by tanks and fighter bombers. Now you can make that a reality, with this wonderfully crafted map of Azeroth for Civilization V.

Below you'll find a massive overview of the map, you can click to enlarge it. Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms have been lovingly recreated using Civilization V's Worldbuilder tool. From the Night Elven homelands of Teldrassil to the spiralling maelstrom at the centre of the great sea, every corner of Azeroth has been crafted, given accurate terrain and dressed in resources.



You can download the map from the Civ Fanatics forum, simply drop the extracted files into your Civilization V map folder and you're away. If you fancy creating some new worlds of your own, check out our guide to using Civilization V's worldbuilder.

Last week we mentioned that Borderlands was about to receive an update that would raise the level cap, adding even higher level monsters and even more ridiculous loot. The update is now live! If you have Steam the update will apply automatically the next time you boot up the game. If you have the Windows version of the game, you can download the patch manually from the Borderlands site. Now you'll be able to take on level 58 Badass Loot Midgets and battle even harder Skag monsters. It'll all be worth it when that level 58 rocket-loaded shotgun drops.

The next free update for Borderlands will allow players to fight to level 58. Enemies will also scale to higher levels, meaning more powerful loot for veteran Borderlands players. Read on for the full details on the patch.

Gearbox have posted the patch notes on the Borderlands forums. Here they are in full:


Level cap increase for all players of 8 levels. That means that all Borderlands players will now be able to achieve a new maximum level of 58.
Owners of The Secret Armory of General Knoxx can achieve a record setting increase to a maximum level of 69.
End game players that have completed playthrough 2 will see enemies scale to the new levels up to the new level cap. That means that if you’ve completed everything, you can play through the game again and again at a challenging level in order to find better and better loot.
Item drops (with the exception of COM Decks) will also scale with higher level enemies to the new level cap. That means that this Title Update features the highest level weapons to date!
Other fixes, including DLC4 Achievement/Trophy glitches that have affected some users and will be corrected to properly award players for obtaining these achievements no matter which order they were completed in.


The patch is almost ready to go, and Gearbox have announced that the update should land in the next few weeks.

Attention PC gamers! We’ve got a giveaway so momentous that it stands to eclipse epochal moments in history going all the way back to the discovery of fire by an unfortunate troglodyte in a lightning storm about one and a half million years ago. In fact, it’s so spectacularly massive that it may create a singularity unimagined by even Stephen Hawking at his most fanciful after a fifth of bourbon. What could be so huge? How about this: a magical Steam code that will grant you free, permanent access to Valve’s entire catalog—which includes some of the finest PC games ever made—and every game Valve ever will make. That’s right: you can win Portal 2, Dota 2 and even Half-Life 2: Episode 3.* It’s the prize that keeps on giving, year after year!

But wait, that’s not all! Click through to see what else, and how to win it!

Update: Winners have been drawn, and notifications are going out. We'll post the list of winners soon!

Update 2: Winners posted!




We’re also giving away sweet, shrink-wrapped, aromatic Collector’s Editions of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, Fallout: New Vegas, Civilization V, Mafia II and Plants vs Zombies. That’s a total of six fabulous, planet-shattering prizes, all up for grabs. Click here to see them all!

But wait, there’s even more! We’ll pick a seventh lucky dawg who’ll receive a copy of Borderlands Game of the Year Edition! The giving just won’t stop!

So how do you get in on the action? Just “like” us on Facebook, then comment on this post on Facebook (not our comment area below) with a list of the three games you’re most looking forward to in 2011 (in order of preference). That’s all! (If you're already a fan, just comment with your list.)

On Monday, November 1 at 10am Pacific time, we’ll draw seven winners from the comments (with the help of everybody’s random friends at Random.org,) and contact them via Facebook. Winner #1 gets first choice. (We suspect they’ll pick the Valve code.) Winner #2 gets to choose between the remaining prizes, then winner #3 gets to pick, and so on.

This contest is open to US residents only. Sorry, rest of the world! We’d let you enter if The Man would let us.

*Provided the sun doesn’t burn out before it’s released.

Our winners are:
Michael Hudak: Magic Valve code
Craig Fender: StarCraft II Collector's Edition
Phillip Front: Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition
Jeremy Sanchez: Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition
Darien Sumner: Civilization V Collector's Edition
Justin Anderson: Mafia II Collector's Edition
Zack Jones: Plants vs Zombies Collector's Edition

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Tim, Tom, Graham and Craig take a second stab at a podcast that was destroyed in a fire. We weigh in on whether Dota 2 can make Defense of the Ancients fun for the masses, how big a deal Fallout: New Vegas is, the philosophy behind BioShock Infinite, the ability to use feces as a writing implement in Duke Nukem Forever, the wisdom or otherwise of scaling difficulty in Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the prospects for Civ 5's AI, and our ever-changing opinions of Team Fortress 2 selling items for real money. Tom also does an impression of the police baton from Deus Ex 1.

This is an extra-long bonus ultra podcast, bonusly ultra-soon after the last one, to make up for our unexpectedly long hiatus. And as a special favour to anyone sick of hearing about them, we barely mention StarCraft 2 or Minecraft. In two week's time, we'll be countering this with a favour to anyone who isn't: a Minecraft special about why the game has taken such a firm hold of so many people.

Download the MP3, subscribe, or find our older podcasts here.