Sid Meier's Civilization® V

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
Sid Meier's Civilization® V - Valve
Updates to Sid Meier's Civilization® V Mac have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

1.0.0.621a
• Graphic issues with Opening Cinematic caused by 10.6.5 have been addressed.
• Fixed crash when switching between 9400M/9600M on MacBook Pro.
• Updated Manuals are now installed in the Sid Meier's Civilization V Folder.
• Resolutions higher than 2048x1440 have been disabled. This is to prevent the "grey bar" issues that
appear at super high resolutions.
• DX9 no longer appears on Title Bar when in windowed mode.
• Users can now save to the Steam Cloud. (Mac games do not save to the same Steam Cloud as PC.)
• Private games are now available in Multiplayer.
• Launching the game in French or German and then playing the tutorial will no longer change the
Spoken Language to English.
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.
• 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."
• Added option to activate the mp score list in single player (for “always up” score similar to Civ IV.)
• The Annex/Puppet/Raze popup now indicates how much extra Unhappiness will be assumed with
each action.
• If there are less than 5 buildings still needed to construct a National Wonder, the production
popup tool-tip now lists which cities lack them.
• Added Yield & Culture tool-tip info to the production popup.
• Tweak information on the Global Politics tab in the Diplomacy Overview screen.
GAMEPLAY
• Exploit – Raze/Annex happiness fix.
• 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 tooltip.
• 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
• Balance - Disbanding units now provides only 10% of their production cost in gold.
• Request – Enable “one more turn” button if you lose, but are still alive.
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.
• City - Add a Puppet city strategy that turns off training buildings and emphasizes gold.
• Military – Defensive tactical AI update. When you are at war and threatening an enemy city, the AI
will better utilize the garrison, as well as the surrounding terrain in defense of the target city.
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.
• 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.
• Tutorials – Many tutorial tweaks and adjustments.
• Multiple crash fixes
• Taller than wide map crash fix
• Fix for Puppet State production exploit
Sid Meier's Civilization® V - Valve
Updates to Sid Meier's Civilization® V have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

[AI]

[TACTICAL AI]
- Proper evaluation of which enemy units can reach my units next turn.
- Sorting enemy targets (within a class) by damage.
- Combine bombardment fire from cities with other ranged fire where possible.
- Never target a city for a ranged attack when they are already at (or going to be at) 1 health.
- Have the tactical AI be more aggressive about fortifying units that aren't moving anyways.
- Make all forms of guarding improvements the lowest priority tactical AI moves.
- Don't mark tiles adjacent to enemy at sea as good for flank attacks -- there is no flanking at sea.
- Update to tactical AI pillaging code - now prioritize enemy land resources and trade routes (never regular mines or farms). Always uses the check to make sure AI is not trying to pillage in an enemy dominance zone. Barbarians will still target everything.
- Never use ranged units to provide flank bonuses.
- Reduce chance of AI civs making "suicide" attacks.
- Changes to better protect the capital or any city with an enemy within 5 tiles.

[VICTORY]
- AI will be more aggressive about pursuing Diplo victory (bribing City States) if they are wealthy.
- AI will be more aggressive about building Spaceship parts when going for Science victory.

[CIVS]
- Tweak a few leader settings to be more likely to use their traits.
- Adjust Napoleon to make more likely to go for culture.

[COMBAT/UNITS]
- AI will not use Horse as defenders on hills as much.
- AI will often build more defensive troops.
- AI will more aggressively hunt barbs in the early game.
- Slightly more naval units.
- AI will now build ranged and mobile units more in line with the flavor settings for the team - in general, this means more mobile units.
- AI now builds, deploys, and uses air units more effectively.
- Allow AI to build more units if above Prince.
- AI will be more likely to build and bring siege units in a city attack.
- Better nuke targeting by AI.
- Won't build AA if no air threat.
- Allow AI or automated human explorers to move to edge of sight range and then explore again.

[EXPLORATION/EXPANSION]
- AI will emphasize getting an Ocean going explorer unit when the time comes.
- AI slightly more likely to settle off home continent.
- AI should colonize other continents regularly.
- AI second wave expansion more aggressive.
- Improve the AI's chances of setting up protected bombard attacks.
- Settlers: should handle watery maps better.
- AI will grab goody huts on other land masses.
- AI will grab empty barb camps more often.

[WORKERS/CITY AI]
- Large Cities should be more willing to build happiness and gold buildings.
- Workers prioritize repair builds higher than other builds.
- AI will be more likely to build a wall on any city that was an original capital.
- Builder tasking now calculates yields appropriately during golden ages and weighs tiles according to how much stuff they provide overall as well as their maximum yield of a certain type.
- More likely to build up economy early.
- Multiple worker AI improvements.

[MISC]
- Factor GS into flavors more.
- Disband obsolete units even if not losing money.
- Upgrade units a bit more.
- Tweak flavors of policies a bit.
- Have AI factor Grand Strategy into picking policies.
- AI will factor grand strategy into tech choices a bit more.
- AI don't send a barb expedition if defenses are critical.
- AI less likely to pick a city on an inland sea for serious naval production.
- Additional pathfinder optimization.

[GAMEPLAY]

[CITY/BUILDINGS]
- Added "National Treasury" national wonder, which requires Markets in all cities. Provides +8 Gold per turn to the city in which it's built.
- Added "Circus Maximus" national wonder, which requires Colosseums in all cities.. Provides 5 Happiness.
- Library now has no specialist slots.
- Wat now has two specialist slots.
- Public school now has 1 Science per pop, +1 free Great Scientist point, +1 Culture for 3 gold maintenance.
- Observatory now has 1 specialist slot.
- Research Lab has two specialist slots.
- Public school now provides 1 beaker per pop for 3 gold maintenance.
- Watermill now provides +2 good and +1 production for 2 gold maintenance.
- Paper Maker now has no specialist slots.
- Circus now has +2 happiness and no maintenance.
- Theatre now has +5 happiness.
- Stadium now has +5 happiness.
- Reduced production cost and maintenance for the Courthouse.
- Courthouse can now be purchased in a city (although it is expensive).
- Removed maintenance from city defense buildings (Walls, Castle, Military Base).
- City defense buildings now help cities heal.
- Increased city strength ramp-up based on technology.
- Reduced effects of Forbidden Palace and Meritocracy (Happiness per city).
- Reduced amount of food needed for cities to grow at larger sizes.
- Buildings can now no longer provide more Happiness than there is population in a city (wonders are excluded from this).
- Ironworks now gives 10 hammers instead of a % bonus.
- National College now gives +5 science in addition to the % bonus.
- Hermitage gives 5 culture in addition to its previous bonus.
- Raze/Unraze exploit fixed.
- Cities being razed are unhappy about it (only during the razing process).
- Cities heal more quickly.

[UNITS/PROMOTIONS]
- Cavalry can now go obsolete with Combustion.
- Stealth bombers cannot use carriers.
- Only allow one upgrade per unit from a goody hut.
- Add second embarkation promotion ("Defensive Embarkation").
- Amount of damage done during naval combat increased.
- All melee horse units get penalty attacking cities.
- Increased city attack penalty for mounted and armor units to 50% (from 40%).
- Lancers (and Lancer UUs) upgrade to helicopter.
- Lowered combat value of Horseman and Companion Cavalry.
- Promotions must be picked the turn they're earned.
- Can no longer promote a unit that has fought during the turn (instead, the promotion comes up the beginning of the following turn).
- Catapults and Trebuchets now weaker against units but stronger VS cities.
- Reduced effectiveness of Archers & Crossbowmen (and their UUs) VS cities.
- Reduced some combat bonuses: flanking (15 to 10), Great Generals (25 to 20), Discipline (15 to 10), Military Tradition (2x to 1.5x).
- Remove requirement for aluminum on Mobile SAM.
- Lower open terrain penalty to 10% .
- Marsh is now 3 moves to enter (Chariots do not move quickly through it anymore).
- Cavalry now upgrade to tanks.

[CITY STATES]
- Reduced bonuses from Maritime city-states - Friends: +2 food in capital, +0 food in other cities - Allies: +3 food in capital, +1 food in other cities
- Only the first 3 units gifted to a city-state will earn Influence now.
- Killing a barb inside a city-state's territory now gives a 5-turn buffer where there is no Influence intrusion penalty.

[HAPPINESS]
- If an empire reaches -20 Happiness, it goes into revolt, and rebels start appearing throughout the empire, based on the number of cities.
- Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age reduced.
- Amount of Happiness needed to trigger a Golden Age now increases as the number of cities in the empire goes up.

[POLICIES]
- Landed Elite (Tradition Branch) now reduces culture cost of border growth by 2/3.
- Monarchy (Tradition Branch) now provides +1 Gold per 2 pop in the Capital..
- Liberty now provides a Settler training bonus to only the capital, and not every city.
- Tradition now provides +50% growth in the capital.
- Theocracy now reduces Unhappiness by 25% .
- Reformation now gives a 10-turn GA.
- Adopting Rationalism now gives a 4-turn GA.

[TECH TREE]
- Add link between Military Science and Dynamite.
- Add link between Civil Service and Education.
- Add link between Economics and Scientific Theory.
- Add link between Chivalry and Acoustics.
- Research overflow now works correctly (extra beakers after completing a tech will rollover to the next tech).

[GENERAL]
- Fixed bug where clicking on a city plot wouldn't select the garrison.
- Natural wonders now award culture (if worked) and happiness (if in border) if that trait is assigned to a wonder in XML.
- Players must now always adopt Policies immediately, and cannot defer picking until later.
- Have culture cost for policies never go down (trading away cities to reduce culture cost exploit). Razing cities will not raise your policy cost ceiling.
- Reduced culture needed for first plot acquisition from 20 to 15.
- 3 new Natural Wonders and rarity code for both base game and New World scenario.
- Reduced points from Wonders (40 to 25) & Cities (10 to 8), increased points for pop by 1 (3 to 4).

[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, etc.).
- Not agreeing to a friend's request now results in a relations hit.
- Third party AIs can now respond when a player makes a DoF or denounces someone. What they say is based on the situation - e.g. if you make friends with someone they don't like, they'll scold you.
- AI leaders will now sometimes ask their friends to denounce one of their enemies as a show of support, and refusing to denounce someone when an AI asks can now make them very upset.
- AI is now capable of denouncing friends (aka, backstabbing) and added backstabbing info to diplo overview screen.

[UI]
- Add XP bar for air units, do not allow XP for air units attacking a city that is already down to its last hit-point.
- Change ActivePlayer's name to "You" in single player in score list.
- Added game option to disable automated workers from removing features.
- Fixed bug where Happiness from garrisoned units wasn't being listed in Happiness info tooltip.
- Load Map function will now display correct size and type of saved map.
- New "Angry Genghis" loading screen (replaces the "fluffy-bunny Genghis" loading screen).
- Added setup options to allow players to defer choosing Policies and Promotions right away.
- Show the river penalty when attacking city across river (the penalty was there but was not being shown in the preview).
- Global politics screen updated to reflect new diplo system.
- Can no longer Force End Turn (shift-enter) through blocking notifications. CAN now use it to skip over units which need orders.
- Multiple tweaks and bug fixes.

[MISC]
- Fix small bugs with adding long roads around existing features.
- Fixed bombard arrow across world wrap.

[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).
- The pager for the installed mods tab of the mods browser is now displayed in the correct location.
- Long values for properties such as "Special Thanks" will no longer extend past the edge browser frame.
- Categories refresh much faster now in the mods browser.
- Multiple additional tweaks and fixes to the mod browser.
- Support for mods that perform major restructuring of the tech tree including adding, deleting, and updating techs, buildings, and units.
- Added GameEvents system for overriding Gameplay DLL specific functionality.
- Fixed "Reload Landmark System" mod flag to now refresh landmarks defined in "ArtDefine_Landmarks".
- Multiple SDK updates (new version to go live shortly).

[SERIALIZATION/SAVES]
- Fixed save format which causes saves to increase the memory footprint of the game drastically when loading frequently over the course of the game. This heightened the risk of late-game out of memory crashes significantly.

PC Gamer

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.
Sid Meier's Civilization® V - Valve
You can now enjoy four new map packs for Civilization V! Purchase the Asia, Americas, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean map packs individually or as part of the Cradle of Civilization DLC bundle.

The Cradle of Civilization map packs are Firaxis-designed maps of real-world locations. You can play random leaders in these settings, or choose leaders appropriate to the history of these areas.

Sid Meier's Civilization® V - Valve
Civ V is now available on the Mac!

Become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the dawn of man into the space age: Wage war, conduct diplomacy, discover new technologies, go head-to-head with some of history’s greatest leaders and build the most powerful empire the world has ever known.

Sid Meier's Civilization® V

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.
Sid Meier's Civilization® V

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.

Sid Meier's Civilization® V

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.
Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition

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!





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