Civ 6’s first update is now live: adds DX12, new map types, and fixes exploits

The Civilization VI Fall 2016 update goes live today. It adds DirectX 12 and Logitech ARX support, plus two new map types, a new multiplayer scenario, balance changes, AI tuning and fixes for a whole host of bugs and exploits. If you didn’t totally ruin a game by playing Tomyris and spamming cavalry to sell, looks like it’s too late.

Civ 6 is good, but how good? We compare it to the only fair competition – its predecessors – in our definitive ranking of the Civ series.

The update will install itself automatically when you start Steam. Read on for a full breakdown of what’s included.

New features

The update adds two new map types, ‘Four-Leaf Clover’ and ‘Six-Armed Snowflake’, which are balanced for four and six players. These will be symmetrical, competitive maps with several starting zones clustered around a resource-rich centre – ideal for incentivising conflict in a multiplayer game, but also playable offline.

The ‘Cavalry and Cannonades’ scenario is added to multiplayer. This is a combat scenario with reduced unit maintenance costs, no strategic resource requirement for units, and which grants a larger starting army and more techs. The goal is to get the most territory after 50 turns.

DirectX 12 and Logitech ARX support have been added, so make sure your drivers are up to date.

Gameplay changes

A number of nice quality-of-life additions, such as new hotkeys and a notification for Barbarian scouts that have seen your city. Some requested features from Civ 5 also return; you’ll now be able to see the next tile a city will claim through culture, and can rename cities.

• Added additional notifications.
• Added a “time defeat” for running out of time. This is always disabled if a Score Victory is available.
• Added additional Hotkey support (next unit, next city).
• Added the ability to rename cities.
• Added UI to show the next tile a city will grow to.
• Added a visual cue for Barbarian Scouts that are alerted to your city.
• Changed Dan Quayle rankings.

Balance changes

Big tweaks here to squash the many exploits that emerged within days of the game’s release. Units no longer give any gold at all when deleted, meaning buying and selling armies or armadas, or spamming light cavalry as Tomyris, is now pointless. Cavalry production policies in general are less effective, indeed. Builders can no longer remove features from tiles outside your territory, so you can’t send them all over the map removing forest to boost production in your cities.

There’s also been a reduction to warmonger penalties “in most instances” – welcome, as in our experience fighting wars in most eras still carries too-harsh diplomatic consequences. Barbarians will now spawn further away from players on lower difficulties, and the AI won’t accuse you of waving your troops in its face when it settles a city NEAR MY OWN BORDER CATHERINE, DAMMIT.

• Added prerequisite project (Manhattan Project) for Operation Ivy.
• Added Metal Casting as a prerequisite for Economics tech.
• Adjusted religious pressure when a religion is first founded to give them more resilience and convert the city.
• Adjusted relationship decay rates.
• Reduced the effectiveness of cavalry production policies.
• Reduced Warmonger penalties in most instances, and adjusted how this reacts to returning versus keeping a city. The last city conquered from a player now provides a heavy warmonger penalty, even if you have a Casus Belli against this player, because you are wiping out a civilization.
• Reduced border incursion warnings if the troops are within their own borders.
• Increased the number of Great Works of Writing slots in the Amphitheater to 2.
• Increased Counterspy operation time.
• Increased the cost of Religious units and applied additional charges.
• Units may no longer be deleted when they are damaged.
• Deleting a unit no longer provides gold.
• Updated Island Plates map to have more hills and mountains.
• Units may no longer remove features from tiles that are not owned by that player.
• Fallout now prevents resource harvesting.
• Barbarian camps must spawn further away from low-difficulty players’ cities.

AI tuning

These AI adjustments should mean your robo-rivals are more willing to make peace when they’re clearly outmatched, rather than pointlessly dragging out wars or starting foolish new ones. They’ll be less inclined to compete militarily – but should be more effective when they do – and will choose more often to contest the science or tourism victories.

• Adjusted AI victory condition focus to increase their competitiveness in Science and Tourism.
• Adjusted AI understanding of declared friendship.
• Adjusted the AI approach to beginning and ending a war based on potential gain and loss.
• Increased AI competitiveness in building a more advanced military.
• Increased AI usage of Inquisitors. Especially Phillip.
• Increased AI value of upgrading units.
• Increased AI use of Settler escorts.
• Tuned AI usage of units that cannot move and shoot, like Catapults.
• Tuned AI city and unit build planning.
• Improved the ability of city-states to maintain a strong military.

Bug fixes

“Will you accept our delegation to your capital?” // “Sure! Welcome! Hey, can I send one back?” // “Lol no GTFO.”

If that sounds familiar, it should now be a thing of the past. Trade route yields will also no longer randomly double, which takes some of the wind from Rome’s sails, while England gets a “buff” in that their unique district gets its proper adjacency bonuses now. Other highlights include the proper transference of wonder ownership with city ownership, and bringing civs into the game properly when they are liberated “back to life”.

• Fixed some production Social Policies, Great People, and Pantheon bonuses that were not applying correctly.
• Fixed Royal Navy Dockyard not getting the right adjacency bonuses.
• Fixed some issues with how the Great Wall was built by players and AI, including proper connection to mountains and removing other players’ Great Walls as potential connection points.
• Fixed a unit cycling error with formations.
• Fixed a bug where the first military levy that expired would return all levied units (including those levied from other city-states) to that city-state. Now it should only return the levied units that actually originally belonged to the one city-state.
• Fixed several issues when Airstrips and Aerodromes are occupied, including forced rebasing of enemy units and UI updates.
• Fixed an exploit that allowed ranged and bombard units to gain experience when attacking a district with 0 hit points.
• Fixed an issue with wonders when transferring city ownership – conquering a city with a wonder would not track that wonder, and could lead to problems when attempting to use Gustave Eiffel.
• Fixed an issue where the Settler lens would not always show the right information to the player.
• Fixed an issue where AI would counter gold changes with the change desired, rather than the total amount of gold desired.
• Fixed an issue where the Tutorial intro and outro videos would appear off-center in certain resolutions.
• Fixed some crashes with units.
• Fixed an issue where multiple leaders of the same civilization would frequently show up in a game.
• Fixed an issue where Trade Route yields were doubling in some instances.
• Units in formations now break formation before teleporting between cities.
• The achievement ‘For Queen and Country’ was unlocking too frequently.
• AI with neutral relationships should accept delegations barring exceptional circumstances.
• Can no longer declare a Joint War if it is invalid for either party.
• Save game files should no longer be case sensitive.
• Certain wonders were sending extra notifications.
• Players will no longer receive any warmongering penalties from a joint war partner for actions in that joint war.
• Liberating a civilization back to life will now bring them back into the game properly.
• Observation Balloon range bonus was being incorrectly applied when stacked.
• Text and grammar fixes.

Visuals

A couple of purely aesthetic touches. National Parks get a ranger tower, which is cool. Next addition: a tiny bipedal bear in a green hat and tie. Please, Firaxis.

• Buildings on snow will now have snow on them.
• Added an Industrial Barbarian Encampment.
• Added a ranger tower to National Parks.
• Fixed some issues with buildings not culling around other world items properly.
• Fixed an issue with some Districts not showing properly.
• Miscellaneous polish applied to multiple improvements, districts, and buildings.

Multiplayer

• Turn timers are always disabled on the first turn of a new game. This happens regardless of the advanced start or turn timer type selected.
• Allow multiplayer lobby’s private game status to be toggled once the lobby has been created.
• Cap the max players to 12.
• Added LAN player name option to options screen.

UI

There’s no single huge change here, but you’ll notice the collective effect of the below within a few turns when you load back in. There’s just a bit less friction in all things, as many keys you’ll press intuitively now do the thing you were expecting, and more information is where you’re expecting it to be.

• Added the number of specialists working a tile.
• Added some additional icons for espionage, promotions, etc.
• Added additional Civilopedia shortcuts, including right clicking a unit portrait.
• Added the signature to the diplomacy action view/deal view so that we can differentiate between duplicate players. Also added multiplayer screenname in diplomacy.
• Added Trade Route yields to the Reports screen.
• Added City Center to the City Breakdown panel.
• Added rewards and consequences to mission completed popups.
• Updated the leader-chooser when beginning a new game.
• Updated the end game Victory screen.
• Updated the multiplayer staging room.
• Updated city banners.
• Updated Espionage mission chooser flow.
• Updated to display what cities are getting amenities from each resource.
• Changed resource icon backings to reflect the type of resource it is.
• Auto-scroll to the first Great Person that can be claimed.
• Improved search functionality in the Civilopedia.
• Removed Barbarian data from player replay graphs.
• ESC now closes the Tech, Civic, and Eureka popups.
• When loading a game, the era blurb will be the current era of the saved game, rather than the starting era of the game.

Audio

• Added some missing mouseover sounds.
• Fixed the Oracle quote.
• Fixed an issue where the Advisor voice was not playing in some languages.
• Fixed compatibility issues with some sound cards, especially those set to high playback rates.

Miscellaneous

• Added a setup option “No Duplicate Leaders” that is enabled by default. This option prevents multiple players from selecting the same leader.
• Updated leader screen to support enabling/disabling bloom according to the ‘Enable Bloom’ graphics option.
• Plot Tooltip Delay is now available in the Options menu.
• Auto Cycle Units is now available in the Options menu.
• Benchmark updates.
• Credits updated.

Thanks to Firaxis via the Civ 6 blog.