This post is a continuation of the post Anything and Everything - Upgrades for Civ V (Part I), in which I listed upgrades/changes I would like to see in the turn-based strategy game, Civilization V.

The list on the original post was a compilation of forum posts that I had made in Kevik's Civilization V forum topic: Anything and Everything We Can Add to Civ V

This April has been a busy week for video games, and a very weird one, too. And the news has varied from good, to bad, to ugly, and everything in between. Here's some of the stuff that caught my attention:

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• Nintendo to reveal Wii 2 at E3 this June?
• PlayStation Network down for days
• Portal 2 available
• First NCAA Football 12 gameplay video
• Civilization V patch due out

Yesterday, 2K Greg (community manager for the 2K Civilization V forums) posted a topic previewing the changes being made in the next patch (supposedly due out by the end of April). In addition to a large list of changes, 2K Greg teased the Civ V community with this quote from Dennis Shirk (the producer of the game):

"The patch notes below are the first part of a large two-part update. We wanted to focus this part of the update on stability and bugs, and as you’ll see in the notes below, we’re progressing nicely. There is also continued work going into the AI, the modding framework, and WorldBuilder, and we expect to have this in your hands shortly.

The second part we have begun working on will be released in the coming months, and will include our next balance pass (for those areas of the game that were not included in the March 1 update), as well as continued work on AI, diplomacy, and a much-requested addition to the game that we’ll be discussing in more detail very soon.

You guys have all been instrumental in helping us to continue to make Civilization V better with each update, and there’s more to come!"

There are 3 main possibilities:

• Addition of the previously-promised pit-boss, hotseat, and pbem multiplayer modes
• Addition of the previously-promised mod support for multiplayer games (currently, multiplayer games do not allow mods)
• Addition of source C++ and AI code access to the modding SDK (hopefully along with some better documentation

Earlier today, I published my first actual Civilization V mod!

This mod is titled: "A Better Civ Experience", and is described as:

"This mod allows players to transform their Civ experience, providing greater depth, balance, and realism."

The mod can be found by searching for its title in the Civilization V Mod Browser. Download, install, and then enable the mod (as shown below) in order to play it.

UPDATE (August 8, 2012): Mod no longer available

This mod is no longer available since Civilization V has switched to using the Steam Workshop for mods. Since this mod was originally an April Fool's joke, and doesn't add anything of any worth to the game, I have no plans to update the mod to be accessible through the Steam Workshop.

As a fan of the Sid Meier’s Civilization video game series (particularly, Civilization IV - which I argued on Geek Fights is the best video game ever made!), I was skeptical - but also excited - at the prospect of a Civilization board game based on my beloved game franchise. Could the feeling of building a civilization to stand the test of time and the one-more-turn addictiveness of the video game be replicated in a board game without the game itself becoming too long and boring? Well, put simply, it can! And Sid Meier’s Civilization: the Board Game is proof!

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