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!"
So what might this "much-requested addition" actually be?
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
My money is on the new multiplayer modes, but my hope is for source and AI access for modding.
There are a few other possible "much-requested additions" that this could be referring to though. But these are much less likely since these features were never promised to begin with, and 2K claims that their removal was an intentional decision by the designers. They could be:
- Enabling the religion feature that is supposedly part of the game's actual code, but which is not currently working
- Addition of a spying/espionage system
But we'll have to wait at least a month to find out, since that addition isn't supposed to be released until the next patch.
What is confirmed for this patch?
The list of changes for each patch that's been released for the game has been pretty long. This patch is no exception, although it focuses more on game stability and bug/interface fixes than on balance issues (which were key focuses of previous patches).
Fixes to amphibious invasions and naval combat AI seem to make up a large chunk of the AI changes, and some improvements to the AI's use and reaction to the presense of Great Generals and citadels seem to finally be getting addressed (it only took 6 months!).
The remainder of the patch changes seem to be fixes for AI and gameplay bugs, crash glitches, interface issues, tool-tip messages, Civilopedia updates, a few cosmetic updates, and a host of other miscellanious fixes that probably should have been addressed months ago.
The full patch notes can be found at 2k's Civilization V official forum.