Premier patch pour Civilization VI

Quasi un mois  après sa sortie Civilization VI reçoit aujourd’hui un premier patch. Mise à jour relativement importante intitulée Automne 2016 et qui ajoute ou corrige un certain nombre de choses. Primo, la compatibilité avec d’une part le système ARX de Logitech (application pour smartphone permettant de surveiller son PC via donc un deuxième écran) et d’autre part DirectX 12, qui apportera probablement quelques embellissements et optimisations graphiques pour ceux ayant Windows 10 et la carte graphique nécessaire (voir cette liste si besoin). Attention, il vous faudra probablement mettre à jour vos pilotes graphiques. Notez que Steam propose l’option entre DX 11 et DX 12 au lancement du jeu, et que Civ VI est déjà très bien jouable, et très joli visuellement, avec DX 11.

Autres nouveautés, deux cartes multijoueurs (dites « flocon de neige » pour celle à 6 joueurs, et « trèfle à quatre feuilles » pour celle à … 4 joueurs) et un scénario nommé Cavalry and Cannonades, qui comme son nom le suggère permettra de plus facilement jouer à la guerre avec le moteur du jeu (partie en 50 tours, armée de départ plus grande, coûts de maintenance réduit pour les unités, pas besoin de ressources stratégiques, l’objectif étant de posséder à la fin le plus grand territoire).

Concernant le gameplay, on appréciera plusieurs petites améliorations concernant l’interface, l’un des actuels points faibles du jeu au sens où certaines informations, certes pas indispensables mais néanmoins très pratiques pour jouer sont toutefois peu faciles à trouver, voire absentes dans certains cas. Par exemple désormais on peut à nouveau voir clairement quel sera le prochain hexagone sur lequel une ville étendra son territoire. Malgré ces premières améliorations, ils restent toujours de nombreux détails obscurs dans le jeu.

Puis vient ensuite une longue liste d’équilibrages de points divers et variés, parmi lesquels on retiendra des ajustements de l’IA (tant mieux, mais n’attendez toujours pas un miracle), du coût des unités religieuses, ou encore de divers facteurs comme celui de l’efficacité de la production d’unités de cavalerie (qui était trop puissant, et donc déséquilibrait le jeu). Enfin du coté des graphismes le jeu bénéficie aussi de nombreuses petites touches supplémentaires et pour terminer ce survol, il y a bien sûr une série de bugs qui ont été éliminés. Voyez ci-après le changelog complet pour une liste plus précise. Précisons aussi un bémol de taille, le patch nécessitait, dans mon cas du moins, un téléchargement de plus de 2 giga, ce qui n’est pas rien. Vérifiez donc bien avant de lancer votre partie si vous ne voulez pas vous retrouver à devoir patienter un bout de temps.

Civilization VI est de base indéniablement un très bon jeu, offrant un contenu très riche, beaucoup de variations et de détails amusants, mais à l’usage on s’aperçoit vite qu’il est très similaire à Civilization V (avec la plupart des ajouts de Gods & Kings), et qu’on y retrouve donc rapidement les mêmes défauts. Cela n’empêche pas de très bien s’amuser avec, particulièrement pour ceux qui aimaient bien Civ V, mais il faudra certainement attendre encore plusieurs importants patchs et au moins une bonne extension pour que cette nouvelle version de Civ atteigne son plein potentiel. On verra ce que les prochains DLC apporteront au gameplay.

Pour plus d’informations sur Civilization VI, voyez le site officiel, cette page sur Steam. ainsi que notre série d’articles La république des philosophes, un AAR Civilization VI.

Communiqué

Civilization VI ‘Fall 2016’ Update Now Live

A new update is available for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI today. The “Fall 2016 Update” will automatically install when starting the Steam client; if it doesn’t install automatically, please restart Steam.

This update adds DirectX 12 support to Civilization VI, starting with AMD cards and NVIDIA Maxwell-series-or-later cards; please make sure your drivers are up-to-date. Support has also been added for Logitech ARX.  For more information on each of these, please click their respective link.

Today you’re also able to play a whole new multiplayer scenario called “Cavalry and Cannonades,” and settle on two new map types, “Four-Leaf Clover” and “Six-Armed Snowflake.” These maps are playable both online and off, and were designed to encourage more conflict by forcing players to move toward the center. For the full list of what’s in this latest update, please see below.

Firaxis Games and 2K are committed to making Civilization VI the best experience possible and will continue to support the title. If you have any feedback on this update or just the game in general, please let us know in the 2K Forums. Stay civilized!

[NEW]

Maps
Added a balanced six player map.
Added a balanced four player map.
‘Cavalry and Cannonades’ Scenario Added
Combat scenario with reduced unit maintenance costs and no strategic resource requirement for units.
Larger starting army and additional starting techs.
Time limit: 50 turns.
Goal: Possess the largest territory.
DX12 Support
Complete Logitech ARX Support

[GAMEPLAY UPDATES]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[MISC]

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.