Civilization VI's August 2020 update now available, patch notes shared

Civilization VI's August 2020 update is now available. You can check out the full patch notes for this update below.

Included in this update is the new Natural Wonder picker, which lets you customize the Natural Wonders that will (or won’t) show up in your game, and the Tech and Civics Shuffle mode, a new way of playing that randomizes your path forward on the Tech and Civics trees. Read on for the full list of what’s in today’s free game update.

While we were testing the August game update, we encountered an issue that was causing PC and Mac/Linux cross-play to become desynced around the mid-game point. For now, we’ll be turning off cross-play while we work with our partners at Aspyr to investigate a fix and we’ll be sharing updates as soon as we get them. Everyone will still receive the update tomorrow and Mac/Linux users will still be able to play with each other; we wanted to make sure this didn’t come as a surprise and really appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding here.

[NEW FEATURES]

Tech and Civic Shuffle Mode

This new game mode adds variety to the tech tree, as it shuffles techs and civics within their historical eras, leading to different costs and prerequisites than normal. The resulting trees are the same for all players. Techs and civics are also hidden until a prerequisite is earned, preserving the mystery of discovery all the way until the end of the game.

Natural Wonder Picker

Sick of the Bermuda Triangle? Want to break the Delicate Arch? In Advanced Setup, you can now bring up a new menu to choose which Natural Wonders you would like to include in your next game. Wonders checked are not guaranteed to be in your next game, rather, they are part of the pool of Wonders that will then be randomly selected and placed.

[GAME UPDATES]

Items in the list below apply to the Gathering Storm ruleset only.

[BALANCE/POLISH]

Amenities

Removed the free population amenity.
Added an amenity to the palace.
Increased the Golf Course amenities by 1.
Decreased all negative amenity level thresholds by 1. Increase Happy and Ecstatic’s minimum by 2.

o New city thresholds:

Ecstatic at 5+
Happy at 3 to 4
Content at -1 to 2
Displeased at -3 to -2
Unhappy at -5 to -4
Unrest at -7 to -6
Revolt at -8

o Negative amenities non-food yield decrease changes:

Displeased -10%, was -5%
Unhappy -20%, was -10%
Unrest -30% (stays the same)
Revolt -40%, was -60%

The Theater Square now gains a major adjacency bonus with the Entertainment complex and Water Park.

Government Plaza Buildings

Grand Master’s Chapel provides +5 faith.
+3 Diplomatic Favor from the Foreign Ministry.

The Naturalist unit now initially costs 600 Faith and will increase by 100 Faith after each purchase.
Fixed issues that prevented Apostles from receiving all available promotions.
The Appeal stat has been added to the trait section of the Districts, Terrains, Improvements, and Features Civilopedia pages.
The text for the Acropolis district now correctly shows major adjacency bonuses for adjacent Wonders.

Apocalypse Game Mode

Reduced volcanic activity.
Reduced frequency of Aid Requests.
Added CO2 production to Soothsayer actions (50 for causing a disaster, 30 for sacrificing a unit).
Forest/Jungle Fires now remain in the burnt state longer.

[AI]

Added some bias towards getting governments with lots of wild card slots.
Fixed an issue where the AI was overvaluing bonuses from governments for cities with governors.
Increased desire for civics that unlock new governments. Capped desire for Theology for high Faith income civs (ensures they can move on to tier 3 or 4 governments).
Various AI improvements.

[UI]

Governors assigned to a City-State are now displayed in the City-States panel.
Fixed an issue that caused map selection to break.
Various UI bug fixes and polish.

[MISC]

Fixing balanced start positions choosing invalid placements.
Added bias for starting in the center of a continent the player does not share with other majors.

[CRASH]

Fix crash when forming a Corps and the unit that is joining is not on the map.
Additional crash fixes.