Firaxis releases first major Civilization: Beyond Earth patch

Beyond Earth Header

The Civilization: Beyond Earth fall update is now live, addressing various technical problems including the infamous "144hz monitor issue"—the bizarre inability to run the game at resolutions greater than 1280x720 on monitors running at 144hz refresh rates—and making changes to units, the tech web, quest rewards, AI, UI, and more.

To be honest, there's nothing in the patch notes that really leaps out at me in a, "Oh, thanks goodness they fixed that" kind of way. "Revised trade route formula for city-to-city trade, with reduced yields," is one change, selected at random; "Miasmic Repulsor now unlocks on Alien Biology (was Ecology)" is another. The combat strength of Explorers has doubled, from 3 to 6, and the AI will now only pursue Domination once the game has gone into extended mode. Individually, none of this sounds all that important, but collectively it adds up to a pretty major overhaul.

"In addition to fixing these and other issues, Firaxis has also addressed a number of gameplay balance requests from the community—like optimizing trade route yields and doing away with one particular Covert Ops exploit," Community Manager David Hinkle wrote. "This is a substantial update, so please take a few moments to pore over the full patch notes below before you jump back into Beyond Earth."

The Civilization: Beyond Earth update should download and install automatically. If it doesn't, Hinkle suggested restarting Steam.

Andy Chalk
US News Lead

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.

Latest in Strategy
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Endless Legend 2 Kin faction reveal
It's turtle time: Endless Legend 2's first faction is the fortification-loving Kin of Sheredyn
Latest in News
Two brightly colored stormtroopers dressed like Run-DMC stand in front of PAX Australia's WELCOME HOME banner.
Tickets for PAX Australia 2025 are on sale now
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again