It's not the strongest start for the seventh game in the most celebrated PC series in history. Civ 7 hasn't exactly received glowing reviews from critics and is currently struggling to shake off its "Mixed" user rating on Steam: only 51% of its 14,000 Steam reviews are positive. A lot of people are playing Civ in its first week of global release, but only about half of them are enjoying it.
Firaxis has heard the complaints and is working to address them. The third post-launch patch arrived today, and it "focuses on addressing key areas of player-reported issues that we can act on most quickly," Firaxis says.
The patch, like the one before it, makes some changes to the user interface, which is one of the key complaints players have. Some of it looks to improve readability: there are several changes to font scaling, alignment, spacing, and cut-off descriptions. Some quality of life fixes are also included, like being able to escape out of the independent power screen.
Tooltips have been improved, too, with a nice hat-tip to a modder we mentioned yesterday, Sukritact, who has already made several improvements to Civ 7's interface.
"Added Building icons to the plot tooltip with their status," Firaxis said. "Added Wonder icons to the plot tooltip with the gameplay effect. Made resource icons larger on improved tiles, and smaller on unimproved tiles. 'Thank you for the inspiration Sukritact!'" Nice to get a shout-out from the devs, I imagine.
And this fix sounds kind of important: "Added a notification for when an enemy attacks a player's Unit in single-player." Yeah, that'd be a good event to be tipped off to.
You can read the entire patch list below. There are more fixes on the way, too: "We're still actively working on a development roadmap outlining more major updates to the game, including improvements to the UI and other critical areas," Firaxis says. "Our goal is to share this roadmap in the coming weeks; we appreciate your patience as we determine what we can deliver in the near future."
Full patch notes:
Stability
- General Stability Improvements and fixes.
GameplayWindows PC/Mac/Linux/Steam Deck
- Bombers can now deploy Nuclear Weapons when packed into an Aerodrome, Carrier, or Squadron Commander (previously only Heavy Bombers could do so).
- Addressed an issue where some users reported experiencing Specialists being removed from Settlements when confirming the Legacy Cards from Age Transition.
- Addressed an issue that some users reported experiencing where the 300 Gold from discovering a Natural Wonder while playing as Isabella was not being granted.
- Addressed an issue that some users reported experiencing where the Factory was unavailable when a Distant Lands Settlement was connected to a Homelands Settlement in the Modern Age.
- Addressed an issue that some users reported experiencing where Sea Trade and Rail connections sometimes failed in Settlements where the City Center was not adjacent to the coast.
UI
- Continued to address alignment issues some users reported when playing in Simplified Chinese. We will continue to make improvements here in future patches.
- Improved Font Scaling in the Civilization and Tech Tree screens.
- Improved Image and Font alignment in the City details menu.
- Improved spacing and alignment on the War Declaration screen.
- Addressed an issue that some players reported experiencing with navigating the Civilopedia search results with a controller.
- Addressed an issue that some players reported experiencing where the Unique Quarter description appears cut off when viewing in Building Breakdown screen.
- Addressed an issue that some players reported experiencing where unlocalized text appears when viewing the "Nuclear Weapons Available" warning pop-up in Modern Age.
- Improvements to the Age Transition Spend Points screen.
- Added a notification for when an enemy attacks a player's Unit in single-player.
- Improved the performance of City Details screen when viewing a large City.
- Improved Progress Bar information consistency (HUD Progress wheels go the right way now).
- The Esc key can be used to back out of the Independent Power screen.
- Added Building icons to the plot tooltip with their status. Added Wonder icons to the plot tooltip with the gameplay effect. Made resource icons larger on improved tiles, and smaller on unimproved tiles. "Thank you for the inspiration Sukritact!"
Miscellaneous
- The correct citizen character set is now being displayed for Korean Independent Powers.
