Working with our players to improve our games is an important part of our approach to game development, and with the Bolivar Update in early June being a big and much anticipated update (as you might be able to tell from the previews over the last three weeks), we want your help to put it through the paces before launch.
From May 19th to June 9th, an opt-in beta version of the Bolivar Update will be available through Steam (for PC only). This beta will let us collect feedback early to help us work on the first patch after the update. However, please remember that most changes based on your feedback will likely not make it into the release version of the Update, but will be delivered in a separate patch later.
Here’s what you can look forward to in the beta:
- Reworked Surrender System: Forcing your opponent to surrender when they reach 0 War Support is now optional, but you will take stability penalties if you press on for too long
- Rebalanced War Support Modifiers: Changes in War Support now scale with losses in battle, and cultural influence over territories causes war support losses
- Surplus/Deficit Stability Tooltip: The stability tooltip in the city screen will now clearly display surplus or deficit stability
- Infrastructure Yield Previews: Expected yields for Infrastructures are shown at the bottom of their tooltip before construction
- Disabling Pollution Effects: Gameplay effects of pollution can be turned on or off in the New Game menu (defaults to off)
- Administrative Center Renovation: You can update any administrative center to your current culture with a cheap construction project
- Automatic Mod Reloading: The game automatically loads the mods used in your latest save when launching
- Civics Unlock Conditions: Unlock conditions are shown in the tooltip of locked Civics
- Unique Wonder Effects: All natural wonders now have a unique gameplay effect
- Luxury Distribution Settings: In the map settings, you can now choose how even luxury resources should be spread
- Scaling AI Difficulty: Bonuses the AI gets on higher difficulty now increase throughout the game to improve the late-game challenge. Please let us know how you feel about these changes on the forum and through the Bolivar Beta AI Survey
- AI Delays: If your armies have queued orders for the turn, the AI will now wait for these to be resolved before engaging them
- New Sortie Rules: Defenders cannot sortie on the first turn until the attacker chooses to “maintain siege”
- Content Management: You can set the frequency of DLC content (except cultures) from the Content menu, and new content is highlighted in game
So, how do you access this beta if you want to try it? Open the properties of Humankind in your Steam library, go to the “betas” tab, and select the Bolivar_Beta branch. Steam should then update your game to the beta version (and if it doesn’t, a quick restart of Steam should resolve the issue).
Please keep in mind that saves for the Bolivar Update and the previous Vitruvian Update are not cross-compatible. Attempting to load a save with the wrong version of the game will likely crash your game.
If you want to share your feedback with us, please check out the Bolivar Beta forum. You can also post Bug Reports section and check the Known Issues thread there.
Have fun with the beta!