Civilization 6 New Civs, Spring Update Available Today

It's a big day for Civilization VI players: The Persia and Macedon Civilization and Scenario Pack is now available, as is the Spring 2017 Update.

The new civs were unveiled last week and are now available for those who buy the premium DLC (unless you own the Civilization VI Deluxe Edition, which unlocks the DLC for free automatically). Persia, led by Cyrus II, has the Fall of Babylon ability, providing all Persian units with bonus movement after declaring a surprise war. Doing so also results in less of a diplomatic penalty than it does for other civs.

The other new civ, Macedon, is led by Alexander the Great. His Hellenistic Fusion ability provides a bonus after conquering a city, depending on the type of districts that city has built. He also provides a bonus that reduces the amount of war weariness Macedon suffers.

The DLC also comes with a new scenario, The Conquests of Alexander.

Meanwhile, Firaxis and 2K have released a Spring Update with a whole host of game tweaks. It's available now for PC, with Mac and Linux releases coming soon. Here are some of the major changes:

• Warmonger penalties have been seriously reduced - players will receive 20% less of a warmongering penalty for declaring war or capturing a city when you've denounced the other player, or 40% less penalty for taking a city from a player you're at war with.
• If you capture a city smaller than the average city in the game, your warmonger penalty is reduced too.
• Harbors have been buffed to provide a major adjacency bonus with the City Center, +1 Food to all Coast tiles when the Lighthouse is built, and +2 Gold to all Coast tiles when the Seaport is built.
• A UI issue that meant the multiplayer games list didn't show all available games has been fixed, and will now show games from additional regions.

Firaxis and 2K are also fixing several bugs in the Spring Update, including one that mistakenly referred to John Curtin as Australia's 'President' rather than 'Prime Minister' in the previous DLC's Outback Tycoon scenario. Check out the full patch notes over on Steam and read our glowing review of Civilization IV right here on GameSpot.