Firaxis just released the latest Civ Patch which has a whole heap of changes to Civ. These are just the additions but the link should be able to show changes/fixes as well as the sdk being released which means the amount and quality of mods to come out now should increase.

- PitBossSleep ini setting...
- unit cycling optimization...
- Africa, Europe, East Asia, Eastern U.S., and South America maps
- Fantasy_Realm, Fractal, and Shuffle map scripts
- unit health bar for plot list buttons...
- Require Complete Kills game option
- No Movies is now a graphical option (instead of an ini option)...
- Warn all users when a player with a different version of files joins the game
- Display a popup warning the host when a joining player has different versions of XML/Python files so he can make sure this guy can be trusted
- Indicate which players have an active turn in the Pitboss admin screen
- Synch Logging now an .ini option
- Able to load mods from the Pitboss
- Hotseat and PBEM scenarios
- Display name of peer you are contacting in join screen if available
- Saving DirectIP join address
- Added culture rate popup help to culture bar in city screen
- Added Admin password field in PBEM/Hotseat staging screens
- Added HideMovieBackground ini option for further movie speedup
- Added HideOutOfVRamWarning ini option
- Exposed many more functions to Python
- Hooked up modern whaling boats
- support for movies in customAssets folder

Civ 1.61 Patch

Civ SDK

And a starforce free Heroes demo. Im looking forward to seeing if its just a facelift to heroes 4 or more than just a 3d rework :)

Description

Heroes of Might & Magic 5 Demo version includes:

3 playable missions (2 campaign missions, 1 custom game)
2 playable races
6 presets for Duel game (play on Ubi.com)


Recommended System Req's

OS: Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 9.0c 5
CPU: Pentium 4 3.0 GHz / Athlon 3000+ or higher
RAM: 1024MB or higher
Video: 256 MB AGP 8x GeForceFX 6600 / RADEON x800 or higher video card
CD/DVD-ROM speed: 32x
Dolby Surround 5.1 sound processor

HOMM 5 Demo

There should be heaps of other places to grab them all by now too.

because ubisoft, despite their starforce proclivities, are generally incredibly well organised when it comes to demo releases, we've got mirrors up on AGN and GA for the release