[PC] Civilization 5: !#@#!@ Impressions Incoming! Brave New World!

[map]

No, I removed the time victory, I wonder if that is the problem.

[Arnir]

The intro movie masks a load, so it's going to run for a certain amount of time no matter what you do.  I feel like hitting a key during the movie will cut it as soon as the load is done, but not before.  I think there's an ini hack you can do to stop the movie playing, but then you're staring at a black screen during that load.

Thanks, I appreciate the info.  It helps knowing that it is actually trying to accomplish something.  I just the way it takes over my system and won't even let me use IM or anything while waiting.

[skystride]

It's still retarded.  What were they thinking?  "I'm sure everyone will want to watch the first 15 seconds of our intro video every time, lets sneak in the load there!"

I think I might lose my first game.  I have about 120 turns left and I'm producing around 150 culture per turn.  It might not be enough for a cultural victory.  Building maintenance is killing me, I had to focus on gold in some cities instead of culture.  I can't trade with other civs anymore either because the 2 civs left are assholes.

[Crusis]

I was having trouble getting into the game for some reason, then this weekend it 'clicked' and I played a single game for hours and hours. I started a standard game, as I understand it, from this thread, epic is really slow. I can deal with that but does anyone have an estimate on how long a game can run (hours) at this level on say a large map?

I concur on the intro video. I am so sick of watching it. Show me an hourglass, dancing pink bunny, anything but the same 15 seconds over and over.

[Morgul]

Major spoiler alert*

Strat for winning any victory condition with any Civ.   I have done a standard and large map with the basics of this strat and won both.

Read at your own risk.

Spoiler for Hiden:

"Who's is your buddy"? strategy

Good Land = river wheat best,  river deer also works(need increase population fast)

Goal- Stonehedge then Great Library, Buy allies with all city states

First buildings/units

1)Build scout (need ruins)
2)worker (farm on the wheat)
3)Build 5 to 7 turns of warrior or monument
4)Stonehenge (When CALENDAR done switch ASAP)
5)Great library (When WRITING done switch ASAP)

first 4 techs research
1-POTTERY
2-CALENDAR
3-WRITING
4-Philosophy
5- mining, bronze or whatever"
(until great library is built, then use "free tech" to bust into medieval era)

Do not buy cultural policies, ignore them until medieval era-
Then buy Patronage, Aesthetics, Philanthropy.  Fill out patronage tree.  Then depends on what win your going for.
Autocracy for military victory, etc.


Spend first 500 gold on buying a City State close to you. (maritime/military are best) Then buy according to resources you want/need, but buy them all.

Sell all resources (except marble) and always buy all city states you see, keep them allies.
Once you have another 500 gold, rinse and repeat UNTIL you own ALL the city states.

Civilizations:

Any Civilization can do it and it works fine.

Special notes:

*Egypt or Greek (golden tombs rock)

Also
THE SIAMESE
Their special power also applies to City States. Food and culture increase. Also more bang for your buck.

THE BABYLONIANS
Their special feature gives you a Great Scientist that you can use to get to CIVIL SERVICE or THEOLOGY much more quickly. (and if you want to try other Medieval techs, you have more flexibility.)

THE FRENCH
Their special power gets you culture faster and gives you benefit for the early part of the game which will help you work the entire patronage policy group.

Consolidated from Rha post I found here:

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/193019-CITY-STATES-who-s-your-buddy

[Razgon]

Major spoiler alert*

Strat for winning any victory condition with any Civ.   I have done a standard and large map with the basics of this strat and won both.

Read at your own risk.

Spoiler for Hiden:

"Who's is your buddy"? strategy

Good Land = river wheat best,  river deer also works(need increase population fast)

Goal- Stonehedge then Great Library, Buy allies with all city states

First buildings/units

1)Build scout (need ruins)
2)worker (farm on the wheat)
3)Build 5 to 7 turns of warrior or monument
4)Stonehenge (When CALENDAR done switch ASAP)
5)Great library (When WRITING done switch ASAP)

first 4 techs research
1-POTTERY
2-CALENDAR
3-WRITING
4-Philosophy
5- mining, bronze or whatever"
(until great library is built, then use "free tech" to bust into medieval era)

Do not buy cultural policies, ignore them until medieval era-
Then buy Patronage, Aesthetics, Philanthropy.  Fill out patronage tree.  Then depends on what win your going for.
Autocracy for military victory, etc.


Spend first 500 gold on buying a City State close to you. (maritime/military are best) Then buy according to resources you want/need, but buy them all.

Sell all resources (except marble) and always buy all city states you see, keep them allies.
Once you have another 500 gold, rinse and repeat UNTIL you own ALL the city states.

Civilizations:

Any Civilization can do it and it works fine.

Special notes:

*Egypt or Greek (golden tombs rock)

Also
THE SIAMESE
Their special power also applies to City States. Food and culture increase. Also more bang for your buck.

THE BABYLONIANS
Their special feature gives you a Great Scientist that you can use to get to CIVIL SERVICE or THEOLOGY much more quickly. (and if you want to try other Medieval techs, you have more flexibility.)

THE FRENCH
Their special power gets you culture faster and gives you benefit for the early part of the game which will help you work the entire patronage policy group.

Consolidated from Rha post I found here:

http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/193019-CITY-STATES-who-s-your-buddy

yeah - I win pretty much every game now with the French...a bit annoying.

I don't know what it is, but I went back and played a bit of Civ4 and some fall from heaven and sad to say having a lot more fun with that. oh well, I guess likes and dislikes are individual :-)

[Azhag]

So overall, thumbs up or down? Reviews are great, user reviews on amazon are not kind (and not mostly complaining about steam either).

[Sarkus]

So overall, thumbs up or down? Reviews are great, user reviews on amazon are not kind (and not mostly complaining about steam either).

I give it a thumbs up, but there are two caveats. First, some things were changed in a major way and not everyone is dealing with that well.  Civ5 is not Civ4 with better graphics and a few tweaks.  Second, the AI is not challenging if you are one of those hardcore Civ players who generally plays at the higher difficulty levels anyway and is constantly on the lookout for tricks and "power strategies." If you are a low to mid-range difficulty player, it isn't bad at all in its current state.

Don't forget that there is a demo. 

[tgb]

I'll second what Sarkus said about the A.I. - playing at Prince I blew what was an almost sure cultural victory by neglecting both my military and repeated calls to get me involved to stop that bastard Alexander while we still could.

Now it's 2025, I'm down to two cities, and still holding Alex off with Musketmen and Tribuchets.  The only thing keeping him from finishing me off quicker is he's also in a constant state of war with America and China.

[Morgul]

Definate thumbs up.   It been out a week and I got 40 hours in lol.   Best game this year on pc IMO.   It is bad addictive.

But, I am a fairly new civ player so I don't have preconceptions or expectations from older civ versions.

I am afraid to click the icon right now because I fear losing myself for half the night and being dead tired at work.      Even with that power strategy, I struggle against the ai on prince and never feel unchallenged at all.

[Freezer-TPF-]

Thumbs up BUT there are some fairly serious bugs, annoying interface deficiencies, and (IMHO on this last one) balance problems.  I'm confident that at least the first two things will be improved by Firaxis (they've already released a few bug fix patches).  Balance is subjective, of course, but can be improved by mods (and I hope Firaxis, but we'll see).

Unless you're dying to check out the changes ASAP, I'd probably wait for another patch or two, primarily for the bug fixes. 

[Blackadar]

Been playing Civs since 1991.  Thumbs up.

Note what Sarkus and Freezer-TPF are spot-on. 

[naednek]

Thumbs to the side.  Has potential, but just peace treaty bug alone kills the gameplay.  I'm going to finish the game I'm on, and then revert back to Civ 4, and play that since I never got into that.

[skystride]

Thumbs Up.

I'm actually finishing my games in Civ 5 unlike Civ 4.  End game just bogged down too much for me in Civ 4.  It will be really hard to go back to stacks of doom and the other quirks of Civ 4.  I am hopeful they will eventually fix the major issues in Civ 5.

[Autistic Angel]

Difficulty: Prince
Map Type: Standard Size Earth
Game Length: Normal
Civilization: Random

I drew the Iroquois who can treat any forest in their territory as a road, and build a special Longhouse that harvests an extra +1 Production from forest hexes as well.  These turned out to be *huge* bonuses because the game started me right next to the Great Lakes in North America, just a stone's throw from the heavily forested Canadian northlands.

Also, there were no other major civilizations in all of North or South America.

The vast forests gave me all the benefits of a trade network without any of the road maintenance, so I had plenty of extra money to spend on making friends with the two nearby city-states.  Almaty was militaristic, providing my empire with a steady stream of free units to eradicate local barbarian camps, while Ragusa's Maritime trait boosted my food income so I didn't have to clear the trees for farmland.

Free from immediate threat and swimming in natural resources, I decided to focus on a cultural victory.  A city nestled in the mountains of the Yukon worked the rich gold and silver deposits to finance centuries of philosophers, writers, artists, and musicians, while another on the southern coast of the Hudson Bay reaped the benefits of three academies to become the Civilization version of EUR^eKA.  My other three cities -- four, after the relatively late settlement of Tampico, Mexico -- were dedicated primarily to the arts.

In the 1600's, I finally sent an expeditionary force into South America, making contact with two more city-states and cultivating their friendship by wiping out the local barbarian camps.  One was another Maritime economy that further boosted my national food income, while the other rewarded me with extra Culture for the rest of the game.

All my cultural progress was funneled into Social Policies that would improve the benefits of my city-state allies even more, reduce the price of future Social policies, or maximize my culture even further.  One of the strongest boosts gave my people one extra culture for every 2 points of extra happiness.  At my empire's peak, my people were producing upwards of 750 culture per turn, and averaging a new Social Policy every 8-10 turns.

I didn't meet another major power until the early 20^th Century when Alexander the Great sailed over from Greece to say hello.  He'd obviously been busy triggering the occasional "An unmet civilization has lost its capital!" messages and was now burdened with a sprawling and temperamental empire, so when I offered to trade three of my Luxury Resources for three of his, he leaped at the chance to bring exotic wonders back to his people.

My people completed the Utopia project in the first couple years of the 21^st Century, without ever warring against another civilization.  The game ranked me as "Marcus Aurelius" in the stats.

-Autistic Angel

[Morgul]

Difficulty: Prince
Map Type: Standard Size Earth
Game Length: Normal
Civilization: Random

I drew the Iroquois who can treat any forest in their territory as a road, and build a special Longhouse that harvests an extra +1 Production from forest hexes as well.  food income, while the other rewarded me with extra Culture for the rest of the game.

-Autistic Angel

Yea, hiowatha sounds like he has some nice perks too..

Honestly at first I thought Japan was overpowered..  Then I thought russia..  Then the greeks and Egypt...   Now maybe the french..

I just think its a awesome game, very addictive..   It will destroy a saturday afternoon.  And the night too heh.
   a few patches to clean stuff up.   Sounds like you had fun. 


Nice post.

[Fez]

Well, yet again I'm having problems with a game on my Alienware M17x laptop with 280M cards.  Running Civ in DX10/11 I get occasional freezes.  In DX9, I get weird flickering errors on some land tiles that have been upgraded by workers (zooming all the way out gets rid of the flickering, but...)  Looking at the Civ5 troubleshooting boards, I see others are having the same issues.  Bloody laptops are no fun for games these days.  The drivers are all too iffy.

[Arkon]

Well, have given it a bit more time and sadly it just isn't grabbing me.  Looks like I need to just go back to Civ IV.

[Rowdy]

Just won as the Egyptians on Prince... never really felt challenged though.  Prince in Civ 4 usually was a tough game.  Won a science victory, miles ahead of Elizabeth, my nearest competitor - she had just entered the Industrial era when I was completing space ship parts.  I had been trying for a cultural victory, but had to change my strategy after the two empires sharing my continent, the Chinese and Russians attacked, and I had to eradicate them in self defense.  Even with mostly puppet cities, the cultural costs escalated too high to try and rescue my cultural victory.  Was rated Caesar Augustus, by far the best rating I've ever had in a Civ game.

However, I think I ran into a bug with a Diplomatic victory.  The screen said I needed 8 votes to win a Diplomatic victory.  Three times the UN voted, and each time I had 6 votes in addition to 4 or 5 city-states voting for me.  Doesn't that equal 10 or 11 votes?  Do I not understand how this works? 

[Asharak]

However, I think I ran into a bug with a Diplomatic victory.  The screen said I needed 8 votes to win a Diplomatic victory.  Three times the UN voted, and each time I had 6 votes in addition to 4 or 5 city-states voting for me.  Doesn't that equal 10 or 11 votes?  Do I not understand how this works? 

Each Civ only gets 1 vote, except for the builder of the UN, who gets 2. All the City-States also get one vote apiece.

So I think you are trying to double-count your City-State votes, because that 6 must already include them.

- Ash

[jersoc]

damnit, i was rocking towards a nice culture victory when all but 2 civs declared war on me at once. no way I could defend them all 

I guess next time I need to build more military units

[skystride]

damnit, i was rocking towards a nice culture victory when all but 2 civs declared war on me at once. no way I could defend them all 

I guess next time I need to build more military units

I heard sealing up your borders and not letting them see how weak you are works.  Also you can give them lots of gifts.

Does anyone know if you can see the amount/type of all the luxuries being harvested in one screen?

[Freezer-TPF-]

Does anyone know if you can see the amount/type of all the luxuries being harvested in one screen?

You can do it with a mod like this.  It should be avail. from within the Civ5 mod browser; look for Luxury Resource Display.  Here is another mod option.

Note that playing with mods, even UI mods, will make it so you cannot earn Steam Achievements, if you care about that.  One can only hope Firaxis will officially add something like this display in a patch.

[Gratch]

I'm having a hell of a time getting into Civ V, but I can't really put my finger on why.  I probably just need to block out a long chunk of time to spend with it, as I've been trying to play my initial game for the past week in 15-20 minute increments.  Not feeling the love on some of the changes yet, but I'm hoping it clicks once I've had time to actually dig in.

I am running into one strange technical issue though.  Civ V runs fine when I select the DirectX 9 version. When I try the DirectX 10 or 11, the opening cinematic plays, then everything just goes blank and I get an "out of range" signal on my monitor. I can hear all the music, but can't see anything on the screen.   The Steam forums suggested this fix, but I've tried it and still run into the same problem:

7# Civilization V Black Screen Out of Range Error

1. Open the corresponding GraphicsSettingsDX9/DX11.ini file with a text editor. Look for the strings WindowResX and WindowResY.

2. If you want the game to run in 1024x768 resolution, change these values so that they read
WindowResX = 1024
WindowResY = 768

Anyone else run into anything like this?  Probably doesn't make a huge difference (seems to run fine in DX9), but I'd like to be able to turn on all the eye candy for this brand new system.  This is the only game I've run into this issue on...everything else runs just fine.

System specs:
- AMD Phenom II X6 (2.6)
- 8GM RAM
- Geforce GTS 250 1GB (DirectX 11, 258.96 drivers)

[Autistic Angel]

The only graphical issue I've noticed is that certain tiles develop black "rips" across them, like they've been torn open by the claws of a giant cat.  It's only specific tiles, random and very rare, but persistent on that map even if I save and restart the computer.  The look is so specific, I mistook it for an oil field the first time I saw it.

Otherwise, Civilization 5 is the first game outside of the original Crysis that really challenges my computer tower.  Map animations, combat rounds, and menu transitions all work perfectly, but when I click on the "Next Unit / City" button and the view suddenly pans across the width of a Standard map, there's a jarring amount of stuttering until it recenters on its target.  I *think* it's furiously dumping and then reloading textures for every single object between points A and B.  It doesn't affect the gameplay one whit, but it's a little annoying when you're trying to manage a sprawling Napoleonic empire on a Pangaea map....

-Autistic Angel

[skystride]

I probably just need to block out a long chunk of time to spend with it, as I've been trying to play my initial game for the past week in 15-20 minute increments.  

Wow how do you quit after 20 minutes?  I swear, it's so hard.  Last night I told myself I would only play for 30 minutes but I ended up playing close to 2 hrs.

I have an average PC.  It's running smoothly now (DX11) after I turned down some options (like shadows).  I really can't tell much of a difference visually.  Even late game the map is scrolling smoothly.  The only hitch is when the diplomatic animation loads.  There's a huge pause in the animation and the audio goes out of sync.  I tried lowering the graphics for that but it didn't help.  Since I don't go into the diplomacy screen that often it really doesn't bother me too much but I still wonder why such a simple animation is problematic.

[Greggy_D]

This game is getting terrible reviews on Amazon (2.5 stars overall).  Reading through them a LOT of people do not like the gameplay.

[Blackadar]

This game is getting terrible reviews on Amazon (2.5 stars overall).  Reading through them a LOT of people do not like the gameplay.

Amazon ratings are a cesspool.  For example, Starcraft 2 got 3 stars on Amazon (93 at Metacritic).  Civ 4 GOTY edition?  3 1/2 stars. 

A fair portion of the negative reviews are people who said outright they didn't buy the game and are bitching about Steam.  Whatever. 

[Rowdy]

Does anyone else find that the automated workers are brain dead?  Instead of building farms beside rivers, and lumber mills in forests, and mines on hills, all I get is trading posts.  Everywhere.  The AI just wants to build trading posts it seems - including in the other empires.  Very annoying to have to micromanage my workers every single turn.

As far as performance, the game runs fairly smoothly for me on DX10, but I have noticed that all the tile textures are missing when the game loads, and only when I move the map around do they load.  They seem to stay loaded, but it's kind of jarring when things start up.

[Morgul]

I really can't see how anyone can say its a bad game.

I understand if you hate steam, find it too complex, hate TBS,  or you played civilization for years and don't like something in comparison to civ 4 or whatever..

But, I sunk about 40 hours in the first 7 days...  

I fear clicking the V icon on weeknights because I know hours will burn by...

Its definatley not perfect, but it is also the best TBS game to hit the PC in a very long time.   I really do not fully understand how it is so addicting, but, is what it is.   I am afraid of it.    I hate to see it after a few patches and maybe a expansion.  ugh 

[Qantaga]

Does anyone else find that the automated workers are brain dead?

   
Indeed.
     
I never automate workers (and haven't in any Civ game). It's a bit more micromanagement, but well worth the extra effort.

[Morgul]

Does anyone else find that the automated workers are brain dead?  Instead of building farms beside rivers, and lumber mills in forests, and mines on hills, all I get is trading posts.  Everywhere.  The AI just wants to build trading posts it seems - including in the other empires.  Very annoying to have to micromanage my workers every single turn.

As far as performance, the game runs fairly smoothly for me on DX10, but I have noticed that all the tile textures are missing when the game loads, and only when I move the map around do they load.  They seem to stay loaded, but it's kind of jarring when things start up.

It seemed like to me, that the workers always go after what they think your short of...   If your gold output is low, they start throwing up the trading posts, etc..

I micromanage them early game, but then I just turn them on auto and pretty much let them do their thing.  They build too many damn roads though.  Wish I could turn that off like in civ 4...   Since roads have a upkeep.   Soon as a city state asks for a road the little buggers comply.

[Rowdy]

Does anyone else find that the automated workers are brain dead?  Instead of building farms beside rivers, and lumber mills in forests, and mines on hills, all I get is trading posts.  Everywhere.  The AI just wants to build trading posts it seems - including in the other empires.  Very annoying to have to micromanage my workers every single turn.

As far as performance, the game runs fairly smoothly for me on DX10, but I have noticed that all the tile textures are missing when the game loads, and only when I move the map around do they load.  They seem to stay loaded, but it's kind of jarring when things start up.

It seemed like to me, that the workers always go after what they think your short of...   If your gold output is low, they start throwing up the trading posts, etc..

I micromanage them early game, but then I just turn them on auto and pretty much let them do their thing.  They build too many damn roads though.  Wish I could turn that off like in civ 4...   Since roads have a upkeep.   Soon as a city state asks for a road the little buggers comply.

I've pretty much lost my current game because of this.  I micro'd them all early, had 6 cities perfectly set up with the minimum roads and my economy was rosy.  Went on a military kick to conquer the civ north of me, and set all 12 of my workers on auto, assuming they'd be competent.  30 or 40 turns later my economy was totally in the red, and all my cities had been converted to trading posts, cities were starving and not producing anything (no hammers!) and roads on every square.  I took them all off of auto but the damage is pretty much done, I don't feel like tearing up roads on every square.

[Gratch]

I probably just need to block out a long chunk of time to spend with it, as I've been trying to play my initial game for the past week in 15-20 minute increments.  

Wow how do you quit after 20 minutes?  I swear, it's so hard.  Last night I told myself I would only play for 30 minutes but I ended up playing close to 2 hrs.

18-month-olds tend to wreak havoc on gaming time. 

[skystride]

I think the only people who don't like Civ 5 are the grognards who would get married to Civ 4 if it was legal to do so    Reviewers love it, it's got 90 on metacritic.

Worker micro becomes less tedious after mid game, I've pretty much built everything there is to build.  Most of my workers are put to sleep at this point.  The annoying part is when your border expands and there isn't any notification.  So it can be hard to notice that tile that just became available.

It makes sense if auto workers just build cottages if your economy is suffering.  But if they build roads all over, then I would definitely keep auto off.

[Fez]

Anyone else having lots of lag/slowdowns/freezing as the games get longer and more map becomes exposed?  Like the game, but all the unoptimized code is really bugging me.

[jztemple2]

Anyone else having lots of lag/slowdowns/freezing as the games get longer and more map becomes exposed?  Like the game, but all the unoptimized code is really bugging me.

Are you running in an SLI or Crossfire configuration? This morning I read an article comparing SLI and Crossfire on newly released games and they were surprised at how bad the slowdown was in Civ5 after playing a while. I can't find the article now, but it was linked through Bluesnews.

[Fez]

Well, I have an SLI configuration, but I didn't think it was running in SLI as there was no profile for it yet.  Could be wrong.

[CeeKay]

apparently civilizations are going to be the new DLC.  this month we got 2 DLC coming, the Mongols for free and the Babylonians for $4.99.  each pack will have the civ in it plus scenarios and units.

[Tals]

They can get the pitboss implemented first as they promised.