Civilization V

Sir_Digby · 2010-09-25T10:50:06.000Z

Morberis:

I like the game… but I want a Sim Civ instead of a boardgame.

I’m in the same boat but that means we want a Sim, not a Civ. I’d love to see a new SimEarth.

On topic, finally managed to get Civ running on my stone age PC, was actually surprised it ran okay-ish.

The new UI is gorgeous, tooltips are also good and on spot but some stuff seems to be hidden behind the clutter (like, a list of what luxury items we have) and some diplomatic options are obscure or simply not clear enough.

That said, it did make me think of a boardgame more than any other previous Civ, I actually felt it was OK to be making my egyptian cities in a tundra and ice setting, there was no logical disconnect because the game looked like a boardgame and not so much as a historical sim.

I did find the AI to be somewhat lacking in the strategic combat department, almost all battles I fought where I had a melee unit backed up by “artillery” were clear victories because the AI didnt bother to try and flank me or to kill my archers before attacking my melee.

That said, great game, I can honestly say it has forced me to rethink my PC upgrade timing and to try and rush it so I can play it decently.

lordkosc · 2010-09-25T11:08:45.000Z

I would give anything for a new SimEarth, that game was so nerdy and good in all the right ways.

pg1 · 2010-09-25T11:10:10.000Z

roBurky:

That’s why you’re getting situations like an enemy laughing at your proposals of peace, until you actually move your army towards his cities and into sight range, then he offers everything he has to you.

Still doesn’t seem to add up. I’ve had Civs offer me great peace deals when they could see few of my military units but I already had beaten their main army. I’ve also had Civs refuse peace deals (I wanted to leave a Civ with one city alive) when I was about to wipe them out. The Civ about to be wiped out keep telling me to make the deal work (I wanted gold and their 2nd to last city) I had to give them things, haha, right.

Mitya · 2010-09-25T11:12:59.000Z

I just noticed something - does the music in the main menu remind anyone else of Caesar III? It sounds just like the music used for that game.

Rock8man · 2010-09-25T11:34:07.000Z

Orangist:

roBurky’s comments remind me of Soren Johnson’s column on AI cheating.

It’s interesting that in that column, Soren says that players are okay with AI players receiving bonuses. And yet, there are several people in this thread for whom that is completely false. The attitude towards Civ 5 seems to be: I’m playing on Prince and will never increase it any more than that because I don’t want the AI civs to receive bonuses.

Personally, I’d say if I can start beating the computer consistently at Prince, then I’ll increase the difficulty level and I’d be okay with the AI receiving bonuses if it makes the game more appropriately challenging and fun.

Chris_Nahr · 2010-09-25T11:40:31.000Z

Sir Digby:

On topic, finally managed to get Civ running on my stone age PC, was actually surprised it ran okay-ish.

On my fairly modern system, Civ5 actually runs better than Civ4. The engine really scales very well, probably because it’s actually using my four hyperthreaded cores rather than just staring stupidly at them while tripping over its own feet, figuratively speaking.

The new UI is gorgeous, tooltips are also good and on spot but some stuff seems to be hidden behind the clutter (like, a list of what luxury items we have) and some diplomatic options are obscure or simply not clear enough.

Hover over the happiness indicator on the stays bar in the top left, you’ll get a breakdown of all sources of (un)happiness including a list of all luxury resources you currently have. Try hovering over the other numbers in the status bar, too – they all have similar breakdowns.

Mitya · 2010-09-25T11:53:18.000Z

How do trade routes get broken? I keep getting messages that a trade route’s been broken, but then I go and check and there’s an unbroken road between the two cities and appears to be fine.

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2010-09-25T11:59:17.000Z

I’m getting nasty repeated geometry issues with the game now. I’ll play one turn and half the world is covered up by some weird stretched object. I’m running the current driver for my NVidia 8800 GT.

I wanted to make a screenshot to demonstrate the glitch, but print screen captures a desktop image with the Civ V area being a black square.

Woolen_Horde · 2010-09-25T12:08:09.000Z

Gus_Smedstad:

I’m getting nasty repeated geometry issues with the game now. I’ll play one turn and half the world is covered up by some weird stretched object. I’m running the current driver for my NVidia 8800 GT.

I wanted to make a screenshot to demonstrate the glitch, but print screen captures a desktop image with the Civ V area being a black square.

Try FRAPS.

mystery · 2010-09-25T12:08:41.000Z

Mitya:

How do trade routes get broken? I keep getting messages that a trade route’s been broken, but then I go and check and there’s an unbroken road between the two cities and appears to be fine.

I only got those messages after I developed Railroads, and my automated workers started replacing roads with rails. It’s a disjointed process, so there were moments where the road didn’t exist, and the rail hadn’t been placed yet. In each of the notifications, I checked the trade route status, and it was listed there just fine.

jpinard · 2010-09-25T12:56:05.000Z

lordkosc:

I would give anything for a new SimEarth, that game was so nerdy and good in all the right ways.

Me too. I’ve been thinking about re-installing it despite the atrocious graphics.

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2010-09-25T13:15:59.000Z

Woolen Horde:

Try FRAPS.

Thanks, that worked. Behold the geometry strangeness.

The symptoms are different every time I load this save game, but they always show rather rapidly.

Reldan · 2010-09-25T14:30:18.000Z

Just won my second game on Prince. I might need to up the difficulty next game. I completed my cultural victory in 1990 as Siam playing off one city.

Things were pretty peaceful almost the entire game except for a couple wars Persia declared on me. The first time I fought off his forces then razed his 2 nearest cities, causing him to beg for a peace that I mercifully granted. The second time he warred with me I decided I didn’t want to deal with his shenanigans any more and razed his empire back to his capitol. After destroying that and leaving him with just 3 tiny cities I retreated back to my homeland, knowing he’d never be a threat to anyone again.

abrandt · 2010-09-25T14:31:26.000Z

Ever had any issues with your card overheating? Never hurts to check the fan and the gpu temp.

PapaSmurf · 2010-09-25T14:32:02.000Z

I thought you can’t raze capitals?

Dave_Markell · 2010-09-25T15:03:46.000Z

PapaSmurf:

I thought you can’t raze capitals?

You can’t raze anyone’s original capital. However, if they’ve lost it to someone else, one of their other cities becomes the new capital, and you can raze that one.

steve · 2010-09-25T15:14:16.000Z

Dave Markell:

You can’t raze anyone’s original capital. However, if they’ve lost it to someone else, one of their other cities becomes the new capital, and you can raze that one.

I can’t remember if this was in Civilization IV, but last night I was pleasantly surprised that I could liberate civilizations and city states when I re-took their cities. Welcome back, Kuala Lampour.

This all probably in the manual, but it’s more fun to discover it in the game. (I think they may have been puppet cities instead of annexed ones.)

Teiman · 2010-09-25T15:19:48.000Z

Gus_Smedstad:

Thanks, that worked. Behold the geometry strangeness.

The symptoms are different every time I load this save game, but they always show rather rapidly.

Hello degenerated triangles.

Maybe your card is overheating. A possible solution is raise the fan speed. I do that with mine with a program called EVGA Precision.

Gus_Smedstad1 · 2010-09-25T16:07:08.000Z

Since it seems specific to the save file, and not just a symptom of playing the game for a long time, I doubt it’s card temperature.

EDIT: Or maybe it is. I got about 6 responses on the Steam Civ V forum saying it was a GPU overheating problem, that the 3 images I posted were typical of GPU failure.

jpinard · 2010-09-25T16:12:43.000Z

Gus_Smedstad:

Since it seems specific to the save file, and not just a symptom of playing the game for a long time, I doubt it’s card temperature.

Gus, it’s an “artifact” from the savegame file, maybe DX-related. I had the exact same thing happen in Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. Game would be fine, until I’d save with the artifact, then it wouldn’t go away. It made no sense, but was just a giant long dark grey triangle. But it wouldn’t show up until I started scrolling the screen.

BTW - I’ve had all purple diplomacy screens so there’s probably just some code or DX-tweaking that needs to be done. Can you go back to an autosave?