5641

I see this is on sale now at Gamersgate for $16.98. I had it good to go on Paypal and then thought ‘wait, I need some sort of consensus on this one’. I know at the beginning there were some grumblings about the state of the game. Have those things been cleared up finally? I’m sort of on a 4X kick thanks to the SMAC thread. I’m loving that one and I wonder if Civ 5 can ever live up to it.

5642

Aside from the obvious issues, the frustrating part about Civ V is the lack of economic diversity; most Civs have the same basic gameplan in every geographic area because most Civs lack an economic bonus, and the bonuses they do sometimes get, are often kinds that don’t lend themselves to diverse strategies (ie, you get a bonus on something you’re going to do anyway). This kind of sucks a lot of the fun out of all the precise early game planning in Civ IV. For ex., if you get a Civ that receives a pillaging bonus when attacking barbarians, you’re either completely at the whim of luck whether you find barbs, or you set the map to high barbs and “cheat” a bit. There’s none of the incredible diversity from the interplay of the bonuses in Civ IV. Add to it that Civ V actually reduces the value of tile bonuses, and reduces tile bonuses to all be the same.

OTOH, Civ V is pretty, and does have some appeal. If you’re more a casual Civ player, you’ll enjoy it at least a few times through. If you’re a hardcore specialist micromanaging Civ player, you’ll probably hate it with the passion of burning suns, ect.

5643

What kind of game do you want? If you want something with the depth of Civ4, you’re not going to find it here. If you want a Civ-flavored wargame thing (and please don’t think about playing MP unless it’s just with one other person or so, it’s unstable and barely supported) then there’s far worse things to drop $16.98 on. It’s definitely worth it at that price point, but it’s not a great strategy game. Not terrible, just not great.

5644

There’s a good podcast at flashofsteel.com if you want to hear a discussion of the game shortly after it came out. There’s also a link in the bargain thread for gamersgate uk that has the game for $11.

Kal

5645

Some time in the two months since I last played Civ 5 they did an update. Now the game crashes once I choose my civ and try and start the game. Drivers are updated and nothing else has changed on my PC.

Great job Firaxis.

5646

Apparently the game is only 12 bucks on Steam right now. At first I was like “well at that price…”

And then I came to my senses.

5647

This strikes me as the wrong thread for you… people in this thread enjoy strategy games. :)

5648

Exactly my point good sir!

5649

It’s possible I walked right into that one.

5650

You don’t use any mods, do you? (nice snark, you other two ;)

5651

Nope.

The Steam forums have a bunch of potential fixes that seem to relate to turning off the opening movie or turning off Dx10/11, but I’m not motivated enough to screw around with that yet.

5652

If you can get to the point that you’re in the menu and getting ready to start a game, it has nothing to do with the movie. It could be a DX issue, although I doubt it. Likely just a corrupted download. I’d kill it and redownload, personally - that’s just a weird spot to die to make much sense to be anything else (which of course means that it likely is, and I just suggested wasting a couple hours of your life waiting for a pointless download to complete).

5653

Maybe try verifying integrity of the game cache first.
Kal

5654

Good idea - I’d thought that only worked with Valve games, but now I recall learning otherwise in the past.

5655

I did have trouble loading old games with this new save in Aug.

5656

My brother saw Civ5 was 12 bucks and gifted it to me on Steam. He then called and left a voicemail of the troll song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ounTVG6paBM&feature=related) that went on for half an hour because he knows that I think it’s junk.

I am impressed by his dedication to trolling.

5657

I tried that and while it said there was a file to be fixed, and fixed it, the problem still remains.

Specifically what happens is that the game crashes while attempting to load while the civ specific narration is playing. I say attempting because the animation below the text doesn’t ever indicate any actual loading is happening.

Edit: Or maybe file integrity didn’t work. I’ve run it again a few times and it always does the same thing, saying there is one file to reacquired, then a tiny bit of Steam download activity, then a message saying Steam has finished with the download. So maybe a delete local files and redownload will be required.

5658

Well I’m about to try playing it for the first time on my xp machine. See what happens!

5659

Says the guys who cant stop telling people in a Civ 5 thread how much he hates it.

5660

Anyone have experience with either of the two Civ 5 total conversions?

Civ5 Nights: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/09/09/mods-and-ends-civilization-v-nights/#more-73124

I said earlier that I loved policies. Now I adore them. There are seven branches now and over a 100 policies to choose from. Although you have to start from the bottom of each branch, they’re all open and picking one will never lock off another. This means a civilisation can change more dramatically over time, adapting to its new place as the political situation evolves. Crucially, players don’t need to decide which victory type they’re aiming for quite so early on in proceedings.

In the mod, citizens actually generate happiness. Expansion and militarisation take it away again. It changes the balance of the game to the extent that you’ll have to relearn a lot of things but it’s all implemented so well, with much much more than I’ve described going on both above and beneath the hood, that the learning process feels natural. At first it’s not quite clear how much has changed but almost everything has.

Vanilla Enhanced: http://civmodding.wordpress.com/

Looks like less of a fundamental shift, but nearly everything is tweaked a bit.