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[Blizzard]

It's also unfortunate since if people were easily able to make a non-Steam cracked version, that might scare publishers away from using Steam at all, I guess? I dunno.

I have a question about taking screenshots. Is there any issue with DX10/11 mode and Fraps? For some reason, the Fraps FPS overlay doesn't even show up, and the screenshot hotkey doesn't seem to work.

 

[owlbeak]

Pretty lame tutorials in Civ 5. As a new player I only looked at them for a few minutes before deciding to learn on my own. Luckily the advisors do a competent job of directing you.

This is the first Civ game I've ever played (played Civ3 for maybe 20 minutes), and I jumped right in with no tutorial. I agree, I think the advisers do a great job of letting you know what you should do, why you should do it, and how it works. I picked it up fairly easily. I struggled for a little bit, but figured out how it all works. I didn't figure out production and how it worked until LAAAATEEEE in the game, but still managed to win with a Space Victory in 2076.

Lots of things I still need to figure out, but I'll get it in time. Also, the Civilopedia is fucking AWESOME. Every game needs that. An in-game help guide similar to a Wikipedia page. Brilliant.

 

[Shalashaska]

You know you have too much Civilization on your mind when literally your first thought upon waking up this morning was "city-state."

My dreams have involved hex moving and countries. I probably shouldn't play right up until bedtime. I still remember all the Tetris shape dreams I had a couple years ago when I was playing Tetris DS all the time.

 

[Spl1nter]

The advisors are solid but it's the UI more than anything that's helpful - everything is nicely highlighted and well-explained. Even as a newer player you should always have an idea of something effective to be doing on a typical turn, even if it's not the optimum thing.

Yet the UI is horrible for many veteran players...

At least certain aspects of the UI

 

[firehawk12]

I'm playing as Alexander on Prince and so far it's piss easy. I rushed Stonehenge, reserved all my culture for Patronage once unlocked and then befriended a Maritime City-State. From there on I had zero need for farms so it all went into production and gold which allowed me to pump out wonder after wonder and befriend more City-States.

Is there a way to skip adopting a policy? It seems like you're forced to pick one whenever you have enough culture points.

Speaking of culture, I kind of miss the Civ 4 way of just slowly taking over other countries.

 

[Danneee]

I really shouldn't have but I ordered a copy just now. I have kind of a big back log but remembering all those late nights with Civ 1 and really liking the demo pushed me over the edge.

 

[epmode]

Is there a way to skip adopting a policy? It seems like you're forced to pick one whenever you have enough culture points.

Right-click the reminder icon in the lower right when it appears. The mouseover tooltip also mentions this.

 

[Sblargh]

The UI is awesome, but it is a bit puzzling why they didn't add a luxuries icon or at least some way to tell how much extra of a luxury resource you have on the happiness pop-up
"5 from incense (2 spares)"
Or even a "resources" screen that details where it all comes from. It keeps with the "little numbers up-front, HOLYSHITDATA at the back" that pleases newcomers and veterans alike.

But aside from that, the fact that I play entire games almost never leaving the main screen is a testament of how good this UI is. People modded the hell out of Civ 4 to prevent them from entering screens just to check little things and this UI does it perfectly.

 

[Sober]

Yet the UI is horrible for many veteran players...

At least certain aspects of the UI

Honestly the only thing that really ticks me off is the production queue has to be enabled everytime you load the game it seems, to let you even have a queue. Also, is there a place that lists your luxury resource count, or is that all just summed up in the happiness pop-up, because it would help not having to go to a leader to initiate a trade to see how much of something I have.

Also no Civilopedia from the main menu so I just have a save on a duel map with 0 cite states if I want to get some reading done :lol.

 

[firehawk12]

Right-click the reminder icon in the lower right when it appears. The mouseover tooltip also mentions this.

Yeah, I tried that but the next turn button is still replaced with "Adopt Policy". I just assumed that it forces you to pick before letting you continue in order to prevent you from clearing out one of the later game trees easily...

 

[Mobius 1]

Now I started playing on Prince and I'm getting my Roman arse kicked before reaching the Renaissance.

 

[epmode]

Yeah, I tried that but the next turn button is still replaced with "Adopt Policy". I just assumed that it forces you to pick before letting you continue in order to prevent you from clearing out one of the later game trees easily...

If you still see the "Adopt Policy" text, it either didn't work (bugged?) or you didn't close the right notification.

I get the prompt whenever I load a savegame and I'm able to close it each time.

 

[Blizzard]

When you select a worker for the first time, little farm icons pop up to show you what you can use the worker to do. Now when I select the worker, I don't get any icons. Is that a first-time-only hint, or is there some way to have those icons displayed? It would be nice if I didn't have to remember which worker options are available for each square, or waste a worker move to see what it can do.

 

[epmode]

When you select a worker for the first time, little farm icons pop up to show you what you can use the worker to do. Now when I select the worker, I don't get any icons. Is that a first-time-only hint, or is there some way to have those icons displayed? It would be nice if I didn't have to remember which worker options are available for each square, or waste a worker move to see what it can do.

Those icons are recommendations. I'm not entirely sure what makes them come up but they tend to stop appearing as the game goes on. They're less frequent, in any case.

I just mouseover a tile to see if there are any improvements in place before I move there. You could also just use the automate worker feature.

 

[Spl1nter]

Now I started playing on Prince and I'm getting my Roman arse kicked before reaching the Renaissance.

Late Medieval tech is extremely powerful. Longswordmen are scary dangerous.

 

[f0rk]

It's also unfortunate since if people were easily able to make a non-Steam cracked version, that might scare publishers away from using Steam at all, I guess? I dunno.

There are 70,000 people playing on Steam right now. If a game is going to scare people away from Steam, this isn't it.

 

[Zeliard]

Do you guys generally go with any puppet cities or eventually annex them all?

 

[Blizzard]

There are 70,000 people playing on Steam right now. If a game is going to scare people away from Steam, this isn't it.

Maybe all those 70,000 people are playing CRACKED COPIES :O

Spoiler

I'm kidding. I hope the pirated versions are not numerous though. I also hope this game is patched to fix some of the issues people have with it, and is not super heavy on paid DLC, and then it may become an amazing game instead of just a quite good game.

 

[gillty]

I remember MW2's multiplayer was also cracked day1 (steamworks) but was shortly fixed within a week or two I believe. Also I believe these steamworks cracked players don't count towards player counts because they wouldn't produce an actual unique steam id.

 

[Zzoram]

It's also unfortunate since if people were easily able to make a non-Steam cracked version, that might scare publishers away from using Steam at all, I guess? I dunno.

I have a question about taking screenshots. Is there any issue with DX10/11 mode and Fraps? For some reason, the Fraps FPS overlay doesn't even show up, and the screenshot hotkey doesn't seem to work.

Nobody uses Steam to stop cracked versions. They use Steam to stop cracked versions from coming out before the game goes on sale (since critical files need to be downloaded along with activation to make the game playable) and for the free value-added features like Steam Cloud, auto-patching, integrated friends list and Steam Overlay. Using Steamworks costs nothing, using SecuROM means paying Sony a royalty fee.

 

[Palmer_v1]

So annoyed right now. I've been playing the game since it released with no problems, but today, I can't get it play. I get all the way up to hitting the "Begin the Journey" button, and it pops to the map where i can see my settler and warrior, but it's frozen and I can't interact with anything.

I've tried the normal troubleshooting stuff, i.e. rebooting, updating drivers(were already updated, but checked anyway), but it still does it. I even tried dx9 version and had the same thing happen.

My next step is reinstalling the game, I guess.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Hey folks, hopefully someone can offer some recommendations. I just installed Civ5 and tried running it via DirectX9. The game loads but the screen is just black. I thought it was a refresh rate issue but I cannot hear anything so I'm assuming that although the game loaded it isn't actually playing. I checked the Steam forums but there is no information about this particular issue, just people receiving black screens which include errors. I do get the Not Responding message in the task manager. Any ideas?

 

[Zeliard]

Hey folks, hopefully someone can offer some recommendations. I just installed Civ5 and tried running it via DirectX9. The game loads but the screen is just black. I thought it was a refresh rate issue but I cannot hear anything so I'm assuming that although the game loaded it isn't actually playing. I checked the Steam forums but there is no information about this particular issue, just people receiving black screens which include errors. Any ideas?

Go into your documents/my games/sid meier's civ 5 folder, or equivalent, into usersettings.ini and change SkipIntroVideo to 1.

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Go into your documents/my games/sid meier's civ 5 folder, or equivalent, into usersettings.ini and change SkipIntroVideo to 1.

Already tried that.

 

[Zeliard]

Already tried that.

Check to see if you have a software firewall blocking it?

 

[ClovingWestbrook]

Check to see if you have a software firewall blocking it?

Nope. Don't have any.

 

[Zzoram]

So annoyed right now. I've been playing the game since it released with no problems, but today, I can't get it play. I get all the way up to hitting the "Begin the Journey" button, and it pops to the map where i can see my settler and warrior, but it's frozen and I can't interact with anything.

I've tried the normal troubleshooting stuff, i.e. rebooting, updating drivers(were already updated, but checked anyway), but it still does it. I even tried dx9 version and had the same thing happen.

My next step is reinstalling the game, I guess.

Verify the integrity of game files through Steam first. If anything got corrupted somehow, it'll download replacements for those files so you don't have to reinstall to fix it. That *might* solve your problem.

 

[owlbeak]

So annoyed right now. I've been playing the game since it released with no problems, but today, I can't get it play. I get all the way up to hitting the "Begin the Journey" button, and it pops to the map where i can see my settler and warrior, but it's frozen and I can't interact with anything.

I've tried the normal troubleshooting stuff, i.e. rebooting, updating drivers(were already updated, but checked anyway), but it still does it. I even tried dx9 version and had the same thing happen.

My next step is reinstalling the game, I guess.

Mine does this sometimes, I just have to wait a few minutes and then it's okay. Seems like sometimes upon initial map loading it will "freeze" while it loads textures. Go get a beer and eat a sammich and then come back. Usually it's okay after a few minutes.

Then again, I also get random lock-ups every now and then which require a CTRL+ALT+DEL.

 

[Facism]

am i missing something about harbours and trade routes?

I've got a harbour in my capital, and i also have harbours with the cities on the other continent, yet the game doesn't register them as have a trade route with the capital.

Knowing Civ, there's probably some really small obvious thing i'm missing :lol

 

[Archie]

Am I a bad person for gifting one of my cities to a rival civ and subsequently nuking it so I can get an achievement?

 

[Zzoram]

Am I a bad person for gifting one of my cities to a rival civ and subsequently nuking it so I can get an achievement?

Nope, it's all good.

Some people sell a city then immediately reconquer it, that's probably dirtier.

 

[Archie]

Also, the vast majority of my uranium is right outside Moscow. I found that amusing.

 

[Zeliard]

Nope, it's all good.

Some people sell a city then immediately reconquer it, that's probably dirtier.

I'm a pretty petty leader when playing Civ. I take umbrage at the slightest thing. Oh, Edinburgh, you didn't like the fact that I conquered Singapore? We're no longer allies, asshole? Time to annex you.

 

[devilchicken]

Played my first ever Civ game last night. I thought I was doing alright until Japan decided to jump me and destroy my 2 cities quite easily. Probably didnt help that it was already 4.30am at the time. Giving it another go now, any tips on when to start a 2nd city? Or does it all depend on what winning strat am i going for?

 

[Lostconfused]

Well I am screwed for the next few turns. Was playing on the standard sized map, which ended up being really claustrophobic and crammed America right next to me. So long story short I ended up taking all the American cities for my own. Which apparently was a really bad idea because now my Civ hit extreme levels of unhappiness and it seems like its going to take a while to recover from it. Guess next time I'll just burn everything to the ground.

 

[BentMyWookiee]

I'm attempting to get a Diplomatic Victory but I'm slightly confused. I already built the United Nations. I have 7 votes (which is the total amount of votes needed out of 8). I thought that victory would've happened since I have the United Nations and the victory progress screen says that I have the number of votes needed. But the game is still going. Do I need to do something else?

Sorry, this is my first Civilization game so I'm still pretty much a noob.

 

[zoku88]

I'm attempting to get a Diplomatic Victory but I'm slightly confused. I already built the United Nations. I have 7 votes (which is the total amount of votes needed out of 8). I thought that victory would've happened since I have the United Nations and the victory progress screen says that I have the number of votes needed. But the game is still going. Do I need to do something else?

Sorry, this is my first Civilization game so I'm still pretty much a noob.

You need to wait for a vote to actually happen.

 

[BentMyWookiee]

You need to wait for a vote to actually happen.

Ah ok, thanks! I'll just keep doing next turn until it happens then.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Ah ok, thanks! I'll just keep doing next turn until it happens then.

It should tell you at the top where the diplomacy button is. It'll say X turns until next vote, or something similar.

 

[firehawk12]

If you still see the "Adopt Policy" text, it either didn't work (bugged?) or you didn't close the right notification.

I get the prompt whenever I load a savegame and I'm able to close it each time.

Hrm, tried it again and it worked. Strange that I couldn't do it before.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Does anyone know why a Great Engineer has the hurry production icon sometimes greyed out? What is the deal?

Edit: Nevermind, have to have 1 turn of production before using him.

 

[Palmer_v1]

Does anyone know why a Great Engineer has the hurry production icon sometimes greyed out? What is the deal?

They can only rush certain things. For example, you can't rush any projects like Space Ship parts, the cultural win building, etc.

 

[Blizzard]

Speaking of great engineers, I see I'm making progress towards a great engineer, and the encyclopedia talks about staffing specialists, but how do you staff specialists/encourage quicker great person developments manually? I see there is the automatic option to focus on great people, but I would like to know how it works.

*edit* I now see how to staff specialists in the city screen for my other city, but it's weird that the great person progress for the capital seemed to already exist without specialists staffed. Are there other factors that contribute to the progress?

 

[Griffin]

Played my first ever Civ game last night. I thought I was doing alright until Japan decided to jump me and destroy my 2 cities quite easily. Probably didnt help that it was already 4.30am at the time. Giving it another go now, any tips on when to start a 2nd city? Or does it all depend on what winning strat am i going for?

Try keeping your borders away from theirs. Rising border tension will more likely start a war. Have 2 units around your city and you should be able to defend them (also keep your units away from their borders).

But the AI is a joke and should be patched asap.

When to start the next city?, when you have a decent gold/hapiness/food income.

Hrm, tried it again and it worked. Strange that I couldn't do it before.

Yeah, I think the next turn button is sometimes lagging or bugged. I actualy had to save and reload the game because I couldn't continue.

 

[Kuro Madoushi]

I'm attempting to get a Diplomatic Victory but I'm slightly confused. I already built the United Nations. I have 7 votes (which is the total amount of votes needed out of 8). I thought that victory would've happened since I have the United Nations and the victory progress screen says that I have the number of votes needed. But the game is still going. Do I need to do something else?

Sorry, this is my first Civilization game so I'm still pretty much a noob.

Also bribe any city states if there are any left.

 

[Spl1nter]

Diplomacy is fucking pissing me off. I liberate the Chinese after they were completely destroyed by the Greeks. For some reason the Chinese are hostile towards me when i am gifting them back there cities and destroying the person who destroyed them. Diplomacy in this game makes no sense what so ever.

Really WTF.

 

[Zeliard]

Diplomacy is fucking pissing me off. I liberate the Chinese after they were completely destroyed by the Greeks. For some reason the Chinese are hostile towards me when i am gifting them back there cities and destroying the person who destroyed them. Diplomacy in this game makes no sense what so ever.

Really WTF.

Did you attack a city-state the Chinese were friendly with?

 

[Palmer_v1]

Speaking of great engineers, I see I'm making progress towards a great engineer, and the encyclopedia talks about staffing specialists, but how do you staff specialists/encourage quicker great person developments manually? I see there is the automatic option to focus on great people, but I would like to know how it works.

*edit* I now see how to staff specialists in the city screen for my other city, but it's weird that the great person progress for the capital seemed to already exist without specialists staffed. Are there other factors that contribute to the progress?

Certain buildings allow you to set specialists, which contribute to great people in addition to other stuff. For example, a workshop lets you set one engineer specialist. The reason some cities get Great People points without specialists is probably because you built a wonder that does it for you.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I just might buy this whenever there is a sale. or full price. the demo really sucked me in

 

[Spl1nter]

Did you attack a city-state the Chinese were friendly with?

No. I literally declared war against the Greeks, liberated China and in the peace treaty received around 8 cities from the Greeks. I even liberated a city state they had taken.

Also the puppet states AI building logic is completely retarded. Going for a cultural victory with 2 cities and 15+ puppet states. Money per turn is shit because they dont know what to build. Luckly I had a lot of saved from money from Golden Ages. Funny that I can get a cultural victory with complete war mongering.

The good news is that the German unique ability is awesome. Only ever built a single archer in the early game as the rest of my units I got from Barbarian camps and I just upgraded them as time progressed. Had strong enough army in the early game to completely eliminate Monty and Gandhi. All from Barbarian camps lol.