Anyone Else Geeking for Civ Five?

[AR_Six]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics

I must admit though, I know nothing of video cards. Should I get a new one?
Yes, this card is relatively suckish compared to the rest of your system and you're running this on a goddamn 37 inch tv. I run a 28" monitor and a 5700 series is underpowered for it. I suggest stepping up to a 5850, if not now, perhaps when the price drops (I would expect around Christmas).

 

[FLMountainMan]

Originally Posted by AR_Six

Yes, this card is relatively suckish compared to the rest of your system and you're running this on a goddamn 37 inch tv. I run a 28" monitor and a 5700 series is underpowered for it. I suggest stepping up to a 5850, if not now, perhaps when the price drops (I would expect around Christmas).

Are these cards easy to install myself? And how does the size of the display affect it? Sorry to be so ignorant, but this is an area I'm really Amish in.

 

[sleekblackroadster]

display size means nothing unless the resolution is higher on said larger screen.

hdtvs and most new monitors are 16:9 1920x1080 resolution but on a large monitor like a 28 or 30 inch they may go higher with the resolution.

of course you don't HAVE to run the game at the highest resolution your screen will support.

if i were you i would keep your 5750 for now and wait until at least the new 67xx series are here and probably go with 6770 of if you can wait a bit longer and want a beastly card the 6850 should be out shortly after.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/09/27/a...e-nvidia-caus/

if you must have one now then the 5850 could be a good choice.

they are easy swaps considering you have:

A. enough room inside the case.. the more powerful cards get bigger and longer.

B. enough amps on the +12v rail on your power supply to power the card and correspondingly enough and the right kind of connectors needed by the card.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Are these cards easy to install myself? And how does the size of the display affect it? Sorry to be so ignorant, but this is an area I'm really Amish in.

display size beyond a certain point is meaningless if it's actually a TV. as someone else said, it's just 1920x1080, regardless if it's 32" or 60". Monitors beyond 27" (most commonly) increase the resolution as with the size. You need a REALLY beefy graphics card to push a 30" monitor on games running 3d graphics because the resolution is something like 2560x1800 or something, especially for the top FPS games. For plain old HD resolution, you don't need anything that special to run something like Civ5.

I'd see how it runs on your current card before bothering with an upgrade unless you also want to play other more demanding games.

 

[Don Carlos]

Originally Posted by FLMountainMan

Total War: Medieval 2 is pretty incredible as well, especially for history buffs. Can't wait until they remake that.

Great game, but I still prefer Rome: Total War for one reason only: being able to choose faction heirs. That one little detail really made the game incredible for me. I don't know why, but it just did. I was pissed when they removed that feature from MTW2. No idea why they did so.

 

[Bhowie]

I've downloaded it and am not real impressed so far.

This city states are ******* annoying.

Anyone interested in a multiplayer game? Seems like it would take a long time to complete one but it could be fun.

 

[FLMountainMan]

Originally Posted by Bhowie

I've downloaded it and am not real impressed so far.

This city states are ******* annoying.

Anyone interested in a multiplayer game? Seems like it would take a long time to complete one but it could be fun.

We don't need to worry about that, it'll crash before anything is ever finished.

 

[dibadiba]

Really enjoying this game. I have to run every setting on minimum since my computer isn't great now, but the game is still great. feels nice to set up catapults on a hill and decimate their smaller cities and watch them send me ****** diplomacy requests!

 

[Meis]

Started playing it the other day... -No problems (knock on wood) with the game freezing up or slowing down. -as someone else already said the build time for some things is ridiculous... even in a decent sized city some units take an eternity. -Maybe even worse than the above^ it takes forever for improvements to be built... 20turns to build a farm? wtf -What's with the buying production? You can only buy as a whole, and not to finish something you're already most of the way done on. -Like the new combat system, adds some more strategy -Lot less of a land-grab situation. I used to always build cities like crazy, placing cities so that they blocked off a huge chunk of the map that I'd fill in later. Now even when you're almost near the year 0 the vast majority of map will still be up for grabs...

Originally Posted by Arrogant Bastard

Great game, but I still prefer Rome: Total War for one reason only: being able to choose faction heirs. That one little detail really made the game incredible for me. I don't know why, but it just did. I was pissed when they removed that feature from MTW2. No idea why they did so.
Me too. Forgot Medieval war 2 didn't have this when I went back to play it recently...pissed me off. I like being able to build up someone and place them as a heir... instead of being stuck with my shittiest guy being next in line to be leader.

 

[Don Carlos]

Originally Posted by Meis

Me too. Forgot Medieval war 2 didn't have this when I went back to play it recently...pissed me off. I like being able to build up someone and place them as a heir... instead of being stuck with my shittiest guy being next in line to be leader.

I was always hoping they'd take it one step further and actually make succession matter. As in, if you replace a popular general as heir with some schmuck from outside the immediate family, a civil war might break out over succession within your faction. That would be so cool. I could reenact Gladiator, too.

 

[furo]

Originally Posted by kwilkinson

If you liked Civ, did you ever play COLONIZATION?
That one was awesome.

**** yeah I played Colonization. I played that back in the day, and it was the ****.

I tried reloading it a couple of years ago but couldn't find a platform friendly version.

"Your dragoons have been Routed!!"

Originally Posted by holymadness

EDIT -- thought I'd post my specs for those interested:

dual core 2.4ghz processor
3gb ram
Nvidia geforce 8600m GT 256mb (laptop)
running win7 64-bit

This computer is about 2.5 years old.

A 2.5yr-old laptop isn't going to cut it for a new game like Civ 5, even if you were running a top of the line Alienware or something similar. I wouldn't try to play this game on any laptop. Based on the comments, it sounds like an overclocked quad core processor running wicked amounts of video ram is a must-have for smooth game play.

 

[Pennglock]

OK, I'll out myself as a nerd here...

Downloaded and played over the weekend, more hours than I care to admit. I never really played previous incarnations of the Civ series, but after this I have to wonder what's all the fuss about?

My biggest beef is with the AI. Has strategy-game AI programming made absolutely no progress in the last 10 years? Civ 5 AI is subject to the same category of pitfalls that games like Age of Empires used to be.

It cannot wrap its mind around the movement of combate units. In any skrimish I was able to take far less damage than I would have from a thinking human due to tricky troop movements. I read that older Civ games allowed you to stack many units on a tile, making combat more of a numbers game. They probably should have stuck with this system since they are incapable creating good AI. I scored early victories on some of the harder difficulty settings by raiding with horses. At the hardest settings I couldn't win because it appears the AI just straight-up cheats by spamming units. F***ers.

This wouldn't bug me if there were good multiplayer... but my attempts at this were a bust. 4 out of 5 games crashed. And the ones that worked had horrendous lag-time. Also, you can't see your movement/combat animations in multiplayer mode, so Id spend have my time trying to figure out what the hell just happened.


Since combat wasn't really doing it for me, I tried a few games to establish cultural and scientific dominance. Maybe someone more familier with the series can chime in, but I couldn't find any depth here. The technology tree is just...linear. There is no way to build different 'types' of civilizations, because everyone is forced to work through the same upgrades.


I doubt I'll play again unless I hear multiplayer starts thriving.

 

[holymadness]

Good review.

 

[Don Carlos]

Originally Posted by Pennglock

Has strategy-game AI programming made absolutely no progress in the last 10 years?

Not really, no. It's been a huge beef of mine, as well. Seems that 4X and strategy developers have been pumping all of their money into graphics and sound, with much less attention paid to gameplay. Stardock is still making some very fun and innovative strategy games, but even their AI is nothing like what gaming AI really should have been by now.

I mean, Christ, we've had computers capable of beating chess grandmasters for 15 years now. You'd think we could build strategy game AI capable of beating humans without the need for artificial cheats, like reduced building costs or total map visibility. And yet, that's what we've got. AI doesn't actually get any smarter beyond the midway difficulty notch of most games these days. Ratcheting up the difficulty level just gives some resource advantages to the AI player, rather than giving the AI player a better brain.

EDIT: For what it's worth, the reviews posted on this thread so far have prevented me from buying Civ5. I'll stick with Civ4 until things get fixed or modded. Not liking the sound of the new combat system, and not liking the dumbed down elements.

 

[FLMountainMan]

This game really does suck.

Last night, played on a pangea map. Sent out a scout first thing to explore ancient ruins. Through some statistical fluke, I hit five or six "your unit has found weapons in the ruins and been upgraded" thingees, so that by around 3,000 BC, I was wandering around the board with an infantryman. Decided to screw around and conquered every other civilization with just that one unit. Won the game by 2200 BC. Ridiculous.

This game is easily reminiscent of Total War: Empire. It was released unfinished, with a shitload of bugs, and probably killed off the franchise.