Anyone try Civ 5?

[LeftEyeNine]

I got G&K. For reference: I like 5 despite recognising some fairly major flaws with it, mainly the poor AI. It's ... catchy in a way prior entries in the series never quite were. I do love the hex map, and the one unit per tile. I like Civ 4 as well - but not the Beyond the Sword expansion. I play vanilla or Warlords when I play 4. I loathe 4's version of espionage, and those tedious corporations. I was never quite fond of the way it handled religion either.

I had some tech problems with G&K until they released the first patch. I couldn't play on any of the map sizes above 'duel' without random crashes, so my experience with the new systems is limited. It's hard to spy on people or use religion effectively when there's only 1 AI on the map! I do appreciate the new civs; some of their unique abilities are quite novel and it's always good to have more faces to play against. The plentiful minor tweaks here and there smooth out the play experience; UI tweaks, AI tweaks, tech tree tweaks, a couple of nice new wonders, new tile resources, having the Ai approach you to renew trade deals - all of those tiny details add up to make play slightly more engaging than previously. Now that the game will play larger maps without crashing, I'm starting to play more seriously. So far, I think that religion seems fine, if light, and espionage will be turned off in the vast majority of my games as it adds little but irritation. I am still undecided about the new city state system. On the one hand, it's a bit more in-depth than spamming gold to win favour, on the other it relies a bit too heavily on random missions and AI spy spam.

AI is not super-improved but it is a bit better, although strangely hit and miss. In some games it will play quite well, in others it makes idiotic mistakes in exactly the same areas where it performed decently before. For example, sometimes it guards its embarked units with proper naval ships and makes it difficult to intercept the invasion force. Other time sit sails blissfully along without a single guard. Diplomacy is likewise improved yet variable. Sometimes things work out sensibly and perpetual peace is possible, others everyone seems to be very aggressive and/or unpredictable.

I did have significant issues with the new performance boost option they introduced in the 1.6 patch which came out shortly before G&K; that was easily fixed by turning an option off in the game's .ini. Essentially, the developers force the game to use a single core now. With my i7 CPU, turn cycle times increased fivefold. With this option disabled the game still cycles turns a bit slower but it's bearable.

I suppose the telling thing is that previously I used to play 3-5 games in a weekend then not touch it for months. I've played a game or three each weekend since G&K's release, and am planning to play again this weekend if I can find time. I'd say that G&K is more worthwhile for the new civs and small details than it is for the two major new features. I got G&K for a little over half price thanks to amazon.uk, and for that kind of price I'm happy now that it works properly. I wouldn't recommend it to others at full price. If you can find it similarly discounted, and if you like 5 to begin with, then it's possibly something you want to pick up. If you do not like 5 already you will not find anything in G&K to change your mind.

My lady ?

[frogbeastegg]

I couldn't find any posts containing the fix instructions when I wrote mine, then I had to leave the PC for a while. Back now, managed to find the quote.

Hey everyone,

As you may have seen in other threads, the guys at Firaxis have a suggestion for the people who have been experiencing issues with the latest patch (early game crashes as well as slow turns).

Please follow these directions and see if it helps out on your machine, and report here to let us know!

1. Open up your config.ini (My Documents/My Games/Sid Meier's Civilization V/)
2. Look for the following line: EnableGameCoreThreading = 1
3. Change it to: EnableGameCoreThreading = 0

When that setting is on (default) multicore PCs will only use a single core. Some people find that leaving the setting on improves performance, many seem to find it makes no difference, and others find that it absolutely murders performance. My i7 2600k was taking longer to process the very first turn of a brand new game than it used to do to process a late-game turn with a very large, busy map. Some people also find that the setting affects game stability; I didn't find it made any difference.

This change rolled out as part of the most recent standard Civ 5 patch. All game owners will have it whether they own G&K or not.