March Patch Notes (formerly february)

[cccv]

My wrist watch doesn't interfere with Monitor rendering or resolutions... just play in windowed mode, half transparent taskbar and stare at the damn bottom-right clock & hover above it to be reminded what day it is.

Yeah, with all of the people clamoring for the clock on this site it makes me realize I must be an anomaly in the fact that I 1-- play in windowed mode, and 2-- wear a watch. Not that those people are wrong for doing things differently, it's just a bit jarring to realize that owning a watch makes me a dinosaur

 

[Arksa]

What's with the darn clock discussion you press Shift + Tab and you get your clock, access to friends and screenshots and what not.

 

[JJOne]

Ï've started with great hopes my second huge map game after this patch. Crashes every 50 turns, which I could ignore, but when in modern age the game crashed every time when making the same action I simply gave up.

 

[Ddude97]

Its still nicer to be able to just glance and see it, but yes we could just use shift tab. Or we could start a thread on the 2K forums and start complaining
And again there is a simple mod

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Don't get too excited -- it's not your mods that are being ripped off.
These chances borrow heavily from Thalassicus' unofficial patch.

If the state of the game is bad and the modder approves, pulling material to make it good from a mod isn't sour at all. The lead designer on the project was originally a modder, and while a lot of his implementation of basic gameplay elements was pretty bad, the idea of using a good modder for input is not a bad one.

The problem here is that they didn't address the biggest issues yet. MP still functionally doesn't exist and the UI war human vs attempting to do something rages on.

 

[ChevalierdeJstn]

#1 "Significant turn time improvements"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...no really, not funny.

Also, "The check is in the mail," and "This won't hurt," and "Don't worry, I'll pull out."

Just completed a test game with the new patch. For me, if anything the turn times are Significantly Longer. I am also getting graphics-engine meltdowns (map terrain looks like a red checkerboard) which I did not see before.

With Civ I, Civ II, Civ IV, and Alpha Centauri, I used to stretch games out on purpose because they were so fun to play. Civ V continues to feel like an exercise in waiting for units to move, waiting for turns to end, waiting for the AI to move, waiting for menus to open...basically waiting for anything at all to happen. If I want an exercise in patience I will go shopping with my girlfriend, thank you very much.
In the meantime, I will go back to not playing Civ 5 until, maybe someday, Firaxis actually completes work on the game they should have released in the first place. I don't even care about the numerous gameplay flaws, which continue to be "nerfed" and patched-over rather than actually Fixed. As it stands these don't matter, as the basic mechanics of this game ARE BROKEN.

 

[Ekmek]

#1 "Significant turn time improvements"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...no really, not funny.

Also, "The check is in the mail," and "This won't hurt," and "Don't worry, I'll pull out."

Just completed a test game with the new patch. For me, if anything the turn times are Significantly Longer. I am also getting graphics-engine meltdowns (map terrain looks like a red checkerboard) which I did not see before.

With Civ I, Civ II, Civ IV, and Alpha Centauri, I used to stretch games out on purpose because they were so fun to play. Civ V continues to feel like an exercise in waiting for units to move, waiting for turns to end, waiting for the AI to move, waiting for menus to open...basically waiting for anything at all to happen. If I want an exercise in patience I will go shopping with my girlfriend, thank you very much.
In the meantime, I will go back to not playing Civ 5 until, maybe someday, Firaxis actually completes work on the game they should have released in the first place. I don't even care about the numerous gameplay flaws, which continue to be "nerfed" and patched-over rather than actually Fixed. As it stands these don't matter, as the basic mechanics of this game ARE BROKEN.

that hasnt been my experience what specs are you running?

 

[greggbert]

I'm experiencing very quick turn times. Huge Improvement for me. These textures require a fast HDD but other than that I have fantastic performance.

 

[Mark the Bold]

I'm experiencing very quick turn times. Huge Improvement for me. These textures require a fast HDD but other than that I have fantastic performance.

Agreed. Damn near instantaneous for me even in late game.... (I have an SSD).

 

[Shaka II]

My wrist watch doesn't interfere with Monitor rendering or resolutions... just play in windowed mode, half transparent taskbar and stare at the damn bottom-right clock & hover above it to be reminded what day it is.

If you have to know what time or what day it is, then you're not experiencing total immersion.

 

[Mustakrakish]

If you have to know what time or what day it is, then you're not experiencing total immersion.

The last time I experienced such immersion was when I was playing TES: Oblivion back in 2006...

 

[cccv]

The turn times improved a lot for me too. I can finally play large maps on my lower-upper/upper-mid range machine without playing the harmonica between turns.

I am experiencing a new quirk, though. Sometimes when a unit moves or I click a button or whatever, the graphic won't "clear." Like, it'll still look like the button or unit is there even though it isn't. I can usually clear it by moving the map, but I've already managed to attack a unit that wasn't there because of this.

Overall though I'd say it's an improvement.

 

[Civsassin]

@ ChevalierdeJstn

That's not my experience either. I have a middle of the road system that runs just fine. My processor is dual core, not a high end one, but a good one. I have 4GB RAM, and I think that is the key. I wouldn't blame the game. Many folks are having good results. If you aren't, look no further than your hardware.

 

[JoeBas]

Guys, I'm running fine on a SINGLE CORE 2.0Ghz processor with 4GB of ram, not overclocked, and it runs fine. Much faster with the patch.

Like Civassassin said, the RAM's the thing.

 

[XeroK00L]

Liking the patch so far, especially the slower modern era. AND I can finally finish a game in huge map now. Although it still slows down a lot in the later half of the game, I can at least somewhat bear with it (just a minute or two of wait in between turns as opposed to 4 to 5 minutes or more). AI is still hopeless stupid and I can still easily defend a city with just a few artilleries and a rifleman against 20+ enemy units--they just kinda wander around not knowing what to do and allow my artilleries to finish them one by one!

My most requested feature would be play-by-email! Without it I can't play with my only CIV-crazed friend, who lives in a totally different timezone.

Or at least give the current multiplayer game an option to NOT allow players to play simultaneously. Right now it really sucks when in comes to combat, turning a turn-based strategy game into a real-time strategy mess.

 

[Laffinarsenal]

Ï've started with great hopes my second huge map game after this patch. Crashes every 50 turns, which I could ignore, but when in modern age the game crashed every time when making the same action I simply gave up.

I found this true as well, and then I changed my video settings to Low/Off and zoomed in completely and then it didn't crash very often. I was even able to finally finish a game. My third since September. The game only crashed after this when I went to look at a city and then as it would zoom out, it would crash. I offset this with a quick scroll zoom in whenever I opened a city screen. Hate to have to do this, but it worked well enough to finish the game.

 

[Drawmeus]

#1 "Significant turn time improvements"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...no really, not funny.

Also, "The check is in the mail," and "This won't hurt," and "Don't worry, I'll pull out."

Just completed a test game with the new patch. For me, if anything the turn times are Significantly Longer. I am also getting graphics-engine meltdowns (map terrain looks like a red checkerboard) which I did not see before.

With Civ I, Civ II, Civ IV, and Alpha Centauri, I used to stretch games out on purpose because they were so fun to play. Civ V continues to feel like an exercise in waiting for units to move, waiting for turns to end, waiting for the AI to move, waiting for menus to open...basically waiting for anything at all to happen. If I want an exercise in patience I will go shopping with my girlfriend, thank you very much.
In the meantime, I will go back to not playing Civ 5 until, maybe someday, Firaxis actually completes work on the game they should have released in the first place. I don't even care about the numerous gameplay flaws, which continue to be "nerfed" and patched-over rather than actually Fixed. As it stands these don't matter, as the basic mechanics of this game ARE BROKEN.

My late game turn times are around 80% shorter - down from 60-90 seconds to 10-15 seconds. You're the first person I've heard report longer turn times (not that I've sought it out).

 

[AfterShafter]

My late game turn times are around 80% shorter - down from 60-90 seconds to 10-15 seconds. You're the first person I've heard report longer turn times (not that I've sought it out).

Well, I will say, while I've noticed significant turn time improvement (like you described) in single player, it's not the case in multiplayer. I have a small group of Civ buddies I play with and late game on huge and even large maps, we're still waiting minutes between turns. I'm currently conducting a series of tests with them to try and figure out if it's particular settings causing the slowdown or just a general thing. I'll be creating a thread about it when I have gone through another game or two to the point of slowdown, just to isolate map size we get the slowdown on, whether it's someone's machine or connection lagging us, etc... I expect multiplayer to take a big longer, but a turn that would be under 20 seconds single player takes 3 to 5 minutes to resolve multiplayer on the large or bigger right now.

And if you'll check my post history, I'm not the type to make spurious claims discrediting the game. This really is an issue for me at this point in time. Runs incredible single player, multiplayer, zero discernible improvement since before the patch.

 

[kell_the_kyuss]

turn times are much better. the ai seems to randomly assign quirkiness to leaders now, its odd, some are still super, occasionally one will just sit there and do the one city thing until wiped out. large maps are playing better, but I still haven't tried a huge map, and likely wont.

really the problem at the moment is the happiness balance. populations can now get quite huge, and they like to get grumpy.

aside from the ai sucks at sea based maps, or that denouncing is dumb.

also completing a policy tree should have a net effect.

some ai's are quite bad about not using workers.

yeah yeah i only play on king and prince

 

[JohnnyW]

The last time I experienced such immersion was when I was playing TES: Oblivion back in 2006...

I actually get more immersed in Counter-Strike than I do civ5.

No, that is not a joke.