Civilization 5 and Steam(works)

arstal said:

I don't mean THAT low spec LOL.

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I disagree, games like this classic may very well be the wave of the future, in a sense.



Civ 5 is implementing a 2d option of the game, so you can play it 'like a risk game' so they say.

Well, I would agree that some pc games have become classic and stick with a niche of fans for a decade or more. There are a number of examples of this happening; Steel Panthers, Alpha Centauri, etc. (CivIV, with its open source may also be joining the ranks of the classics.)

Although "Tanks" was cool in its time, I don't have much interest in playing anything like that again. (Your picture is a bit spooky in that I haven't laid eyes on that game since I was a child!)

arstal said:

The console is what a Steam monopoly future would look like, in terms of gouging customers and proprietary DRM. There's really no need to abandon the PC over Steam- there are still viable competitors such as Impulse and Gamersgate, which need to be supported to ensure competition in future.

Yeah I own a console, but only because one genre of games I play- does not have a presence on the PC, and consoles do provide standardization of hardware which is good for some games.

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The only newer commercial game I really play anymore is Civ. I have a handful of older games I still play.

Don't really care about DRM etc on a console; they can't keep tabs on my internet or wreck my computer or introduce a security vulnerability on a machine I do banking etc on.

I haven't touched one since Atari so it'll be interesting to see what's changed.

Having had steam for quite a while due to Portal, I was simply curious and fired it up yesterday. Well, it wants to update and gets stuck at 0%.
Turns out I am not the only one who faces this issue. I did search the net and got several solutions to this issue and everything fails (uninstall, kill registries, firewall etc).

Good luck for us all in September when we try and play the game with this handicap of a software...great job 2k (not that I have much respect for them anyway after what happened with Civ 4)

ThERat. Is it because your internet connection dropped? If so, you could try disabling your network adaptor and see if that lets you get past the stuck update. It's a bug in the software still, but this worked for me in the past.

ThERat said:

Having had steam for quite a while due to Portal, I was simply curious and fired it up yesterday. Well, it wants to update and gets stuck at 0%.
Turns out I am not the only one who faces this issue. I did search the net and got several solutions to this issue and everything fails (uninstall, kill registries, firewall etc).

Good luck for us all in September when we try and play the game with this handicap of a software...great job 2k (not that I have much respect for them anyway after what happened with Civ 4)

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Did you try to delete Clientregistry.blob file?

Solution that always work is to move SteamApps(this step is so that you dont have to redownload your games) folder from Steam folder. uninstall Steam, install it back and after that move Steamapps folder back.

If have done the works....uninstalled (and moving the steamapps folder beforehand). Went to wikipedia which has a complete instruction how to reinstall the game.

Worker with the firewall to delete the steam entries, deleted directory and other steam and valve entries without result.

My question is, why does this piece of software have to be so complicated. I am surely no computer idiot. Wait til the masses buy Civ 5 and then face this sort of rubbish. Piece of crap if you ask me. Should never happen with such a software.

Imagine you don't use iTunes for a while and would face this dilemma. Totally unacceptable.

Never had that happen in 6 years of using Steam. You sure you gave it the correct firewall permissions? And tried on 2 different days just in case there was local disruption to Steam service in your area?

I agree with Senethro that this is most likely problem with permissions somewhere in your PC.

You are also making it too complicated.

1. Move Steamapps folder
2. uninstall Steam
3. run CCleaner
4. restart PC
5. Install Steam (make sure you dont install it to Program Files if you have Vista or Win7 to avoid potential problems with permissions).
6. Start Steam and login to your account. If that works, exit Steam, copy Steamapps folder back and start Steam again.

Look, mate I am no computer idiot.

Of course I did what you suggested. I tried everything said here and more. How on earth do I know which software has some potential conflicts with steam. It worked the last times I used it. And the last time I used it was some 6 months back to download a demo.

So, now it's supposed to be my firewall settings? Then why did it work before for 3 years?

If steam is such a sissy that needs me to have IT knowledge beyond what is required by normal people, than I predict heaps of issues once Civ 5 is being sold that way.

and you know what does the trick? renaming the installation folder to sth else than steam...go figure...

Huh, I'd still go with locally interrupted service frankly. TF2 got a big update recently so it could have been associated with that.

So every time there's a big TF2 update some people won't be able to play civ due to local service interruptions?

Steam does have its problems and glitches. Over the past few weeks I've seen it lock up a few times, show me incorrect download times, take more than a minute to close when I'm trying to shut down the computer (pretty sure because a download was going, as I could see it with the firewall), freeze when unable to use the internet connection (though I found a way to get around the problem, eventually) and I'm sure there'll be other problems.

Hopefully steam won't be a hassle to most people, but I do sympathise with those people who will inevitably run into problems with steam. Most problems can probably be solved with a bit of clever googling but it doesn't help much if your internet is down.

The technical support forum on civfanatics will at times get flooded with issues related to steam.

The technical support forum on civfanatics will at times get flooded with issues related to steam.

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I predict that's going to be far worse once Civ 5 is. Doing my google research how to overcome my problems I realized there are many issues with steam.

Great job, Firaxis for giving us no choice but to use that system.

I sure hope that Take 2 will actually support Steam problems now - which they have tended to not do with Civ4 Steam versions. We have had a lot of Civ4 Steam users here over time that have been left out to dry by both Valve (pointing to the publisher) and Take 2 (pointing to Steam) with their problems. Of course my opinion of Take 2 Tech support is not terribly high, though they have been improving from being truly atrocious a few years back, so maybe they'll at least consider that.

ThERat said:

Great job, Firaxis for giving us no choice but to use that system.

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I'm still praying that there are enough others like me - who won't buy because of Steam - that, a year or so after release, they'll realize there's a bunch of sales to be had by issuing a non-Steam version.

I'm not putting up with yet another layer of things that can and will go wrong, which offers no additional functionality to me. That's exactly why I stopped messing about with cracked games, you end up spending more time screwing around, trying to get it to work, than actually playing the game sometimes. I buys my hardware, I pays my money, I plays my game: that's what I expect. No fuss no muss, that's what I'm paying for.

PieceOfMind said:

So every time there's a big TF2 update some people won't be able to play civ due to local service interruptions?

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A few years ago this (apparently, from this users point of view) used to be the case. However Valve looks to keep their download servers and authentication servers separate now as I've not had trouble logging in when downloads were busy in a very long time.

frekk said:

I'm still praying that there are enough others like me - who won't buy because of Steam - that, a year or so after release, they'll realize there's a bunch of sales to be had by issuing a non-Steam version.

I'm not putting up with yet another layer of things that can and will go wrong, which offers no additional functionality to me. That's exactly why I stopped messing about with cracked games, you end up spending more time screwing around, trying to get it to work, than actually playing the game sometimes. I buys my hardware, I pays my money, I plays my game: that's what I expect. No fuss no muss, that's what I'm paying for.

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Don't bet on that. That said, if enough people boycott- they could make Civ VI without forcing usage of Steam. I'll sacrifice Civ V for civ VI.

Or Firaxis employees will all quit and form a studio outside of 2K- which is my real hope. I don't trust 2K at all.

arstal said:

Don't bet on that. That said, if enough people boycott- they could make Civ VI without forcing usage of Steam. I'll sacrifice Civ V for civ VI.

Or Firaxis employees will all quit and form a studio outside of 2K- which is my real hope. I don't trust 2K at all.

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Ok I'm sorry that dose not make any sense, If 2K is this profit hungry soulless corporation, if Civ 5 dose not preform well (i.e. no/little profits) then your not going to get a Steamless Civ 6 your just not going to get another Civ period and since 2K now owns the Civ trademark (someone correct me if I am wrong here) forming a new company if not going to do anything.

bite said:

Ok I'm sorry that dose not make any sense, If 2K is this profit hungry soulless corporation, if Civ 5 dose not preform well (i.e. no/little profits) then your not going to get a Steamless Civ 6 your just not going to get another Civ period and since 2K now owns the Civ trademark (someone correct me if I am wrong here) forming a new company if not going to do anything.

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It´s only a question if in such a case the failure is seen in the franchise/genre itself or other factors. Crying loud that steam is a reason should be a sign, that even in case of the not so good sales, it´s no problem with the franchise itself. Now imagine the scenario that the sales wouldn´t be that good (because of steam), but noone had complained loud - what would happen to the franchise in this case?

But even if steam is seen as reason by the publisher, he can decide to change the way (civ6 optional steam) or decide to stop the franchise, if he is not willing to create a steamless game.

But in the worst case - i think most could live with a new name* - as long as the game is a civ. Eg.: "OSROAOSF" (our steamless revival of an old strategie game franchise)

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answer to post in this thread this thread

@ Aussie Lurker

And even this number - 76 - is still higher than the person who will buy the because of steam - 59. Any steam sale could be achieved also with optional steamworks or by selling civ5 on steam. The first would also cover the person who like the game and buy it (or more likely) because of the features of steamworks, the second would cover the persons who buy games only on steam (the steam community).

That there is a difference between number of person claiming something and the number of persons doing it actually, you maybe right. At least my assumed number is also "a bit" lower than the actual percentage in the poll. But i think that the relation between the both extremes (pro steamworks, against steamworks) can be (certainly an arguable "can") quite good covered by the pool (both have a motivation to participate - the group which most likely will not participate and is probably underestimated is the "i don´t care and bother the entire steamworks stuff" group - they have nothing to win and are surely quite bothered by the long-lasting discussion).

So with an optional steamworks implementation - as long as there is no believe by the publisher that the piracy rate will be lower because of the steam drm or Valve disallowed an optionial steamworks use in the deal - would be the business wise better decision. More sales (soemone said, even one sale is one more) and perhaps more satisfied customers. If civ5 will fail because of steamworks is a different story, but losing sales because of "nothing" (some point why a non optional implementation could make sense, most likely not complete)

• in some scenarios Valve would be the "bad guy": forbid a optinal steamworks implementation or much worser wouldn´t sell civ5 without steamworks (the only reasons to lose the steamworks/steam sales) or
• 2k/Firaxis would be the "bad guy": decided not to provide steamworks optional because of additional user limitation (no reselling, ...), drm (expecting a lower piracy rate), advertising a market shift towards online distribution (higher revenue share, steam can also be seen as pre-stage to cloud gaming) or ignorance (didn´t expected that anybody could have problems with it)

is a different story.

@ Merovinge

There was a reason why i used the raw figures and not percentages or odds this time. Trying to generalize the result of such a poll - or at least making general conclusions because of the poll, would need a bit more argumentation that i´m willing to provide or even think about atm. In general it´s always easy to neglect results (and most likely poll results which aren´t liked), but in most cases there is no real prove (in sense of argumentation and not only claiming) why the result has absolut no information (which doesn´t mean that this information has to be bias free), or even why there is a connection between the observerd answer behavior and the selection criteria to participate. And even if there is a connection (my assumption here): How and to which degree influences this bias the result and therefore the interpretation of the poll results?