2K Greg's recent posts on the 2K forums

[Thormodr]

Spot on. I only disagree with the title you propose; it should be more like...

Consivilization: Involution.

How about Civilization: De evolutions?

 

[pazmacats]

It would be nice to know what they were working on.

The game does have a couple larger issues, a many minor ones. Then there's the insanely huge issue (the AI, which is really, really, really bad on almost all levels).

The AI seems to be bad because some game mechanics are designed poorly (stone age hex combat system from the early 90s, + very linear game play, + boring wonders, + boring great people, ... )

The AI in Civ games has (and will always be) terrible. But the game was fun because of different ways to play it.

I hope they start to work on an expansion ASAP and hire some coders to improve the overall game speed.

 

[Krall]

How about Civilization: De evolutions?

Civilution!

 

[Guardian_PL]

I've played through a game and a half, and my 3 friends have all played about 75% of a game so far. No crashes. Maybe because we never reload our games to redo moves?

Yes, that's a Firaxis' next step to punish those abhor reloaders - make the game crash if you load the game more then once!

Putting the elitist idiocy aside I can definitely say that before 1.0.0.20 I had no such problems. Since then I've lowered all the details and it's still crashing on me. Like I said before - good for you folks, enjoy the crash-free game.

 

[Thormodr]

Civilution!

That's pretty good. Civ + dilution.

How about?

Civilization 5: Lots of violence, plot optional.

Civilization 5: The Swim lane Civ.

 

[bryanw1995]

Indeed. I'm not so sure it bodes well for any nation if the emperor is advised by: a psychotic military advisor, an ultra egghead, a marketing VP, a Russian? French? spy, and an Elvis impersonator.

elvis: "we're rockin' majesty"

 

[drachasor]

Played 40 hours and not one crash. Probably your system, not the game. 90% of computer problems are hardware, firmware and OS related, not software.

I haven't had any crashes in single-player. When I play with other people though, the game has a lot more problems.

For what it is worth, I and my brother both have brand new computers with carefully picked hardware -- we built them ourselves.

 

[bryanw1995]

Really? Not even when you're halfway through the game, and then reload the game for whatever reason? If that doesn't ctd the game for you then you're lucky man - I have to restart Civ5 every time I want to load up a save, it works only once and then crashes.

it's your hardware. My old system had quite a few issues. I rma'd my ram, got a new mobo, re-overclocked everything, and now I'm solid as a rock.

I remember a few years ago I upgraded to a 3870. I was so excited that I wanted to bench crysis a few other games. only problem was that crysis kept causing errors. I assumed it was the vid card, come to find out my ram had gotten weak on my sometime in the past year and failed. run memtest for 20 passes and linx 0.6.4 for 300 min, if neither of those crash your system then civ 5 won't, either ( as long as you aren't at/below minimum specs).

 

[drachasor]

it's your hardware. My old system had quite a few issues. I rma'd my ram, got a new mobo, re-overclocked everything, and now I'm solid as a rock.

I remember a few years ago I upgraded to a 3870. I was so excited that I wanted to bench crysis a few other games. only problem was that crysis kept causing errors. I assumed it was the vid card, come to find out my ram had gotten weak on my sometime in the past year and failed. run memtest for 20 passes and linx 0.6.4 for 300 min, if neither of those crash your system then civ 5 won't, either ( as long as you aren't at/below minimum specs).

That's simply not true.

What map size are you playing on?

 

[Louis XXIV]

While I agree on the wonder paintings and quotes, I seriously miss the end-game videos and recap.

Victory video, a replay function, give us something! I love CiV, and usually I do not think it fair to compare it to Civ IV, but at the end of a Civ IV game I really enjoyed being able to replay my game and really look deep into what I did. It felt like a really nice recap... closure, if you will. I don't get that same sense of closure from the end of a CiV game.

I agree with all those. I like the end videos and replay a lot. Victories are something always worth savoring. Wonders quickly stop being (sometimes I would build a wonder just because I needed something to build. When it finished, I'd watch the video just so I would know what it did). So I do miss these two things much more than the wonders.

Jon is one of us, he was a fan before he became a Firaxian and I appreciate his vision. He seemed to really like Civ3 because Civ5 reminds a lot of that game, aesthetically.

Honestly, based on my interaction when he was Trip (we were on the same demogame over at Civilization Gaming Network), he didn't even strike me as a warmonger player. He was a details oriented civ player, but I don't think he favored war or peace more heavily.

I definitely see what you mean by Civ3. I think there's a good base for both of these games. All Civ games run the risk of being too much like the predecessor. I feel the best need to look back at all the ones previous and borrow various elements. There are clearly elements of every Civ game in Civ5. I see a lot of influence from 3, but there's also stuff from each.

 

[Guardian_PL]

it's your hardware. My old system had quite a few issues. I rma'd my ram, got a new mobo, re-overclocked everything, and now I'm solid as a rock.

I remember a few years ago I upgraded to a 3870. I was so excited that I wanted to bench crysis a few other games. only problem was that crysis kept causing errors. I assumed it was the vid card, come to find out my ram had gotten weak on my sometime in the past year and failed. run memtest for 20 passes and linx 0.6.4 for 300 min, if neither of those crash your system then civ 5 won't, either ( as long as you aren't at/below minimum specs).

Oh, thank you.

So it's my fault that the game crashes? None of the other games I've played (like Mafia 2 on max details for instance) did that, there is confirmed bug report that saves files are growing each time you'll save the game untill it crashes, we were told that Firaxis guys are working on it but it's my hardware. Shame on me indeed, sorry for the trouble...

 

[johnbutler1982]

"Nonsense. Utter nonsense. Aside from the ATI card issue (which apparently was a biggy although I had an ATI card and it worked fine for me), Civ4 was an excellent game at launch. "

You really don't remember the run to capital bug? When Civ4 first came out (prior to first patch), when war was declared, the AI would immediately run all their units to their capital city and fortify them there, giving away the rest of their empire. It had to be patched. Civfanatics forumers screamed to high heaven about it.

 

[Buccaneer]

Despite a lot of crap threads/posts here at CFC, there is a lot of good information, bugs and ideas being brought up. Is 2K checking CFC as well? I found the 2K forums to be a confusing dumping ground.

 

[charon2112]

I think the developers should fix legitimate issues with the game (crashing, AI, river graphics)...but the absolute worst thing they could do is start looking at complaints on the internet about how people hate Civ V because it lacks [insert Civ IV feature here] and start making major changes to the game. That could potentially ruin the game.

 

[dexters]

I think they have more sense than that.

But again, back when Civ3 was new, Soren and Dan were around poking their heads into threads.

I honestly haven't seen a Firaxian post anything outside the tech support forum for graphic glitches and bugs.

That worries me a bit considering Jon posted here before he joined Firaxis.

 

[Barking Iguana]

Perhaps Greg or someone in the know might enlighten us as to how they're approaching the truly awful AI...

I'm not a hardcore modder, but I was tinkering and thinkering last night about how to fix it, and I have to say -- I'm concerned.

Let's face it - the AI in I through IV was never all that bright anyway... BUT - you could paper over a lot of its faults by simply giving it huge bonuses or cheaper units. You could counter player exploits by adding unit attributes and changing AI build priorities. It wasn't perfect - but it worked, to some extent - because you could just always make the AI's lumbering stack larger, less costly, and more effective. The end result is that you never really "fixed" the AI (and yes, I'm of the opinion that without "true" AI -- and who wants to risk dealing with cylons genociding our grandkids -- you'll never make an AI algorithm as effective as a human player) - but since military play was only one aspect of Civ, you really just needed to make it tough enough to give the human player something worry about.

V, though, requires a completely and radically different approach. You're NEVER going to be able to solve it by reducing unit costs or giving the AI ungodly advantages with size. It's not even a matter of countering or balancing specific units.

In a hex/1UpT game -- the AI has to be able to analyze each battle or at least each campaign situation independently. It has to know how to position fast attack, melee, ranged, and siege units appropriately, then also shift that deployment as the field changes. It needs to know that sometimes NO moves is the best move. It needs to recognize that there are occasions where sacrificing X to save Y is the right move.

In short - it really does have to become a truly tactical AI... and Civilization has NEVER had anything close to that. It's never NEEDED anything close to that.

As much as I still like (or want to like) hex/1UpT - I worry that there is literally so much that needs to be done and what needs to be done is so radical, that for one thing -- other aspects (and I think there are other aspects that are a mess) will suffer.... Civilization was never supposed to be a military strategy game - I'd hate for it to become that - but it seems there is no other choice.

You could just give the AI a strength multiplier. Giving all their units 1.5 times their ordinary strength would cover up a multitude of sins. And if that's not enough, make it 2.0 times.

 

[zonk]

I think the developers should fix legitimate issues with the game (crashing, AI, river graphics)...but the absolute worst thing they could do is start looking at complaints on the internet about how people hate Civ V because it lacks [insert Civ IV feature here] and start making major changes to the game. That could potentially ruin the game.

Well... I think it would be fair to say "your mileage may vary" on the 'ruin the game comment'.

I couldn't frankly care less about river gfx -- heck -- they could change them to be nothing but sans serif words saying "this is a river" and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to me.

What I want is an end to boring wastelands of 50-100-more of 'Next turn' if you happen to be a more peaceful player. Yeah, I think the AI is atrocious, too -- but fix that, and I'm still just clicking next turn with the occasional interruption to adopt a new policy or pick the next tech. I've stopped using the city build queue just so I'll have something to do in between next turns.

 

[zonk]

You could just give the AI a strength multiplier. Giving all their units 1.5 times their ordinary strength would cover up a multitude of sins. And if that's not enough, make it 2.0 times.

I guess that's an option.... but other strategy games where I've seen the developers try this route to fix an AI -- it hasn't made the game more fun.

Hearts of Iron tried this -- they simply gave the AI in-battle bonuses at harder levels.... it made for an utterly unsatisfying experience.

Still - you might be right... could well be the solution.

 

[Guardian_PL]

I guess that's an option.... but other strategy games where I've seen the developers try this route to fix an AI -- it hasn't made the game more fun.

Hearts of Iron tried this -- they simply gave the AI in-battle bonuses at harder levels.... it made for an utterly unsatisfying experience.

Still - you might be right... could well be the solution.

Not in Civ5, where AI units are moving backs and forth, not finishing wounded units of yours and spend centuries embarking and disembarking. That wouldn't change regardless of power multiplier, so the combat still would be broken

 

[edpovi]

Really? Not even when you're halfway through the game, and then reload the game for whatever reason? If that doesn't ctd the game for you then you're lucky man - I have to restart Civ5 every time I want to load up a save, it works only once and then crashes.

I've gotting over 60 hrs in over multiple games, saves and re-loads. I have never gotten a CTD. Technically speaking, this has been a very stable game for me, better than a few other releases I've played over the past year.

I've had fun with the game and I continue to have that desire for "one more turn". I feel the AI could be improved but I have had some good battles with the AI, and I think some UI tweaks and improvements could be made.