Bugs: should I wait for a major patch before playing?

[LaRo]

I know that 2 minor patches already have been released but that a major patch is required or expected.

Should I wait for the patch before playing? Is the game playable even with the bugs?

Thank you,

 

[duxup]

There is only one way to tell for each person. Try.

It worked for me, so I'm happy to be playing. If it was crashing all the time I might feel differently.

 

[knord]

I have no problems and have clocked 27 hours of game-time and no crashes.
There are a few graphical glitches, the AI is "fun" (needs more tweaking) but it's playable.

If I compare this game to any other game I have tried to try out the last couple o' years, this is the first that works "out of the box".

 

[Ahriman]

I find this game very stable and bug-free compared to most releases.
I'd say try it now; if you don't like the current game, you won't like it with some minor bug fixes.

 

[SuperJay]

Is the game playable even with the bugs?

Yes. The "bugs" aren't that numerous. I've played for about 30 hours total so far and only run into one bona-fide bug. (A free tech got lost during age advancement. Disappointing, but didn't in any way cripple the functionality of the game.)

That said, download the demo first and try it out. Civ 5 isn't for everyone.

 

[atog]

Single player is fine. Occasional crash is borderline bearable, at least for me. I played my turn 100-110 3 times last night because I didn't save often enough. I think there's a 100% repro-able crash if an AI contact you while you open some overlay at the same time. Then I started manually saving every turn.

Multiplayer is NOT PLAYABLE. It's worse than Alpha. It's offensive that they decide to release the multiplayer mode like that.

 

[DarkMaster]

I have over 24 hours of gameplay and I'm anxious to get home and finish the training GotM we have here. Almost conquering the world.

I've run into most of the bugs (some of which have been patched) and I had zero problems trampling the AI on Chieftan and on Prince. They don't even fight back. My game crashed once when I pressed F10 three times very fast, by accident. Still, I'm hooked. I'm addicted. War is so much fun, even with the stupid combat AI, and the game is drop dead gorgeous. I'm waiting anxiously for the first large patch, but in the meantime, I'll just play some Civ!

 

[Honelith]

Might aswell play it now, and get some practise in for when the bigger patches arrive.

 

[Malecite]

Game has never crashed once for me, ever.

 

[Captain_Crunch]

Single player is fine for me. Crash free and also free of major bugs. Some minor glitches when you get to the modern era on a huge map, but all strategy games I've ever played had this.

Multiplayer is pre-alpha quality. It's horrendous. I tried 5 or 6 games so far, 4 didn't make it past turn 1. I got disconnected within about 100 turns from the two that did. There's no reconnect feature btw, once you're out you're out. It's frankly quite insulting. I've never seen a multiplayer feature so poorly conceived, executed and supported on any game ever. Certainly not since we graduated from the early era of IPX and TCP lan games ca. 1998.

So if multiplayer is your bag, I guarantee you will be disappointed. Stay away until they fix it (if they fix it).

 

[Beardy Dan]

What bugs?

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I will personally wait. I see no point in playing the game if I already know that the AI is ******** and presents no challenge. The diplomacy is also uninteresting.

Once those 2 issues have been fixed I will return to the game but I probably won't sooner then that.

 

[Atwork]

What bugs? Well, not to complain, but the fact that many people are experiencing bugs (some significant) shouldn't just be swept under the rug by those few who've experienced no bugs.

Bugs/problems I've experienced: 1) auto-moved unit embarks to sea on its own accord; 2) tile remains controlled by governor no matter how badly I want to lock the sucker down; 3) Romans have 4 cities and access to iron but makes no attempt to collect iron and builds no units even after war is declared -- Rome decides to build 1 archer one turn before its civilization is destroyed; 4) game crashes if try to skip intro movie; 5) game crashes if reload earlier save from Main Menu screan; 6) a few minor animation/audio bugs.....

So, yeah, nothing game breaking per se -- but certainly not problem free!

 

[charon2112]

I've had no problems, no crashes, no bugs. When most people here complain about "bugs", I believe they just have a PC that can't handle this game. Or they consider "bugs" to be design decisions that they don't agree with.

 

[SuperJay]

There are definitely bugs, for sure. But the term "bug" often gets used to mean "design decision I don't agree with."

(The "two free techs -> spend one -> age advancement -> lose other free tech" is a bug.)

But yes, it's not perfect at all. The AI does have issues - big ones. Multiplayer is unstable and diplomacy needs work. Who knows, maybe I'll get to the point where I hate it, but so far it's been fun.

 

[baberg]

I had one bug happen to me - Washington sued for peace on his turn and gave me 4 cities. I accepted and made them all into puppet states but the UI was still asking me to select production for those cities. When I hovered over the icon it said "Chicago needs orders to build..." and Chicago was one of the puppets I had just made. I had to reload to get around it though thinking about it now I could have probably annexed the city and set the build order, or just razed it.

I also had some minor graphical bugs last night but it was nothing an alt-tab didn't fix (and I was alt-tabbing a lot to keep Pandora from pausing).

 

[charon2112]

The AI does have issues - big ones.

I've found the AI to better than IV so far. IV didn't have great AI.

 

[Maxor127]

Game crashes a lot for me. Loading a game = crash unless I load it from a fresh game restart. I also crash with DirectX10/11 that I think has been narrowed down to Nvidia cards, particularly 8xxx cards. Multiplayer is extremely buggy.

 

[atog]

I've had no problems, no crashes, no bugs. When most people here complain about "bugs", I believe they just have a PC that can't handle this game. Or they consider "bugs" to be design decisions that they don't agree with.

Nope. I work in QA for a company you probably know and I can assure you the Single player is not that good. First of all, if you have any remote experience or knowledge about programming, nothing is bug free. Then there are a number of bugs that does not result in a crash.

Like the one I mentioned, i have encountered a diplomancy screen initiated by AI and have nothing said and no buttons. No exit/cancel/back option. Pressing ESC does nothing. But ironically pressing ALT-F4 ask me if i want to quit the game. That happened 3 times in a row. That's no excuse of my new computer which i bought to replace my 6-year-old one so that SPECIFICALLY I can play this game. yes, i invested on a new computer because of this. I didn't even bother when SC2 came out.

Then I also run into problems where I signed open border and cannot enter friendly territories.

I have seen unit having the "cannot enter sign" while i have movement points left and the turn is NOT over. I need to select another unit and come back to it before it let me move.

All such problem are so easily caught. But non-crash bug catches less attention than crash ones. But nonetheless, the game is very far from optimal is the truth as some other stated as well.

 

[The_J]

I find this game very stable and bug-free compared to most releases.

Looking at 70 confirmed threads for bugs, 8 pages in the bugs forum and 10 pages in tech support...i have to disagree.