Land units can move on water? WTF indeed.
It’s. So. SLLLLLOOOOWWWW. 
Not sure whether there is something wrong with my PC, or if it’s the way the game is, or just the way it’s playing on my hardware, but the game is practically unplayable right now. I’m going to try and make some downward adjustments to my video settings (you can’t do this while in game, sadly) and see if that fixes things.
-XT
Oops. Bit of a tactical to myself. The bombard from cities thing is cool, but they can do it too. :smack:Launching an attack with a couple troops by each city is stupid. Must concentrate on the super-star destr-- I mean capital city.
Ok…I haven’t checked any of the game forums or bug reports, but something is obviously wrong here. Anyone else having problems with the audio being all choppy when ever someone talks, and the terrain tiles basically constantly shifting (and generally looking crappy even when they aren’t), and the game running just horribly slowly, with even mouse movements being exaggeratedly slow? I’ve turned down my video settings to all be either low or medium, and the game is running no better than the default auto-config of high to max. I’ve never had these sorts of problems with this system, so something is obviously going on here.
-XT
Man, I’m so bad at Civilization. I need an entry-level strategy guide or something.
I’m happy to say the game started without a hitch for me.
That said I built a new PC a month ago and it is a monster so everything is running peachy at max settings.
So, the problems you are experiencing I cannot say what might be the problem. The usual caveats of updating your drivers would be in order (sound and video and [maybe] bios). You might also consider doing a Windows Update to get that in shape.
Also, turn off any apps running in the background either via your System Tray and/or Task Manager.
Beyond that try lowering the video settings to their lowest and see if that improves anything. If it does then ramp up video till you get the best performance/quality you can manage.
The forums are flooded with graphics problems. It’s not just you.
Honestly, that sounds like a corrupted install. Maybe something went pear shaped in the unlocking process? I’m sure you’ll want to try other things first, but as a last ditch effort I’d reinstall it.
Game Play Comment:
Gotta say I am a bit overwhelmed by the “help” system in the game. Anytime a new feature pops up I seem to be expected to read a lengthy treatise on 5 related topics.
I am certainly not opposed to reading but geez…I really just want to play.
As far as game play I am enjoying it but barring reading War & Peace Civ Version it is trial and error for me now. Part of the fun though…
I should add…
Choppy sound, in my experience, is usually your hard drive thrashing.
Look to see if the hard drive light is flickering/solid while the audio is choppy.
If it is fixing that is a tough one. Defrag might help but don’t expect too much. Try telling Steam to defrag your cache. Run something like CCleaner as well (note CCleaner can clear your web passwords, history and such so pay attention to what you tell it to clean).
If you are on a laptop it is near hopeless. Laptops are terrible at hard drive access. Miserably slow things they are. Price you pay for portability.
I got my Rome game to the renaissance and decided I to try a more customized game. I started a game as India on a huge, hot, wet, Pangaea. I think the damned Iroquois got most of the ruins. I’m spacing my cities out a lot, and I’m very pacifistic so far. I’d build up my military more, but I don’t want to miss out on too many wonders. The other civs periodically diss me, but I’ve got the most land, and the most cohesive empire. Rome and Germany have really far-flung cities (Mediolanum was just founded between three of my cities :mad: ). I’m spending most of my gold on maritime city-states, so I’ve got a hefty food bonus in my cities. My latest project (after a few surprisingly expensive archers) has been building libraries, so my research output is climbing steadily. The Renaissance is around the corner, and I look forward to seeing jungle and forest give way to farmland as cities grow.
Apparently there is no such thing as transport units anymore, they are just vulnerable aquatic land units.
Freaking Babylonians boxed in my city with cities of theirs. They are being all nice for now but the result is clear…I’m doomed unless I attack. My army is not as up to snuff as I’d like either.
Not looking good for me.
I’d bribe the Romans if I could but spent too much cash on gaining resources.
Live (or die) and learn I guess. 
Gods…I’m SO bummed. 
[QUOTE=Whack-a-Mole]
Choppy sound, in my experience, is usually your hard drive thrashing.
[/QUOTE]
Doesn’t seem to be the case. For one thing, I don’t get that with any other game, even at the highest setting. For another, I’m not seeing a lot of drive activity. It’s not a laptop btw…that’s what I loaded it on at work just to check it out while I was waiting to come home and spend all night playing.
I can live with the sound, really, the trouble is the graphics. The landscape is constantly shifting, and it goes from black lines across the land tiles to a washed out brown, and then back…slowly. It’s almost making me ill to watch so I gave up for now.
[QUOTE=Merneith]
Honestly, that sounds like a corrupted install. Maybe something went pear shaped in the unlocking process? I’m sure you’ll want to try other things first, but as a last ditch effort I’d reinstall it.
[/QUOTE]
It’s a thought. I did the Steam pre-load thing over the weekend, so I suppose I could unload it from Steam and then re-download and re-load. It’s a thought.
-XT
Demo - not bad and feels reasonably paced but when I buy it I’m going Epic or Marathon. I like buying tiles but no stacking of workers is weird (assuming I didn’t miss something). Marshes look like a chance to kill troops forced into them.
Apparently I’m a borderline system with a too slow CPU (Quad Duo) and it works ok for the first bit of the game.
Demo runs fine on highest settings on my (recent, fast) machine. Not sure why I bothered with the demo, since I’m obviously going to buy it. Hmm. Maybe now, so it will be downloaded when I get home from work tomorrow. The demo booted me out after about 3 hours of play. I like most of the changes from IV, personally.
Not feeling the rave reviews from the demo. <- sad face
I’ll refrain from saying more until I try the full game, when they deign to let me.
I’m really going to have to decide soon whether to cut down my jungles. I think it’s a university that gives +2 science per jungle tile, and that looks like a lot on paper. For the uninitiated, base science output is one per citizen, and there’s no commerce slider to convert coins to research. Since a jungle also gives two food (and always clears to plains), I reckon leaving the jungles in place is better for a science city.
There’s a setting in options where you can customize the Advisors. You can tell the game if you are a Civ newbie, a Civ 5 newbie or a experienced player. It defaults to total newbie, I set it at Civ 5 newbie and the help screens are not intrusive and mimic the actions of Civ IV pretty well. Basically you get a prompt the first time you accomplish any new game concepts but not every time something happens. They assume you pretty much understand the movement, resources and city screen basics already.
City states are a mixed bag of cost/benefit. You can get in their good graces by bribing them regularly with money or units. They also have a number of quests that they request you do for them. Some of them are as simple as requesting a road, or as complex as destroying another city state. Once you do enough for them they grant you access to resources or gift you units. But over time, their opinion slowly wear down and you have to do more for them to reestablish it.
Sure, I can afford to buy their love. But sometimes, it’s just easier to take them down. The downside being that in my last game, Bismark started calling me bloodthirsty and refusing to deal with me, despite the fact that he had spent the last 500 years slowly rolling up the Roman empire and razing it’s cities to the ground. 