Civ V seems to be running fine for me on my i7860 and GTX280 at 1920x1200. I've seen a couple of slowdowns but nothing that has made me consider turning down any settings. I have everything maxed out right now.

 

 

I never noticed a difference on an ICH10 or P55, I don't use raid anymore though. My F3 spinpoint is enough.

 

 

MLC SSDs are nowhere near reliable enough. imo. Every major SSD manufacturer has had some sort of major firmware issue in the past year. I don't understand why they don't see the same bad publicity that Seagate saw.

Well... you could very well be right - but in my case, I don't expect to be adopting 1 until I encounter some sort of hardware failure and - knock on wood - that won't be for 2-3 years... at which point I'd be willing to adopt as I'd wager the vast majority of issues will be resolved (or at the very least, there will be enough reviews out there to point me at a good drive (must be at least 1 in 2 years, right?)). 

I don't think that the fundemental issues of MLC flash can or will be addressed with time. These articles are a good read.

 

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/article.php/3894671

 

http://www.enterprisestorageforum.com/technology/article.php/3904146/Why-Flash-Drive-Density-Will-Stop-Growing-Next-Year.htm

Very interesting links - thanks for the info.  Read them and I guess we'll see. 

Im enjoying Civ5. No crashes either.

On biggest world with max civs and max city states... its now a game between me the Japanese (I love the fact that we always fight at full strength), also I have 7 cities states on my side, and the Germans which i am more powerful but they have 6 city states. There are other empires but they are just push overs. Its in 1903 right now. Its been a long game... hopefully I can win it tonight.

Civ 5's multiplayer is worse than beta software, this makes me sad.

really.  Sad to hear that - going to play some MP today or tomorrow... I'll throw in some feedback as well.  Hope its not that bad!  Really disappointed if it is. 

MP is not as polished as it should be, for sure. But "worse then beta" is overblowing it. So long as you set autosave in the game options to save every turn, MP is pretty functional.

Also, its possible to manually save by using Ctrl + S.

I ment the sheer lack of features mostly (either bugged or missing), even betas have more stuff working (and it was an exaggeration, its actualy just beta level).

 

Rebel: And how do you load that save game? (its lols)

You have to rename it (manualy) to autosave - which is IMO stupid , but it works.

Hey folks. Running the game in DX 9 works more or less perfectly for me, on highest settings (Except AA which seems unavailable?). Kind of counter-intuitive Thanks you all

Otherwise, random thoughts:

Now, pre-order gimicks are just that, and I don't usually go in for them unless I know I'm getting the game anyway, but I have to say that the Mesopotamia map is pretty fantastic, and easily my favorite at the moment. Definitely feels like a lot of love went into it.

What difficulty are you playing? I started out at chieftain for a game, but steamrolled the AI in every aspect, and the happiness boost makes spamming cities a little to easy. Tried prince for a few games, which forced me to play a conservative game in regards to city placement. The AI obviously receive a happiness boost, as England, my closest neighbor in the latest match, has far, far, more cities than I do and is still expanding, but doesn't seem to have access to any greater variety of luxuries. Next game I'll move it up a notch or two.

Diplomacy, in a word, is limp. Limp is a good word, and it serves to describe diplomacy well. Pacts of Secrecy and Pacts of Cooperation don't have any apparent function. The relationship with the AI also pretty constantly drops unless you go to war for them, or bribe them with resources and gold. I have noticed they are more likely to sue for peace when things go badly, often ceding cities, which is an improvement over previous games.

On a similar note, someone on another forum was saying they felt that AI civs now feel more like actual participants in the game, striving to win, while the city states have taken up the NPC banner, if you will. After thinking about it, I'd have to agree with them. AI Civs do feel like they are more motivated and active, like they are striving for the same things you are, and less like sources of "free cities" and extra cash flows for those redundant resources. City States, meanwhile, fill a nice static niche. They offer a little help in wars, and their culture/food/unit bonuses aren't bad.

You could certainly build entire strategies off of city-states. If you played it right, you could feed a mid-sized empire off maritime tributes, and likely build as large an army as you need off the free units.

yeah - i noticed that too... for some reason you can't enable aa in directx 9. 

 

Compared to Civ IV, what is the deal with Civ V's MP?

Heres some good posts outlining some of my issues.

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=88675

and

http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=89150

 

Thx for links aractain - will help them out. 

 

Wow. It looks like there was some sort of developer handbook passed out in the last few years titled how to fk up multiplayer games in as many ways as possible. How unfortunate.

Hmm is it just me or are there no African nations at all to choose from? Zulus?

 

The game is pretty good...very simplistic compared to the older versions it seems as well.

It isn't simpler really its just different. Besides concepts like corruption, and sickness and such are usually excessively micromanagement intensive. I like a bit of micro, but if a 500 turn game starts getting bogged down due to 4-5 minutes of micro managing details every turn it gets boring and stale fast. That was one of my many complaints about both civ 3 and 4. Partial reasons that I eventually put them down. Tedious tasks are not very fun. Now things still have a good depth to them but without having to go all ocd over some of the particulars. Leaving more room to think about the big picture. Thats one of the ways I look at civ 5. Its much more a big picture game then 3 or 4, which were much more micromanagement based game styles.

We really do seem to be going backwards on MP, particularly in TBS games this year. It's particularly sad in the case of co-op, where shooters are getting better at it and strategy games are going backwards in a hurry.

You know, I've noticed this too. I play FPS games and enjoy them fine, especially because of co-op games like L4D and Borderlands, but FPS has never been a genre I would consider at the top of my list. My group and I have been playing these because the MP experience is pretty much painless, works great and all our strategy titles are flaking out. It's rather unreal. Hell even the RPG's are abandoning co-op. And then these developers/publishers want to know why these FPS games sell like hot-cakes but refuse to listen. I guess it's because every time there is an MP thread in games like Elemental and Civ V there is some jerk who jumps in and say don't ruin SP, or stop using up resources for MP. As if there aren't a million other threads out there already talking about SP.

After Majesty 2, Elemental, Patrician IV, and now Civ V, I don't trust these genres do anything right with MP anymore, and just won't be buying early on in the genre anymore. I'll move them where the FPS games used to be, consumed only at bargain prices.

I think it's just gotten to the point where the number of people who are willing to play a very long drawn out turn based multiplayer strategy game (particularly one that does not have simultaenous turns) is a very small niche. When most people want a game that they can play with their friends they usually want one where they don't spend much more time waiting around for their turn then playing. I must admit that while I used to quite happily play some games like that (with strict turn time limits) I no longer really want to either.

People on the other hand love to play cooperative or competitive games where they they can constantly be in the action, which is why there has been such a surge in MP shooters and the like. RTS is also a quite popular field for it. But even if a game like Civ  or elemental managed to get the multiplayer working flawlessly, the number of people who actually were willing to play it would be a fairly small demographic compared to the number of people who buy something like modern warfare for the multiplayer. This is why companies don't spend a lot of resources on it.

Songhai, or however is spelled, was a Western African Civ. I suppose you might discount it because it was Muslim, but I think it counts.

 

I haven't tired multiplayer yet, but Civ 4 was TERRIBLE for people dropping the game whenever they had a bad few turns. I don't think I had a single game where someone didn't drop out.

TBH I don't know why anyone would want to play a game like civ with strangers.

tend to agree.