Sid Meier's Civilization V

[Ella Minnow Pea]

As Butter mentioned in another thread, Civ V was released Tuesday. I thought about purchasing it, but then I discovered there was a downloadable demo online. I'm glad I went with it, as - once again - my computer can't doesn't met the minimum requirements and the game isn't playable due to garbled text. Argh!

There are a few threads about the specific issue on the 2K Forums. While I almost meet the minimum requirements, my video card once again is insufficient. Apparently it doesn't like the Intel Express 965 Chipset for integrated video on laptops. There may be a fix using the latest Intel drivers, which I'm about to try out, but it is frustrating that my 2 year old computer, which was a midrange system at the time, can't handle it.

So I'd recommend trying out the demo before spending $50!

The opening video is quite impressive.

[Butter]

Yes, that's what we did.  After we tried out the demo, we realized that neither of our computers would run it satisfactorily.  It would probably RUN it, as long as we allowed 3 extra minutes for each turn for processing.

So, we ordered a new computer online specifically with this game in mind, plus it was about time anyway.  We are expecting it within a couple of weeks.  Then, we'll be off to buy the game, and lose a couple of months playing it.

[Ella Minnow Pea]

I updated my drivers to the Intel supplied ones and was able to run the game. It's beautiful, but way too slow on my machine. So it will be another year before I'll play it regularly, as I haven't had this computer for 3 years yet. At least by then it hopefully won't be $50.

[Butter]

This game is really fun, but with this being Andrea's last quarter of school, me going on 2 business trips this month, and Andrea working several weekends, damned if we've been able to find time to play it for more than an hour or so.

Usually, we'd waste whole weekends on this game easily.

[Butter]

First patch is on the verge of coming out.  Hopefully, will make the game a bit more fun, as it has just lacked something so far.  We just haven't played it as much as I thought we would have by now.