Civilization V Problem after dowbload from D2D

[bibarnes]

I just bought and downloaded Civ V through D2D. After initial problems of getting them to accept my CC because the ship to URL is in Mexico and my bank address is in NC, I downloaded Civ V. It took 12 hours and then another 30 minutes or so to install it. The first thing I noticed is that it seems that the game will not run unless there is an internet connection because the desktop icon links to steam://rungameid/8930 and is listed as an Internet Shortcut. That is a little annoying since I paid full price for the game. The next thing that happened is really annoying. I have no cursor indicator after loading the game. I can move the mouse and get indications that there is a mouse position becaue different things will highlight and a click will give the desired results. The problem is that playing the game is impossible because I don't know where the cursor is.

My PC is just over the minimum requirements because of the Video card, I have a Gforce 8400.

Any suggestions as to how to fix this. Who do I complain to, Sid Meier or D2D or Steam. This is the first time I have purchased a game this size by download and will probably be the last.

[AeEsBii]

A Geforce 8400 is not above minimum requirements. With NVidia Geforce and ATI/AMD Radeon HD graphics cards the first digit, ie 8xxx, represents the series number. The next represents the performance, x4xx. Using a car example: neither a 2009 Camry nor a 2010 Camry are as roomy as a 2008 Avalon. The minimum requirement for NVidia cards is a 7900 GS. The 8-series equivalent would be an 8600 GT (but not an 8600 GS). This post covers a lot of graphics cards.

Steam can be set to run in Offline Mode. It has "Steam" as a menu item where most applications put "File", and then you can click "Go offline".

Issues purchasing the game should be brought to the attention of D2D (Direct2Drive?)
Issues with Steam should be brought to the attention of Valve.
Issues in the game should be brought to the attention of 2K. They will probably make some attempt to help you, but you're below the system requirements.

Civ V can be purchased as a retail disk. Unless a game is really cheap and a really small download (less than 1 full CD) then I buy it as a disk. Civ V is one full DVD. Some people have an internet service plan that would let them download something like that in no time, but I'm not one of those people (neither are you, it seems).

I'm pretty sure I've seen other threads mentioning black menus, but I'm not familiar with the problem. Someone else here might be, though.

[toasteur]

to simplify from what aeesbii just said, as soon as you received the key from d2d and registered it in steam, the fact you bought the game from d2d become irrelevant as all you need for the game is now on steam. essentially, you buy a key from d2d.

as for steam, yes it's an online platform so internet is mandatory, maybe not at all times (offline mode), but regularly - for the updates, - and as offline mode can expire. so you can bypass momentarly the online requirement by going into offline mode on steam.

also, i would strongly advise against using a pc close to minimal requirement, because it doesn't work really well with minimal requirement except maybe for short game on duel or tiny maps, which restrict a lot the possibilities.

and as aeesbii already pointed, a 8400 is below requirement as even if it's a more recent generation (well often it's even not, just an old card rebranded), it's really a cheap card and as such, is not really meant for gaming, just desktop and media use.

it's quite possible your card doesn't support some feature required to run the game like shaders, and the fact your game is registered in steam makes it non refundable. you're best bet would be to upgrade your configuration because even if you finally manage to make it past the intro movie, there are big chances your games will be slow as hell and maybe also crash.

[Ingwaz]

to simplify from what toasteur just said, do a background check on the game you are buying before you buy it.

[Davor]

As was said before, you need to run Steam in Offline mode. Problem is, you need to be online to do this. So once you get your computer online again, make sure you have the current patched version, and then go to Steam application, and set it to "offline".

Hopefully this will take care of your interent issues. Just to make sure you know, you can only patch Civ V through Steam and will need to be online to do this.

[AeEsBii]

and as aeesbii already pointed, a 8400 is below requirement as even if it's a more recent generation (well often it's even not, just an old card rebranded), it's really a cheap card and as such, is not really meant for gaming, just desktop and media use.

it's quite possible your card doesn't support some feature required to run the game like shaders, and the fact your game is registered in steam makes it non refundable. you're best bet would be to upgrade your configuration because even if you finally manage to make it past the intro movie, there are big chances your games will be slow as hell and maybe also crash.

Most cards in a series use either the same chip or a derivative of the series-launching chip and thus support the same technology but at different levels of performance. For example, a GTX 480 is GF100; a GTX 465 and 470 are also GF100, but ones that had cores disabled so that they'd draw less power/produce less heat. A GTS 450 and GTX 460 are GF104 chips, which were slight re-designs of GF100 that focused on lower power/heat.

With the GeForce 8 and 9 series, and the GTS 250, the higher end cards were all based off more or less the same chip (G92 and G92+) with die-shrinks (smaller chips require less electrical current and thus produce less heat, allowing them to be clocked higher) instead of a major re-design. The G92 is the only chip I know of being used in three series like that.

His 8400 is either G84 or G86 depending on whether it's PCI or PCI Express. Of course none of this changes the fact that it's below spec. I think it's interesting, though.