civ 5 hopeless, crashes constantly, i give up

[ycngha]

i started with civ 1 on an amiga 500 -- never crashed. i just started playing civ 5 this weekend and it runs for a bit then decides to crash for no reason. i'm using a very clean xp system that is only used for steam games, no internet surfing or mail, fully patched. no valve game has ever crashed on my system, including all the half-lifes and l4d games.

i'm through with anything that has sid meier's name on it, as well as 2k and firaxis obviously. what an embarrassment to put so much effort into a game only to rush the qa and testing, and even after it's released cant bother to fix it five months out.

low quality, sid's name is mud.

[Ewigan]

don't give up on 2k, they still have gearbox!

[QuantumTarantino]

i started with civ 1 on an amiga 500 -- never crashed. i just started playing civ 5 this weekend and it runs for a bit then decides to crash for no reason. i'm using a very clean xp system that is only used for steam games, no internet surfing or mail, fully patched. no valve game has ever crashed on my system, including all the half-lifes and l4d games.

i'm through with anything that has sid meier's name on it, as well as 2k and firaxis obviously. what an embarrassment to put so much effort into a game only to rush the qa and testing, and even after it's released cant bother to fix it five months out.

low quality, sid's name is mud.

Would you like assistance?

[Teodosio]

i started with civ 1 on an amiga 500 -- never crashed. i just started playing civ 5 this weekend and it runs for a bit then decides to crash for no reason. i'm using a very clean xp system

Try with Windows 7. Use the 64bit version if you have a 64bit CPU. Install the latest video drivers for your card.
I never had a crash since release.

[jpbar81]

That's your advice? So he's to purchase a whole new operating system just to play this incomplete game? (Along with verifying that all his existing software/hardware is compatible with the new OS)

How about we look into his game/video settings and more of his pc specs first? (If he'd be willing to give us more insight into his problem.)

Also, civ crashes even the most robust of systems. I built and play on a windows 7 ultimate 64 bit as well, along with some heavy-hitting pieces of hardware inside it that help me wage huge battles in Starcraft 2 at max settings. I can say that I never had a crash in Civ 5 too... but I also only play standard size maps (with all other settings standard; bigger isn't always better!). That's why we need to find out "how" he's playing the game and what game/video settings he uses.

Yes, you may be one of those lucky folks whose pc doesn't crash on huge maps, but you wouldn't be a part of the majority. So, it's best not to advise Windows 7 as a reliable fix. Especially if he's not using a 64 bit machine and doesn't have good hardware inside to run it.

[Teodosio]

Windows XP is now 10 years old (2001), let everyone make their own conclusions

[tfordp]

Try with Windows 7. Use the 64bit version if you have a 64bit CPU. Install the latest video drivers for your card.
I never had a crash since release.

I run it on XP, never had a crash. Had one on my other machine, running Win 7. Go figure.

[lietkynes]

Windows XP is now 10 years old (2001)

And it's still the best OS

[Lariono]

The explanation is simple, the owners are greedy and stupid programmers.

[Shiggs713]

And it's still the best OS

agreed. I'd trade 7 or vista for an XP MCE machine any day.

[MaleciteV]

You would trade 7 for XP? Then you deserve everything you get for using a 12 year old operating system.

[mrmunkles]

Speaking as someone who made a living off of repairing computers if you honestly think XP is great you really need to get your head checked. True it had an immense ammount work done on it to make it stable and in relative terms "fast" but as a general rule its an awful piece of software in comparison to win 7.

As many have said you can draw your own conclusions but to any serious techy the continued use of xp pretty much stamps a "I dont know what im doing" on your proverbial forehead.

[mattlach]

That's your advice? So he's to purchase a whole new operating system just to play this incomplete game? (Along with verifying that all his existing software/hardware is compatible with the new OS)

Anyone still running XP and NOT expecting serious problems has got to have a screw or two loose.

XP - at 10 years of age - is hopelessly obsolete.

[mattlach]

And it's still the best OS

You have no idea what you are talking about.

From a stability, security and feature standpoint XP is a complete fail, and was upon launch too. Windows Vista/7 finally implemented some of the basic security functions other operating systems have had for years.

Still running XP in 2011 on anything other than a email/word processor machine is a bad joke, and even then you are opening yourself up to a ton of vulnerabilities just by having the POS operating system connected to the internet.

[jacypr]

Windows XP is now 10 years old (2001), let everyone make their own conclusions

Yeah, I have come to a conclusion. You think he should spend another $ 200 buying a new OS to play the game (a broken one), just because he's using an OS that many people in the world still use and the game is crashing, although the game DON'T say that it's incompatible with windows XP. That's very kind, thanks for the support!

You've got to be kidding me.

[mattlach]

Yeah, I have come to a conclusion. You think he should spend another $ 200 buying a new OS to play the game (a broken one), just because he's using an OS that many people in the world still use and the game is crashing, although the game DON'T say that it's incompatible with windows XP. That's very kind, thanks for the support!

You've got to be kidding me.

There is no debating that Civ5 has it's fair share of problems. Having an outdated computer or an obsolete messed up operating system doesn't help however.

It's amazing to me that anyone thinks tir computer should last and be able to run the latest software for more that two years...

[Hamhawk]

According to the system requirements FAQ http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...quirements-FAQ. Windows XP is supported, rendering the argument in favor of an OS update moot.

[QuantumTarantino]

According to the system requirements FAQ http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread...quirements-FAQ. Windows XP is supported, rendering the argument in favor of an OS update moot.

You misread the requirements

XP upgraded to SP3 is supported

[Hamhawk]

Correction, the original release version of Civ 5 supports Windows XP Service Pack 3. Since all patches for Civ 5 and all Service Packs for Windows XP are free. Having both is easy. If you really want to debate semantics because your post was only semantics.

[Shiggs713]

thats his M O, don't you know?

[QuantumTarantino]

Correction, the original release version of Civ 5 supports Windows XP Service Pack 3. Since all patches for Civ 5 and all Service Packs for Windows XP are free. Having both is easy. If you really want to debate semantics because your post was only semantics.

No Semantics, Not all versions of WinXP are upgradable to SP3...

[jacypr]

There is no debating that Civ5 has it's fair share of problems. Having an outdated computer or an obsolete messed up operating system doesn't help however.

It's amazing to me that anyone thinks tir computer should last and be able to run the latest software for more that two years...

It's amazing to me that anyone thinks that if one OS isn't supported but the game is advertised as running fine in that OS, then the guilt lies with the consumer, not the company that created the game.

If Civ 5 has its share of problems, and they get worse in an OS that was advertised as supported, then it's part of the problems the fact that the game doesn't run well in such OS, and as any problem it has to be adressed by the company who created and advertised the game. Period.

No Semantics, Not all versions of WinXP are upgradable to SP3...

I'm with Quantum on this one. The fact that it says "SP3" is, indeed, crucial and isn't just a matter of semantics.

[Hamhawk]

SP3 is indeed supported by all legal copies of Windows XP, including media center, a very specific form of updating called slipstreaming is not supported on Windows XP Media Center 2005 but it can be updated in other ways. If a copy of Windows XP does not support SP3, odds are that it is illegitimate.

[StoneCypher]

2k's unwillingness to be honest about the state of this game has guaranteed that I will never buy from them again. 2kElizabeth had the audacity to claim that they shipped what they said, despite that two of the nine listed box features don't exist at all, two more don't work, and one works occasionally as long as you don't use more than 25% of the number of players it says are handleable.

2k games staff said before release that they'd played 10-player games. As this forum is well aware, it's not possible to start a game with more than five.

If you buy from this company, you encourage 2k to think this quality of deployment and this level of response are adequate.

[AeEsBii]

Windows XP Professional 64-bit is a legitimate Windows XP edition, which only received two service packs (and its service packs were not the same ones used for 32-bit XP editions, so XP 64 SP2 does not have the same features as regular XP SP2). There was also a version of Windows XP for Itanium systems (a 64-bit processor developed by HP and Intel, before x86-64 became widespread).

Then there's the case of many people refusing to install service packs, usually for company-issued PCs in the event that their business relies on software which is not compatible with the service pack (or even just the fear that the service pack might break something). Some people buy business PCs from recycling programs or liquidation auctions, and might not bother ensuring that the PC is up-to-date, or dislike large downloads.

There have been a number of users coming to these forums trying to figure out why they couldn't run Civ V with DX11. Turned out they had Vista, but not SP2 (which installs DX11).

While I doubt that the OP has less than SP3 installed, I think the point QT is making is that if you omit specifics (in this case, a mere three letters) then you might overlook a rather simple solution.

[SirMaru]

Two choices for the OP: run Diaxdiag and let Quantum review and comment on it. OR, try my game specs which I will NOT mention unless the OP requests them. In over 200 hours my game specs have had only 2 freezes and no CrashTo Desktops (CTD's). Plus, IMHO, my game specs are the best way to get the most enjoyjment from the game at least for ME.

A third choice is to send Tech Ian a Private Message and let him help the OP.

A fourth choice is to try again after the latest patch is released in the next few days. Its conceivable it will have finally solved most of the crash problems.

[Hamhawk]

While XP 64 and the Itanium versions did exist, their install base was microscopic. DX diag is the easiest way to determine such things. However correcting my post for 3 letters when my answer was accurate for 99.98% of all legal consumer versions of Windows XP is downright nitpicking. He should clarify which patch and hot fix version of Civ 5 works with what specific version of Windows NT 5, 5.1, 5.2, 6, 6.1, 6.2, 7, 7.1, 7.2 etc with sub version numbers if those version details matter that much.

[Takao]

Windows XP hopelessly outdated? Hahahahahahaha! That's a good one

Windows XP(32-bit) Professional updated to SP3 will run Civ 5 just fine...

No crashes since release through 1.0.1.141, Although I haven't played since early January. Civ 5 is, well, rather dull, but perhaps I will update and try again with the February/March "big patch".

[AeEsBii]

Service pack version is something that can commonly vary from system to system, and as I've mentioned is something that gets overlooked from time to time.

Civ V's requirements (XP SP3, Vista SP2, or 7) have not changed since release, therefore all versions of Civ V have the same requirement. NT version within a Windows version (XP/Vista/7) does not change, with the exception of XP 64.

Personally, I would have focused on the reasons many people do not/will not update service packs, but I understand how QT might get on a tangent about XP 64 as elsewhere on the forums there was a very recent discussion about some of our fellow forumgoers running Civ V on XP 64. They may only account for 0.47% of recorded Wikipedia traffic this year (approximately 21,000 users), but XP 64 users are out there.

[StoneCypher]

I tried to google "how many players does civ5 have" but missed the word have.

On the first page of google results there are six links critical of the state of civ5. One reads "100 things that are wrong with civ5." Another reads "Civ5: what went wrong?" A third reads "Civ 5 multiplayer UNACCEPTABLE."

Needless to say, the official word from 2k is that most players are happy and nothing is wrong.

Sulla said it better than I can; this is cut and pasted from someone else's web page (this is *just* what he says about multiplayer, and he gets correct what the staff here don't: the reason that Civ5 multiplayer is a ghost town when it was so common and vibrant in Civ4 isn't a lack of interest; it's that the game is so unplayably broken that even Civ5's leaderboard's average time absent is 22 days among its top 50 players.)

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/Civ5/whatwentwrong.html

--------------

2) Nonexistent Multiplayer: I had a feeling that Civ5's Multiplayer (MP) was in bad shape long before the game actually came out. The writing was on the wall: it was exceedingly clear from the developer interviews that MP was receiving very little attention. Whenever they were asked about MP, the developers would give a formulaic non-answer and quickly move on to the next topic. It was also noteworthy how none of the elite talent from the Civ3/Civ4 MP ladder community was part of the pre-release test group, in stark contrast to Friedrich Psitalon's massive input into the Civ4 testing process. Just about all of the new features advertised for Civ5 were Single Player centric in design; how exactly would city states fit into a MP ladder game, for example? Yeah, you could always turn them off, but what about the civs who had abilities based around city states? Would they be left out in the cold? During the summer months of 2010, the silence about Civ5's MP was deafening. When the first and only MP preview was released less than two weeks before Civ5 shipped, you could tell that the developers were trying hard to sell a faulty product. Go ahead and read this MP preview from back then, it's quite short. So four journalists played a game, they built a couple of cities in the desert, no one fought anyone, and then the game ended after two hours. And that was putting the BEST face possible on Civ5 MP. Yikes.

When it did release to the public, Civ5's MP turned out to be worse than anyone imagined. Not only is the game almost completely unplayable online, with drops and connection issues limiting games to a maximum of four total players, Civ5 lacks an incredible array of basic MP features. Not only are these features dropped from their previous inclusion in Civ4, it's simply hard to imagine how a mainstream game released in 2010 could possibly be so crippled for online play. Let me run through a quick list of these issues:

- There is no online lobby or staging area for Civ5. No common area to chat with other players and set up games ahead of time. The Civilization MP ladder group (Civ Players) have set up their own Steam chat room for this function, but that's hardly the same thing, and the vast majority of players will never even be aware of its existence.

- Connection issues are at least as bad as Civ4, if not worse (and they were bad in Civ4, let me tell you!) When players drop from an active game, they are immediately replaced with an AI and play continues. This is in contrast to Civ4, where a voting screen would pop up when anyone dropped and give the option to play on, wait for the player to return, or save the game and continue later. With drops being so common, AI takeover is a major problem.

- Because the connection issues are so bad, Civ5 games are essentially limited to a maximum of 4 total players. All of the games currently being run on the ladder are either 1 vs 1 duels, 2 vs 2 teamers, or 4 player free-for-alls. By way of contrast, the most common Civ4 MP setup was 5 vs 5 teamers. It's simply not possible to have the same number of human players in Civ5, which is really odd for a game that's five years newer than its predecessor.

- Games can only be run online through Steam; there are no Hotseat games, no Pitboss games, or Play By Email games. (All of these have been promised for the future, but none have appeared so far.) All online games must be simultaneous turns, no option for sequential turns even if players are willing to wait out the extra time needed.

- There are no turn timer options (Civ4 had four different speeds), and the MP ladder pros find the default option to be excruciatingly slow. Once a player ends their turn, he/she cannot take any further actions. You cannot queue up moves or change tiles/builds, unlike the previous online Civ games. Because of this crippling oversight, no competitive player in a MP game will ever end their turn early, and so everyone must sit around and wait out the turn timer in every turn of every game. The alternative is to get screwed over by someone who can still move their units and react while you are unable to do so.

- Note that there is no eight-second delay in Civ5 either, and unit movement rates are much increased, so be prepared for all sorts of insane double-moves of units. Have fun dealing with that Companion Cavalry that moved ten tiles across the turn split window before you could react. This is a major reason why "battles" in Civ5 turn into crazed click-fests to see who can move first. (More on this below.)

- There is no option to ping the map in Civ5, a basic feature of pretty much every online game ever, so have fun typing instructions to teammates in chat. Due to the way that Civ5's interface is designed, it's also not possible to see your teammates' research either.

- There is no city elimination option in Civ5 either. Seeing as how 95% of all MP ladder games used this option in Civ3/Civ4, you can tell how the game wasn't exactly designed with the online community in mind. Most games are decided based on points, which had a truly awful scoring system that vastly over-valued wonders and number of cities. It was tweaked in the patch and improved, fortunately, but still no city elimination option.

- Combat animations are disabled for Civ5 MP, and cannot be turned on. None of the downloadable content civs are playable either, which is fradulent on the part of Firaxis/Steam since they specifically list "Multiplayer" on the advertisement for the Babylon, Spain, and Inca downloadable content.

- All mods are also disabled for MP, so don't think you can come up with your own scenario and try it out online...

- You cannot save Civ5 MP games. I'm not making that up, it's not possible to create manual saves in online play. Players must rely on auto-saves if they want to continue a playing session, which is ridiculous on all sorts of levels.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's polukaks from Civ Players describing a list of "totally game breaking stuff" common to Civ5 MP:

"1: Sometimes when you are playing a game and have 1+ open slot from leaver, a person will randomly hotjoin you. This almost always causes the game to freeze.
2: Even when the game is full, people seem to be able to hotjoin you and freeze the game.
3: Randomly, the game will "desync" or whatever, making it impossible to move units. There is no indication as to which player is causing the problem.
4: Sometimes the game will just freeze, causing a reboot for one or more players. If this happens, due to unknown reasons, no amount of steam/civ/computer restarting will allow the game to be reloaded. In fact, the frozen player wont be able to join games for about half an hour.
5: During situations where many players try to move a lot of units (i.e. clickspam), the game will literally spend minutes trying to relay the commands between players.
6: When joining a game lobby, you will sometimes see yourself as AI, being unable to select (or unselect) your leader.
7: Very VERY often, a game will have a couple of random players that never seem to be able to sync with eachother. This will often happen during a RELOAD, where a bunch of players that were all connected previously suddenly cannot join a lobby together.
8: The game randomly enters the loading screen during gameplay for unknown reasons.
9: If someone legitemately tries to hotjoin, 90% of the time it will cause the game to freeze.
10: In the lobby, you will sometimes have players that appear ready and in sync for the host (and most others), but not ready (and maybe not even present!) for others. Launching a game in this state will generally cause a crash.
11: It is quite common to be sitting in the lobby waiting for players to join, only to have Civ 5 crash.
12: Oh and did I mention the game likes to crash in-game as well?
13: When a players join the game lobby, they will sometimes cause a slot to disappear. He will be invisible to every player in the lobby, and the host must make sure to figure out who it is and ask the person to rejoin.
14: Sometimes, during a reload, the slot of a player that is no longer in a game is "not ready" and the game cannot be launched. (Getting a temporary sub will solve this, but easily adds 10 minutes to the time it takes to get a reload going)

This is just from the top of my head! There are TONS more. And it happens a LOT. From my programming background I can easily put the blaim on the combined factors of using P2P (which gives NO benefits and adds a LOT of complexity) with a generally bad multiplayer system in the game."

Even if we could leave aside all of these technical issues, the gameplay itself in Civ5 translates very poorly to online play. Because each unit is so much more expensive than in past Civ games, losing one or two units can end the game entirely. With no double-move restrictions in place at all, along with a massive flatground defensive penalty and instant healing, games are frequently decided based on wild clicking races. It's perfectly possible to move a horseman seven tiles (across the timer window), kill a defending unit, and then insta-promote for full health again... all while the other player's connection is lagging and unable to respond. The forums are awash with reports of players issuing commands and then waiting 10 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, full minutes before they were carried out. Furthermore, with tile improvements so weak and buildings so terrible, the "economy" in MP games entirely consists of city spamming up to the happiness limit and chopping forests for production. No one ever builds anything other than units. The gameplay itself isn't fun or interesting, and compounded with the enormous technical problems, you have a complete trainwreck of a gaming experience.

The result has been a mass exodus of the Civilization ladder community from competitive MP play. I stuck a screengrab at the top of this section to demonstrate this phenomenon in action. Check out the "Days Idle" category to see just how few games are taking place. This is a picture of the Top 50 rankings for the Civ5 ladder. Counting the players offscreen in slots 40-50, the median "Days Idle" on the Civ Players ladder is 22. HALF of the Top 50 players have gone more than three weeks without playing a single game! 35 of the 50 players on the list haven't played a game in the last ten days. Counting "very active" players (a game in the past three days), we find only 8 out of 50 players on the list that qualify, a mere 16%. Civ Players also has a "Daily Results" category on their website that lists all of the games played each day. Going through those numbers, the ladder is averaging about 5-6 games played on weekdays and 7-10 games played on weekends. This past weekend (Friday + Saturday + Sunday), there were a grand total of 22 ladder games played; again, that's counting every single game played by everyone on the Civ5 MP ladder, added up together across three days. And it's the same group of 10-15 players taking part in every one of those games... Now obviously there are more games going on that aren't part of the organized ladder, but it serves as a useful barometer of the lack of interest in overall Civ5 MP.

[QuantumTarantino]

While XP 64 and the Itanium versions did exist, their install base was microscopic.

And yet, weve already had 2 users, using the itanium version, trying to get assistance with Civ5

Their DXDIAG wasnt even able to identify the processor correctly

[Davor]

Either I missed it, or nobody has said it. I thought XP is not supported. While it could run Civ V, if it doesn't work,then there is nothing 2K can do, since it wasn't made for it to run. It was made for Win 7 only and that's it.

[kooljay2]

just my opinions:
1) the overwhelming majority of ppl that play games do not post in forums. I would put the number around 10%. Of those 10% of players, most forum posters do so to get tips, tech answers or support, or to wage complaints. So even if every post in these forums were complaints (and they're not), to say they reflect the overall playing community at large is a gross misstatement. @Stone: if you want to see how many ppl are playing at any time go to http://store.steampowered.com/stats/.

2) statements like "it's impossible to play beyond 4 players" are misleading bc I have played with more than 4 players. I am not a ghost or a figment of my imagination, I really do exist. Perhaps "it's impossible for YOU to play with more than 4 players" is more accurate.

3) did anyone besides me notice the OP has not commented since? Like Quantum, I have offered to help anyone with the issues they are having and heard birds chirping in the silence. It appears to me (again, just my opinion) that some ppl don't really want help, they just want to vent (I would have used another word but decided against it).

4) Most of the comments pasted by Stone about MP I would agree with, but there were a couple of things just not true, like not being able to save MP games. The thing that stood out for me was when he said "Connection issues are at least as bad as Civ4, if not worse (and they were bad in Civ4, let me tell you!)" I laughed bc of the many post glorifying Civ4 as being pristine, perfect, yada, yada, and how by comparison Civ5 is a dog. I figured that was an exaggeration, and it was nice to hear someone say that.

5) XP is old and outdated. the fact that it still runs and works does not change that. I am old enough to remember the XP launch, when ppl were calling it "Windows xperimental". Not nearly as polished as it is 10 years later. 10 year old cars still work too, but most ppl prefer to drive a newer one that has more safety features, better gas mileage, more creature comforts, etc. Time to move on.

[Hamhawk]

And yet, weve already had 2 users, using the itanium version, trying to get assistance with Civ5

Their DXDIAG wasnt even able to identify the processor correctly

I would call that a fluke. The odds of an end user getting ahold of an Itanium system legally are extremely low, think lightning strike low, due to cost and rarity. In the future a modicrum of civility would be preferred to a blatant attack of you are wrong.

As for XP being outdated, it only stopped being sold last October, and it will have continued support from Microsoft until 2014 which is long past the expected support life of Civ 5.

For comparison, unix was developed in the 70's and it serves as the base OS for Apples flagship OS X.

[QuantumTarantino]

I would call that a fluke. The odds of an end user getting ahold of an Itanium system legally are extremely low, think lightning strike low, due to cost and rarity. In the future a modicrum of civility would be preferred to a blatant attack of you are wrong.

As for XP being outdated, it only stopped being sold last October, and it will have continued support from Microsoft until 2014 which is long past the expected support life of Civ 5.

For comparison, unix was developed in the 70's and it serves as the base OS for Apples flagship OS X.

I said that to him too (and even if he did obtain it legally, he most certainly wasnt using the licence as microsoft permitted him), but the fact remains, we have had 2 players, use Itanium x64, on these forums.

To clarify, he didnt get an itanium system, he got the OS only

Either we can use all data to form a opinion, or realize, that the usage of these forums, is not done by typical PC users.

Neither is indicative of the reality of the situation, and thats why small corrections get made (and some players claim it is only semantics)

Your last comparison point is complete apples vs oranges, if you bring Unix into it and claim it is what apple has been running since the 70's, you need to compare that to DOS (the equivalent, in windows OS)

[AeEsBii]

For a while you could buy Itanium CPUs and boards from Newegg. Today you can buy complete dual-socket Itanium systems from eBay for as little as $250. It's not like it's outlawed tech, nor is it terribly expensive. I don't see how he could have had the Itanium version of Windows but not an Itanium system, as IA-64 is as different from x86-64 as SPARC or PowerPC. There are x86-64 versions of Solaris and OS X, but those only run on x86-64 systems. The SPARC version of Solaris only runs on SPARC systems, the PowerPC versions of OS X only run on PowerPC systems.

Comparing UNIX in the 70s to Darwin/OS X is like comparing NT 3.1 to NT 5.1 (XP) except over an even longer span of time. Even the transition from 5.0 (Windows 2000) to 5.1 involved a lot of compatibility issues. Many aspects of NT 6.0 are incompatible with NT 5.1, which is why DirectX 9 is the last version of DirectX to run on XP. IE9's dependence on the new DirectWrite and Direct2D libraries, and their dependency on the NT 6.0/6.1 driver model (for hardware acceleration) are some of the reasons it isn't available for XP. (And are also reasons why other browsers either don't support hardware acceleration when installed on XP, or don't have full support.)

More relevant to the topic, though, is the fact that XP SP3 is supported by the DirectX 9 version of the game. If Firaxis hadn't gone out of its way to make two versions of the game then we'd only have the DX11 version (development would have started on DX10 and then taken advantage of additional DX11 features, since it's really more like a DX10.2). That would have left out the Windows XP users, and only someone who can visit parallel dimensions could tell us if that would have resulted in a more stable DX11 version, so we'll never know for sure.

[Hamhawk]

My apologies, my comparison was not fully developed. Windows XP is NT 5.2, a speciallized consumer version of NT 5 better known as Windows 2000 Server Family, NT was originally developed for corporate architecture in the late 80s, NT means "new technology"

Unix is not being compared to OS X because OS X is unix, or rather a highly specialized and adaptive GUI based on a unix kernel. This kernel can be recompiled and adjusted to accept multiple forms of processors, as it has been adapted for x86 from PowerPC such as the g series.

The comparison was more to view a larger picture, an OS being out of date is based on support not age, as OS X is arguably based on a much older platform than Windows XP. Of course this is honestly over simplified as multiple OS versions evolve and others based on other technology move in and out of the picture over time.

DirectX is another monster entirely and had a steeped history in starting as an API for graphics and morphing into a resource control monstrosity. Believe it or not, although linked to specific os versions, it is a separate entity.

We have gotten quite far off topic but I seriously doubt that the OP is interested in attempting to resolve his technical problem.

[Gyrate]

Yeah, I have come to a conclusion. You think he should spend another $ 200 buying a new OS to play the game (a broken one), just because he's using an OS that many people in the world still use and the game is crashing, although the game DON'T say that it's incompatible with windows XP. That's very kind, thanks for the support!

You've got to be kidding me.

I would never suggest that. It would be better for him to buy a new PC. They pretty much throw the OS in for free. Then I would suggest he buy a top of the line graphics card and 8 gigs of gaming ram. Make sure it's already been tested by someone else who plays huge maps. It should only cost you about $1500 and 72 hours of reading to get the game running right.

[slowtarget]

Either I missed it, or nobody has said it. I thought XP is not supported. While it could run Civ V, if it doesn't work,then there is nothing 2K can do, since it wasn't made for it to run. It was made for Win 7 only and that's it.

It's been said a few times in this thread already: Civ V is supported on XP SP3, Vista SP2, and Win 7. The point of contention about XP was that 64 bit XP isn't supported as its based on a server kernel and doesn't behave enough like 32bit XP to allow for unified support across both versions.

[StoneCypher]

> It appears to me (again, just my opinion) that some ppl don't really want help

Yes, because a few people aren't interested in individual forum help with a game that's catastrophically buggy, most of whom are engaging in "it doesn't happen to me therefore it doesn't happen," then clearly they came to the forum to ask the company for a correctly functioning product because they *don't* want help.

Totally makes sense.

> Most of the comments pasted by Stone about MP I would agree with, but there were a couple of things just not true, like not being able to save MP games.

Save of multiplayer games came in patch 3. It's an old post. You still can't open multiplayer saves without moving and renaming files; to pretend that the save system is complete is deeply disingenuous, especially after saying something is "just not true" when it was at the time of writing, and without knowledge of trivia that the software doesn't document, remains in essence true today. Because really, save without load is meaningful save. Really.