Talk:Sid Meier's Civilization V

Originally, Game of The Year had a long, detailed section explaining all the different features. Last night I shortened it to a single line under Availability. Looking at some other articles, I found some good examples of highlighting a preferred version of the game (and Game of The Year is as close to complete as you can get right now). So I restored Game of The Year to its own section, although it is much shorter than before. Any suggestions? Did it work better as a single line, or does the key point summary of the version work better?

Examples:

This is the one line version from last night:

Game of The Year Edition contains all DLC except Korea and Wonders of The Ancient World. It also includes a digital soundtrack. It does not include the Gods and Kings expansion.

And this is the newest edit:

Game of The Year Edition

This is the recommended version of Civilization V.

Contains most DLC and a bonus digital soundtrack.

Does not contain Korea or Wonders of The Ancient World DLC.

Does not include Gods and Kings expansion.

The Gods and Kings part is emphasized because I got tired of people asking about it. A lot of people seem to think Game of The Year includes it.

Since this has now been tagged as needing cleanup, I'm looking it over again (seems we did this last year too). Any specifics on what needs tweaked, removed, added, or completely revised?

The new infobox doesn't support expansions, they will be removed.

{{infobox
|title          = Civilization V: Gods & Kings
|cover          = Civilization v gods kings cover.jpg
|developer      = [[Wikipedia:Firaxis Games|Firaxis Games]]
|publisher      = [[Wikipedia:2K Games|2K Games]]
|engine         = 
|release dates  = June 19, 2012
}}

{{infobox
|title          = Civilization V: Brave New World
|developer      = [[Wikipedia:Firaxis Games|Firaxis Games]]
|publisher      = [[Wikipedia:2K Games|2K Games]]
|engine         = 
|release dates  = July 9, 2013
}}

Noticed a few changes on here I'm a bit concerned about.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Civilization_V#Improving_waiting_time_between_turns shows a tweak of replacing a dll file. I've heard about this, but never tried it, but I don't know the source of this file.

There's a version on CivFanatics, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=399635 that has been updated and has worked with some mod designers to help compatibility.

http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Civilization_V#Nebuchadnezzar_DLC_causing_errors

There's a lot of problems here. The problem here is really a bad file, which would likely be fixed with the other troubleshooting steps, or by deleting the file and verifying the game cache. Following the instructions as written might break the game, because improperly editing the xml can cause problems.

So it should either clarify what part to edit (I still don't recommend this), or have the file be reacquired through verifying.

Edit: I rewrote this to avoid problems with the Civ5Pkg file, which would have required additional fixes to undo if something went wrong.

Since it is not quite officially announced that Gold Edition is being released, I plan to update this with info on it as soon as it is available. If I'm not able to, this is what I have in mind, adding this under the Game of The Year entry:

=== Gold Edition ===

{{++}} Contains all Game of The Year content, Gods and Kings, Wonders of The Ancient World, and Korea.

{{++}} Most complete version.

So if someone gets here first (only once it is released), that's ready to go in the article.

This page was started several months ago, and uses an older formatting. I have adapted it as needed to make it easier to read. Earlier today I started working on making it match the sample article and other existing articles, however I find that formatting to be somewhat wrong for this page. With the massive amount of bugs and fixes, having all those bright, oversized boxes will actually defeat the purpose of making fixes easier to find, in my opinion. So, any ideas on how to make this more of an appropriate PCGW article without losing clarity?

Also, while I understand the reasoning for separating fixed issues with unresolved issues, with a game like Civ V where there are just so many issues, some resolves, some not, that creating a separation will probably make the fixes harder to find. I prefer the category system I put in place.

Finally, since the samples have the external links listed at the top of the page (not sure why), do they need to be listed redundantly at the bottom?

Not entirely sure what you're referring to by bright, oversized boxes but if you're referring to the fix boxes then they're supposed to make instructions easier to read and in turn easier to follow. Fix boxes should only be used if there's actually a definitive way to fix something and is structured properly. You can also leave out some general information/fixes that are not applicable directly to the game as this information is redundant and would most likely be served better if it was in the Steam (for example windows xp troubleshooting) article or the relevant article if it isn't already.

Regarding splitting unresolved issues and fixed issues, don't - if there'a fixed issue you can state why this may not be applicable to some or how effective the method is at working. Unless there's an absolute definitive unresolved issue that's only when you should put it under unresolved issues as I can understand your concern of splitting issues up. We don't want to confuse the reader so if you absolutely must split them up then just make a reference to it further down with a link so it's easy for the reader just to click on and be straight into the information for the specific fix he was looking up.

You could also leave some irrelevant information out like going in-depth into alternative versions, if you see what I did for Need for Speed: Most Wanted I just simply stated there's an alternative version and a reference to information regarding that version which could be applied in the same way here. There's quite a bit this article needs to do to conform to the standards, but regarding the links at the bottom simply remove them, make references if they're applicable or fit them into the top of the page. I could have a go at the page to clean it up a little bit if you would like as I can see you're pretty dedicated to this page.

It actually is a little strange to me that I've overtaken this article over the last several months, not quite my intention. I do like to keep it on course and up to date, but I welcome other editors. If you want to comb over it, feel free. I would just hate to lose some useful information in the process.

I as a rule try not to remove other people's edits or contributions without good reason, hence leaving some of the excess troubleshooting steps. I actually don't think they are that useful. I simply didn't want to remove existing information for no reason.

I do feel it's important to show the different versions, mainly because a lot of people have been confused by the "Game of The Year" edition. Many people seem to believe it contains Gods and Kings (where they get that idea, I can't say), and also believe it contains all DLC. I suppose this could be shortened to say "The Game of The Year Edition contains all DLC except Korea and Wonders of The Ancient World. It does not include Gods and Kings." I do want to keep a mention of the Campaign Edition, simply to note it is not compatible with the other versions. I mean, the point of this article to is keep confusion to a minimum (and sowing confusion is something Civ V is good at...).

I understand the point of fix boxes, as I said, but I don't like the appearance of them. I don't think plain text is perfect, either. Right now this article is very wordy and detailed, and I think putting a lot of fix boxes in would only make that worse.

I would recommend, however, that any drastic changes that would affect people finding information on this page wait a short time, particularly with the "Issues with version whatever" part. A new patch was just released, and I have noticed people referring/linking/quoting that section to sort out bugs introduced in the last few days. Keeping that intact would be helpful for the Civ community, for the next few days at least. As far as I'm concerned, that is the most important part of the page right now.

As for whether fixes may not be applicable...I don't believe there is a single fix on here that applies to everyone. Most of them work, but they all have shown exceptions...this is a very buggy game, and it seems like the community is holding it together with patchwork.

I will look around at other articles to get a better feel for the current layout (it keeps changing on me!).

Removing ineffective or irrelevant information is a natural part of any wiki website, if it's been made redundant since when it was added it should go. As long as you state why in your edit and unless they counter it saying it's valid then there's no issue. Just give your best shot at trying to make it clear and concise, which is what the sample article is trying to help especially with fix boxes. As I said before only core instructions should go in fix boxes to help with being clear and concise, you can keep lengthy detailed text outside but if the reader is looking for a specific fix he/she doesn't want to have to have to go through tons of text when he/she is just looking for a simple resolution. You can easily keep ifs and buts using

.

So I've started taking a hatchet to the article as it was. Any input on how it's coming along?

Looks great, when you're done with for now let me know and I'll make it look slightly more presentable. Good job.

Okay, I'm done for now. I think I was a bit wrong about the boxes, they aren't bad when used right.

It's far longer to modify than I initially thought. This will take some time, for the meantime continue editing it as you would like and I'll eventually get around to sprucing it up.

Thanks both for looking at this page. I've had a go with a small section on overheating, if I have time I'll do more later. I'm hoping that I can demonstrate the effectiveness of the icons and boxes which I developed to make pages easier to scan - they reduce the need to for long sentences like 'there is a fix developed here', 'this workaround take the following steps' or 'the advantage to this fix is that..' etc.

Overheating looks pretty good. Shows me what needs done with some of the other sections.

At this time, recent patches have broken the game, facilitating the need for a section specific to these patches. It's a useful section to have at the moment. As time goes on, however, these issues will need to be organized into other sections, to make correcting the problems easier for people. I have already started this by moving Steam Workshop errors to their own section, even though they are introduced with the June patch. As additional patches are released, resolved bugs will need to be pruned and rather than repeatedly appending more version numbers to the section, the section will need to be dropped one day. I will try to keep an eye on this and make necessary changes...but this is the direction I am going for...but for now, I think it's important to have this section, with all the recent bugs in one place.

And of course, if this kind of patching tragedy ever happens again, a new version of this section would need to make a comeback...

I have finally removed this section, as it has served its purpose. Now the newest patch introduced more bugs, so I might add a new section similar to the one I removed.