Atma Xplorer

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Civilization V skip Intro Movie

After installing Civilization V, the Intro Movie will be the biggest headache that you’ll encounter. Why? There’s virtually no way to stop it (short of hitting CTRL + ALT + DELETE) from running it’s full length if you don’t have a powerful enough computer. The reason you can’t skip the cinematics is because the game is still loading which is why it can’t respond to your frantic hits on the ESC key. So how do you skip Civilization 5’s intro movie? Here’s how.

  • Browse the following directory: My Documents\My Games\ Sid Meier’s Civilization 5
  • Find the file called “UserSettings.ini”.
  • Once the file is open, find the “SkipIntroVideo” setting which is set to 0. (You can use CTRL + F to find it fast)
  • Set “SkipIntroVideo” to 1 and the intro should not come up when you start the game anymore.

The only drawback is that upon launching the game, all you get to see you see is a blackscreen because the game is still loading. Still, that’s a reasonable alternative than having a cinematic that you can’t escape at.

If you’re experiencing Civilization 5 crashes, please refer to my more complete guide: Fixing Civilization 5 crashes.

PS: I was supposed to post a Currently Playing: Civilization V write up but I ended up playing the game for more than 20 hrs >_>. It’s addicting. Be warned.

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Comments ( 17 )

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  1. ljvc Jake September 26, 2010 Reply

    Thank you for that, I was getting really sick of looking at that old face for 30 seconds EVERY time I loaded the game. Also, I wonder if it loads faster since it needs not load the video.

    • hugemoron dude October 16, 2010 Reply

      Seriously… what happened to the civ i loved? Well i love this one but seriously, the practical touches are missing. (skipping the intro as one) thank you for the write up. If only they had a hot nekked chick for the intro. i don’t think many of us would complain.

  2. public.bpm Jerome September 28, 2010 Reply

    Many thanks from me to!

    Now. Off. To. Work…. Must. Stop. Playing………

  3. hellfire truthmonger September 29, 2010 Reply

    WTF is wrong with these game companies? Its 2010, and we’re going BACKWARDS in game design. Forced online services? Forced internet for single player games? UNSKIPPABLE INTROS???? And an incredibly buggy and unfinished product to boot! Sure makes bittorrent seem attractive – I’m not gonna reward half-baked products like this. I took my copy of Civ V back, that’s how bad the experience was. At best I’ll mess around with a pirate copy for a bit, and probably end up deleting it in a couple days when I get sick of the bugs/crashes.

    • crash_and_burn_link Mud November 27, 2010 Reply

      They don’t force you to be online. The game will launch through Steam but you don’t need to be connected for single player.

  4. ericjbloom Eric October 3, 2010 Reply

    Have to sadly say truthmonger isn’t far off. I played 2k’s Civ Revolution on consoles and it was “powered by GameSpy” also. I had constant problems with matchmaking and just all out drops – cant save online games…..
    They didn’t support that game, yet, next I played Mafia 2 which had a portion that I could not beat because of a missing graphic or something that 98% of the time crashed my Playstation. So who’s to think that this resource hog of a game that can’t run smoothly on a 3500$ computer is worth paying for? I am going back to GameFly on my console and not get burned for crud PC games. No wonder the only PC games out three are Farmville and MMO’s.

  5. jshandorf JS October 4, 2010 Reply

    When I first installed the game on my laptop I had a few odd crashes and then after the patch it crashed ALOT. I ended up installing the new nVidia video drivers and the drivers for my Reltek built in sound chipset. After I did that the game runs great and I get no crashes at all. My only complaint was the non-skipable into movie. Now that is solved.

  6. mer mer October 6, 2010 Reply

    Oh God thank you.

  7. jer_fouts milkman October 6, 2010 Reply

    I so glad you techie guys got our backs,appreciate the info!

  8. foo Drew October 11, 2010 Reply

    Many thanks, this was driving me crazy and you are #1 in google for it!

  9. n_shay Shay October 16, 2010 Reply

    Thanks dude!

  10. lux.ind Lux November 27, 2010 Reply

    Haven’t ever had a crash.

    Love civ 5 … a lot.

    Haven’t played it multiplayer yet.. so that might suck — dunno.

    Yes, the intro being unskippable out of the box was annoying as all hell.. but I think the game kicks ass – at least single player – can’t comment otherwise. My comp is a rigged together piece of crap with a decent graphics card.. not sure why your comps crash playing the game.

    Now that the intro doesn’t play I really don’t have a complaint. – after reading everyone’s griping about it, I just felt I should point out.. everyone doesn’t feel that way – it’s a great game and incredibly improved over civ 4

  11. a Alex February 12, 2011 Reply

    Wow thank you A LOT

  12. meh Meh April 23, 2011 Reply

    Good game.

    Stupid into video.

    Thanks for the fix

  13. unca.alby UncaAlby May 9, 2011 Reply

    “There’s virtually no way to stop it (short of hitting CTRL + ALT + DELETE) from running it’s full length if you don’t have a powerful enough computer.”

    I have a dual-processor AMD 5200 with 2G ram with 7200rpm hard drives, and a brand new ATI graphics card (required to even play the game).

    Just how much power am I supposed to have?

    I’m getting a little tired of needing to shell out gobs of money for brand new equipment every time I want to play a new game. At some point, I AM going to need to buy food and pay rent.

    Thank you for this tip. I’m going to try it out first thing.

    • andrew Andrew June 6, 2011 Reply

      I doubt CPU or video card will matter much, when the game is loading from your HDD. Maybe if you had a new SSD drive, that might help….

      Anyways, I hate how Civ V is so unpolished. For example you can’t drag the square in the minimap, only click.

  14. captkeebz captkeebz June 11, 2011 Reply

    Thank you!

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