No BS Startup Guide

Sid Meier's Civilization V734 views12 favorites4 min readby Heckin' computerUpdated Aug 2, 2024View on Steam ↗

How to remove all intro vids, pop-ups & launcher

Heck, don't ya hate all the intro video lag and pop-ups trying to launch CIV 5? Well I used to, but then I arrow'd them to the knee. No more trouble ever since. Here's how I did it and you can too:

>> DON'T FORGET TO BACK UP YOUR FILES FIRST IF YOU WANT TO KEEP THEM AS-IS, OTHERWISE 'Verify' from Steam will put it back where it was 100% anyway

Go to G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V

(Or whereever G:\ stands in for where you have your Steam folder located in)

Delete all the *.wmv files. Namely:

Civ5_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wmv
Civ5_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv
Civ5_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wmv
Civ5_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wmv
Civ5_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wmv

Get rid of em. Done. That's part of it. Since this guide assumes you have all the expansion packs, you will want to get rid of these too in the Expansion folder area -

G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion
AND
G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion2

Those folders contain a series of WMA and WMV files that supplement the ones in the root (base CIV 5) folder;

Respectively;

Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wma
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wma
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wma
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wma
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_pl_PL.wma
Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_ru_RU.wma

then in the next folder

Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wma
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wma
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wma
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wma
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_pl_PL.wma
Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_ru_RU.wma

(A set in each, have to be deleted separately.)

Last but not least,

You'll want to modify your FrontEnd.lua located in G:\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\UI\FrontEnd\
to change this line to look like this:

--UIManager:QueuePopup( Controls.LegalScreen, PopupPriority.LegalScreen );

Namely, just add the two hyphens in front -- like that shown above and save. Do nothing else, that covers that one.

Next is EULA.lau located in G:\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\UI\FrontEnd\Modding

This one requires you change the first line's false to true and then removing two instances of double-hyphens later on following the 'UNCOMMENT THIS' text... I recommend simply copy-pasting the whole thing instead of the existing file contents since I've already done it for you here:

------------------------------------------------- -- EULA Screen ------------------------------------------------- g_HasAcceptedEULA = true; function OnAccept() g_HasAcceptedEULA = true; NavigateForward(); end -------------------------------------------------- -- Navigation Routines -------------------------------------------------- function NavigateBack() UIManager:DequeuePopup( ContextPtr ); end function NavigateForward() UIManager:DequeuePopup( ContextPtr ); UIManager:QueuePopup( Controls.ModsBrowser, PopupPriority.ModsBrowserScreen ); end -------------------------------------------------- -- Explicit Event Handlers -------------------------------------------------- ContextPtr:SetInputHandler(function(uiMsg, wParam, lParam) if uiMsg == KeyEvents.KeyDown then if wParam == Keys.VK_ESCAPE then NavigateBack(); end end return true; end); ContextPtr:SetShowHideHandler(function(isHide) --UNCOMMENT THIS BLOCK IF YOU WISH TO ONLY --SHOW THE EULA ONCE PER APPLICATION RUN if not isHide and g_HasAcceptedEULA then NavigateForward(); end if(not isHide and g_QueueEulaToHide) then NavigateBack(); end end); -- For now, we don't need to track any sort of acknowledgement of the policy. Controls.AcceptButton:RegisterCallback( Mouse.eLClick, OnAccept); Controls.DeclineButton:RegisterCallback( Mouse.eLClick, NavigateBack);

Now if you want an easy fix for all this, you could just modify my batch file FIXC5LD.BAT code to make it match your Steam directory. Since it spells out the files to be deleted and updated you can't do any harm unless you changed things OTHER than the 'G:\SteamLibrary' to whatever yours is. Even so it's basically fool-proof. Beginning FIXC5LD.BAT

@echo off cls Echo Degunking CIV 5 load-up process echo. echo. cd\ REM REM Make G:\ whatever drive letter the Steam library is on, then REPLACE ALL G:\SteamLibrary with your Steam folder's name instead in that drive in Notepad before running this REM G: cd G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V Del Civ5_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wmv Del Civ5_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv Del Civ5_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wmv Del Civ5_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wmv Del Civ5_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wmv cd\ echo. cd G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion\ Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wma Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wma Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wma Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wma Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_pl_PL.wma Del Civ5XP_Opening_Movie_ru_RU.wma cd\ echo. cd G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\DLC\Expansion2 Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_de_DE.wma Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_en_US.wmv Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_es_ES.wma Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_fr_FR.wma Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_it_IT.wma Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_pl_PL.wma Del Civ5XP2_Opening_Movie_ru_RU.wma cd\ echo. echo. echo. Echo Launching Notepads to open final files Echo Just drop in the custom code, save and exit. echo. Echo This one is Frontend.lua pause call notepad "G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\UI\FrontEnd\Frontend.lua" echo. echo. Echo This one is EULA.lua pause call notepad "G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\Assets\UI\FrontEnd\Modding\EULA.lua" echo. echo. Echo All done! pause

End FIXC5LD.BAT

Just copy in the code changes I mentioned above as each Notepad window opens, it's automated except for that since I don't want to run afoul of Steam's rules. Everything else is done for you if you use that .BAT file.

Launcher bypass:
Last but not least, right-click CIV 5, go to Properties and update the Command line to
"G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV.exe" %command%
For DX9
OR
"G:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization V\CivilizationV_DX11.exe" %command%

For DX11, where G:\ is whatever your game drive is.

Launch the game! Enjoy no nags or laggy intro videos!

PS I recommend setting 'No Reward Popups' as checked and 'Unit Cycling' unchecked/off for a maximum strat gaming experience.