the graphics are also horrible
Wait, what?
Civilization V
What are you talking about? How can you say that?
I play in DirectX 9 because I run on XP
Oh, thats why.
Just saying, if you play the game/demo on Windows XP or just DirectX 9, the game will not allow you to choose settings higher than "medium". It requires DirectX 10 to go any higher up, and DirectX 11 (with a DX11-working GPU) in order to go to the highest with tessellation (which looks REALLY awesome on the terrain).
The game itself is very fun, I love it and can't stop playing. My only irk is that the game is subject to many crashes and I am 100% suspecting its the game's coding having some incompatibility with my hardware.