Patch 1.09 released!

Well... the game seems to load just as fast initially and when building worlds loading games, not slower but not faster either. No new bugs so far.

The game turns seem to go by faster and the map seems to scroll smoother.

The bink movies run even worse than before. Previously the sound would skip periodically while playing but the video itself ran smooth and fine. Now the whole thing skips, both video and sound, and if anything it skips even more (not if anything, it skips alot more).

The worst thing is... the very first time I ran the game and played through the bink movies ran perfectly fine with no skipping only after quiting the first night and coming back did they start to skip and now the patch makes it worse! ARG.

For those of us with ATI cards that needed to unpak the art0.fpk file back to get the game to run, do we need to undo this fix to see the performance gains?

If so, is there an easy way to do this without re-installing? I.E. what files do we delete that were unpaked. I assume we would then re-run the patch to get the updated art0.fpk file?

Perhaps someone at T2/Firaxis could write a small batch file to delete these files...heck I could do it if I had the exact file list...to make it easier for those who are pc challenged.

a BT seed for those need it

http://12club.cn/bt/fetch.asp?ISZNN

Damn 5.00 am and there's a new patch ..no sleep for the obsessive

Torrent doesn't work for me, but the rapidshare download is at 80% anyway

Edit: Spoke too soon. Rapidshare download failed right after I posted. Oh well, trying the civfanatic one next.

vmxa said:

Some body need to suggest they make these patches so you can get only the new stuff. 23.6 MB for each one?

That puts a strain on all bandwidth for DL sites with so many customers. I would have thought they could have made it much smaller for those with 1.08 already.

Click to expand...

Nowadays, 23.6mb isn't all that much for a patch. I do feel bad for those who are on dial up, but games like Battlefield 2 and many others routinely release patches of 100-250mb in size.

oldStatesman said:

For those of us with ATI cards that needed to unpak the art0.fpk file back to get the game to run, do we need to undo this fix to see the performance gains?

Click to expand...

I have an ATI Radeon 9550 and had to do the manual fix when I installed the game. Since using the patch, I have seen a noticeable increase in performance as well as a cure to my CTD issues.

For me,this was a successful patch. There are surely other issues to deal with, but at least we've got a stable game to play for the time being.

Oblivious said:

I have an ATI Radeon 9550 and had to do the manual fix when I installed the game. Since using the patch, I have seen a noticeable increase in performance as well as a cure to my CTD issues.

Click to expand...

Thnaks...another poster in another thread said the opposite.

I am noticing an increase in page file usage over what I had pre-patch. Hence my concern that the unpaked files are now a drain on performance with the new code.

My biggest issue was constant CTD though...so as long as those are gone I'll be a happy camper.

Cytadc said:

Well... the game seems to load just as fast initially and when building worlds loading games, not slower but not faster either. No new bugs so far.

The game turns seem to go by faster and the map seems to scroll smoother.

The bink movies run even worse than before. Previously the sound would skip periodically while playing but the video itself ran smooth and fine. Now the whole thing skips, both video and sound, and if anything it skips even more (not if anything, it skips alot more).

[..]

Click to expand...

same over here!
me huge map is going a little faster, but not much.
scrolling is now possible. thats a big step forward!
i think it'll be the first time, i can finish a map by winnig and not just quiting 'cause of the lags
at least no crashes, black terain, etc for me so far *crossing fingers*

it's about time.... thank you..... and happy thankgiving to all.....

I was fortunate to have a pretty bug free Civ4 experience prior to installing the patch, but now the game seems to take longer to load and crashed while returning to the main menu from a game. Never did that before! I hope it's a one shot deal .

MookieNJ said:

I was fortunate to have a pretty bug free Civ4 experience prior to installing the patch, but now the game seems to take longer to load and crashed while returning to the main menu from a game. Never did that before! I hope it's a one shot deal .

Click to expand...

Just a reminder to those who were not having problems before...have you updated your video drivers etc? Those of us who were having issues had to do all that stuff...since you all were not, you may not have done this. The patch may be more sensitive to the newer drivers...not trying to be a smartace here, sincerely trying to be helpful.

I still have the black terrain problem...only new thing now is that I can see the leaderhead animation, naturally useless improvement though. Movie lag still persists. I have just one question...what in the world is wrong with the designers???

I shared my 1.09 experience in another thread without realising that there is already a long thread going on here. Repro-ing...

My son and I have been playing Civilization IV, version 1.00 on 2 brand new computers that we bought from Costco. One is a HP Pavillion Model a1123 and the other is a Gateway 836GM. Both are fast machines, costing about $1,400 each, and we have Comcast as an ISP. We were able to enjoy playing LAN Civ4 games for a week, with fast frame rates and good movies. No problem prior to the patch.

We downloaded the patch 1.09 this evening. My Gateway machine runs Civ4 now with a message that says "Your machine is below minimum specification. Civ4 will not run on this hardware setup.". The movies were now slow and choppy. My son's HP Pavillion *cannot* even launch Civ4 now, so we are no longer able to play multiplayer games on the LAN. He has a 4 day weekend with no school, and we were looking at spending fun time together... now he is totally disappointed.

Our only option to have fun this weekend is to uninstall patch 1.09. Contrary to any "mistaken believe", there is no easy way to uninstall the patch without totally uninstalling Civilization and reinstalling it from scratch. You cannot uninstall the patch from the Civ4 disk, or right clicking on the menu bar when you invoke "Start\All Program\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV". You have to do it in the control panel, using "Add/Remove Programs". Furthermore the only related entry in Add/Revmove Program is "Sid Meier's Civilization IV", the patches do no appear, so you cannot uninstall just the patch alone. To get our civilization working, we have to delete the entire Civilization IV game, and then reinstall it on both machines. This is a whole lot of trouble.

To add insult to injury, while we were uninstalling Civ 4 from my machine, it frozed. I guess it froze in the middle of uninstallation, and put my machine in a weird "limbo state". This is because I can no longer install Civilization IV from the installation disk because it only has "PLAY" on it. Furthermore, I cannot uninstall Civilization IV now, because the entry in Control Panel "Add/Remove Program" is gone. After a lot of poking around, I finally found a technical solution. I have to use "Regedit" to physically remove the Civilization IV entry so that I can reinstall Civilization IV version 1.00 on my machine again.

The whole 1.09 patch experience is a NIGHTMARE. I took us close to 3 hours to get the patch 1.09 out of both machines, so that we can enjoy playing Civilization 1.00 again. Just my 2 cents.

YES!!! YES!!!
I must have worked to fix my Cheshire Cat/Black Terrain problems for at least 10 hours when the game got here. This patch was my last hope, and it solved both of those critical problems! Thank you, Firaxis. I was worried that we lowly laptop users would be left out. And when you have to have your pre-ordered copy shipped to South Korea, you really double cross your fingers hoping that first patch is going to get it going.

Ah, sweet social life, I hardly knew ye...

OK, I have the Direct-2-Drive software. I pay the same price as everybody else, the game says it is the same as everybody else. Why do they make a patch that excludes me?

I tried uninstalling and re-installing completely, I even swam upstream at FilePlanet and dowloaded a 111MB 'hotfix' that they failed to mention when I got the game in the first place. None of it works, the patch still refuses to install.

Moderator Action: ASorry - but the patch is more than just an .exe, and we can't conden it be distributed like that anyway. Please just wait for D2D to catch-up.

@ Argpmait

The problem with the Gateway may be that it uses Integrated Intel GMA950 onboard graphics subsystem. My guess is the game as patched now detects it as not compatible and lowers the video settings to compenstae.

From

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1697,1821806,00.asp

To put it mildly, it's no contest. To put it more bluntly, it's a complete and total rout for the GMA950, with the possible exception of the CPU-intensive Flight Simulator 2004. Even then, what you get is playable frame rates, but the GeForce 6800TC still crushes the GMA950. The verdict is even worse when you realize the GMA950 wouldn't even run Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory or Painkiller, even though the specs of the GPU suggests they should. Intel has acknowledged a driver bug with regards to Chaos Theory. But if this is any indication of the potential compatibility issues users may encounter, running games on the new core is a dubious prospect.... <snip>

Final Thoughts and What to Buy
We can state flatly that if you buy a system using Intel's GMA950 integrated graphics and want to play 3D games, invest at least $60 in an add-on card. If what you want is simply a system that can run standard office software, plus maybe play some DVD movies, then Intel's new graphics core is probably suitable.

Click to expand...

Argpmait said:

Our only option to have fun this weekend is to uninstall patch 1.09. Contrary to any "mistaken believe", there is no easy way to uninstall the patch without totally uninstalling Civilization and reinstalling it from scratch. You cannot uninstall the patch from the Civ4 disk, or right clicking on the menu bar when you invoke "Start\All Program\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization IV".

Click to expand...

You should be able to undo the patch using System Restore (under Accessories, System Tools).

A lot of interesting changes with this version.

My computer is not of a very good sort (1 GHz, 256 MB SDRAM...ATI video card), and I assumed the "skipping sound" thing was due to my performance problems. With this patch, however, all is relieved! The video was running horribly slow before, it seems, and the audio was simply waiting to catch up. The wonder videos used to take about 40 seconds apiece...thought they were just long. Now they run at "normal" speed (seems like 15-20 seconds?), but a lot choppier.

BUGS galore, though! Woah, I've never run into so many (very minor) bugs. I managed to convince ol' Mao to have not one, but TWO Open Borders with me while reneging some gpt deal. The Jewish Chinese also somehow graciously allowed my Buddhist Mongolian civilization to have line of sight into all their cities. I loaded an autosave after forgetting about a very ready catapult who would help the odds against my 5.8 - 5.25 modded attack, and my graphics card read no input/civ crashed (a first for me...).

Anyone else experiencing anything similar?

Anyone have problem with no music?

oldStatesman said:

@ Argpmait

The problem with the Gateway may be that it uses Integrated Intel GMA950 onboard graphics subsystem. My guess is the game as patched now detects it as not compatible and lowers the video settings to compenstae.

Click to expand...

I get the "below min spec message too" (heck my pc's 2 months old! So go figure) but it runs fine...it tries to set the graphical settings to min..but I just turn them up to all maxxed using "options menu" (and ignore the "you will need to restart the game for these settings to take place" message ..you dont ..just start the game).

I hardly ever moan, but I'm afraid this is just programming not thought through properly....

But anyways , performance seems slightly improved..first graphical change I noted , is that resources i.e. pigs, cows etc now only animate WITHIN sight of your borders or one of your units. Suppose this will save some lag..and the "ground to globe" scroll is a lot smoother..anyways back to playing..

Laters..


EDIT:- In fact it was bugging me, so if you want to change it , go into Civ IV config settings file and change line

HideMinSpecWarning = 0

to

HideMinSpecWarning = 1

and it won't do it anymore