Like the rest of us who enjoyed playing Civ from the first release, I've been looking forward to this fourth version. By now this enthausiasm has come to a frustrating hault and now I have come to a point that I am ready to return the game to you and demand my money back. This is not something I do lightly, or unfounded, but this game you have created is simply inmensly faulted.
Let me give you a little insight in the reasons that led me to writing this.
The Upside:
The Graphics are very pretty. The angle on zoom is great and entertaining, as are the animations of unit actions. Very nice wonder animations as well.
The Downside:
GAMEPLAY (allthough no reason for refund, I included it anyway)
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The interface is very chaotic, compared to the previous versions of CIV. Miniscule little icons with some very important functions. All together not very clear. The city screen most of all...
Sometimes when you want to add something to the buildinglist in the cityscreen it adds the item, sometimes it replaces the item that was already in the list, Why???
The Icons and catagories in the building qeue are not very practical. Just the names on the list is so much easier.
Loading a building list also seems to result in a reverse list... If you want to built a: grocer - market - supermarket, they will end up in reverse on the cities list... Sure I understand that you might not need to built a grocer and market once you can built a supermarket... But why shouldn't I...???
By the way... Why isn't there a Select all button for the list???
The game keeps recommending I built, (or even auto-built) a warrior... Even though much better units are available. Also it keeps recommending I built, (or even auto-built) military units... Even though I selected to be a pacifist state.
Allthough I have plenty of money I can't seem to offer cash with my offer of rice for Ivory in the tradescreen... Annoying. I can only trade goods for goods science for science, etc... Why...? Used to be better. Makes the trading very restricted. Not really fun to do anymore.
I'd like to auto save to a specific directory. Not the default window directory, but every time I have to look up the directory I want from the initial directory shown by the save menu. Highly annoying...
Jumping back to the unit selected by the game as "next to move" is a horror. Example: If you want to move a couple of units first (who for instance were fortified in one city), and thusly interrupt the games set order of moving units, you again and again have to look up the city to select the next unit there, cause the game keeps jumping back to the unit it selected before. If the player interrupts the set order, it needs to stay interrupted, or only continue with the set order when indicated by the player. All together this game turns somewhat annoying because of the fact that everything in this game wants to jump back to some pre-selected, or start position... Makes you have to do ten times the work needed. The user is left with a very labour intensive control on selection and actions that need repeating for more cities or units.
THECHNICAL (This is where the real pain begins)
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It's an unacceptable unstable game. It continuously crashes for a great number of reasons. By using <ALT + TAB>.
On loading the game it freezes a lot, even with saved games. And loading takes forever, even though I meet all the system requirements easy.
Video really slows down to a frame for frame motion after a while, (usually this means it's gonna freeze up soon).
Regular crashes because of: "the nv_4 display driver stopped working normally", according to windows. (the only time I ever got an error message, the rest is just freeze and guess).
The game continuously halts for up to 2 minutes, because of... (loading, calculating, headache... Who the hell knows...?).
Continuous crashes on start of wonder movies.
These problems mentioned above occur lots more when I select a Big world, instead of a small world at the beginning of the game.
The latest f.ck up? The game simply won't draw the world. My units and cities float in a totally black screen. Funny but utterly useless.
Motivation to demand a refund.
- My System defenately fills the requirements, easy. Still... The game is one big collection of crashes. So, find another excuse, write a serious patch, or recall this game and give mye my money back. You know the reseller won't give me a refund. It's not their policy.
- The fixes... Any solutions for those of us who are not computer wizzkids ? You can't expect your customers to dig around in their PC's to solve these kinds of bugs... I mean, the fixes mentioned in the OS Update section on the official support forum are rediculous. That's High Tech computer stuff. No normal person knows what to do with that and if they would try, it will probably result in serious damage to their system, leaving me wondering if I shouldn't sue for damages.
- Driver Updates... Tried several of them. None of them resolve anything. Just spinned me into a total new dimension of "Pissed off"...
Tried unistalling the game and graphic drivers. Then re-installing the game before re-installing the driver... The result... The game now crashes every ten minutes, instead of every five minutes. Whooptyf.ckin'doo...
- DirectX Update... Guess we all know that DirectX won't accept anything but the latest version, once it's installed, so no results here.
- System Settings... Honestly, I haven't tried all of 'm yet, cause this suggestion will keep you starting up your PC and loading the game for the BETTER PART OF A WEEK...! And some of us do have jobs...
- Virtual Memory... Again one of those suggestions that will f.ck up a PC beyond believe for those who don't know what their doing.
- Game Settings... No, that won't work... Put everything on "LOW" and the game just crashes five minutes later. We shouldn't have to do that anyway, if we have a system that meets the requirements, right?
- Render Error Fix... "Download the latest Video drivers - ATI / Nvidia / S3 - do not install yet!". I'm sorry, but windows does that automatically. I can remove/delete all drivers I want and windows will install them all back as soon as I restart. Anybody else got this problem...???
- The art pack didn't fix anything for me. It just says: "Can't load Art0.FPK".
- Cleared the cash (C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\My Games\Civilization IV\cache), guess what...? My saved games went missin' too... Good suggestion dudes...!!!
- Rivatuner and nVHardPage... What exactly are you supposed to do with those... Any suggestions a human being can understand...
- SafeDisk4 Fix, Admin Permissions, Hardware Conflicts, New User Account,Other Measures... C'mon, now you're just fishing...
In short... Nothing got solved and I am loosing interest in this game... It's just too frustrating. It's a bit like driving a car of which you need to pump up 4 tires, charge the battery, fill up oil, water and gas first, every time you want to take a drive. You'd soon take the bicycle.
Final word to all forum visitors who read this... If you have a solution would be great. Repeating the fixlist is useless, I already tried all of 'm. Just disagreeing and posting some stupid remarks is equally useless, just portrais your character... I still want to play this (what could have been) great game and hope that a Patch comes soon to solve the bulk of these problems.
Right now I wouldn't recommend buying this game, no matter how good it looks.
