mirceglavni
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2007
- Messages
- 6
Hi fellow civers,
Greetings from a future ex-civer, as I definitely had enough of this CRAPPY GAME!
Here is the story:
My system is a Athlon 64 2800+, Asrock K8 NF3Upgrade, 1 GB RAM. Until recently, I had an nForce 5500, and Civ4 BTS (the only game I still play at all) run very slowly (especially in the late stage of a game), but very stable. I always had my drivers fresh.
Then I (?) made a fatal mistake - I wanted this almost 3 years old game to let me play somewhat faster (giving units orders or promoting them took forever, as well as between turn waiting time).
So I bought a new graphics card. As my MB only supports AGP (not PCI-e), I carefully examined reviews, these forums and finally choose an ATI X1650Pro. Installed the hardware, drivers, fired up Civ4 BTS (all the latest patches installed). The game was blazing fast, I felt like in heaven! No lags, no problems. And then, the nightmare started. After appr. 1400 (all max graphic settings, on 1024x768 or whatever) I suddenly saw the monitor went black - as if the computer shut down the monitor (the PC did work). Tried Alt-Tab, Windows-menu key - nada. OK I thought, lets make a hard reset (I NEVER had to restart my system this way - WinXP Pro, SP2). Thought it was just some cosmic radiation, no big deal.
Tried it again - could play a few turnes more - and then again. and again. and again. It didn't crash at a specified event, just randomly. I searched the forums, tried all the tips - ini-file editing, putting Omega drivers instead of the ATI ones, set all settings to minimum - nothing did help. I also installed the static-leaderheads, edited the XMLs so that paper-tech didn't allow map-trading (thought that this would keep the memory requirements down)
The crashes didn't go always the same - sometimes the screen would just freeze, sometimes I could at least move the cursor around (hey, at least our cat had some fun trying to catch it on the monitor screen) or it would (eventually) produce some weird lines.
I figured that the graphic card was overheating, so I installed some 3d games from my brother (GTA Vice City, Air Conflicts). Played them a couple of hours at max-setting - no single crash.
After two weeks of troubleshooting, increasingly thinner nerves (according to my wife and working colleagues) I finally quit,deleted this peace of ..... (you know what) and threw the game to the cellar.
I am very dissapointed about Firaxis. When I see the forums, I see that a lot of people are having similar problems, and this 3 years after Civ4 came out. Is this the way they treat their PAYING customers?
Someone in the forum wrote that playing this game is very expensive. I agree with him. Bying the game, and bying additional hardware to be able to play it is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE.
OK, looks like I'm writing a novel here, so I'll just stop. If someone from Firaxis is reading this, here is my message:
YOU HAVE LOST A CUSTOMER. FOR FUTURE VERSION OF THIS CRAP, I WILL FIRST DOWNLOAD IT FROM SOME PIRATES-SITES, SEE IF IT IS ANY GOOD. IF IT IS, I WILL MAYBE DESIDE TO BUY THE GAME. STOP RELEASING UNTESTED PRODUCTS THAT DON'T WORK ON AN AVERAGE PC!
Bah, I had enough of this. 
Greetings from a future ex-civer, as I definitely had enough of this CRAPPY GAME!
Here is the story:
My system is a Athlon 64 2800+, Asrock K8 NF3Upgrade, 1 GB RAM. Until recently, I had an nForce 5500, and Civ4 BTS (the only game I still play at all) run very slowly (especially in the late stage of a game), but very stable. I always had my drivers fresh.
Then I (?) made a fatal mistake - I wanted this almost 3 years old game to let me play somewhat faster (giving units orders or promoting them took forever, as well as between turn waiting time).
So I bought a new graphics card. As my MB only supports AGP (not PCI-e), I carefully examined reviews, these forums and finally choose an ATI X1650Pro. Installed the hardware, drivers, fired up Civ4 BTS (all the latest patches installed). The game was blazing fast, I felt like in heaven! No lags, no problems. And then, the nightmare started. After appr. 1400 (all max graphic settings, on 1024x768 or whatever) I suddenly saw the monitor went black - as if the computer shut down the monitor (the PC did work). Tried Alt-Tab, Windows-menu key - nada. OK I thought, lets make a hard reset (I NEVER had to restart my system this way - WinXP Pro, SP2). Thought it was just some cosmic radiation, no big deal.
Tried it again - could play a few turnes more - and then again. and again. and again. It didn't crash at a specified event, just randomly. I searched the forums, tried all the tips - ini-file editing, putting Omega drivers instead of the ATI ones, set all settings to minimum - nothing did help. I also installed the static-leaderheads, edited the XMLs so that paper-tech didn't allow map-trading (thought that this would keep the memory requirements down)
The crashes didn't go always the same - sometimes the screen would just freeze, sometimes I could at least move the cursor around (hey, at least our cat had some fun trying to catch it on the monitor screen) or it would (eventually) produce some weird lines.
I figured that the graphic card was overheating, so I installed some 3d games from my brother (GTA Vice City, Air Conflicts). Played them a couple of hours at max-setting - no single crash.
After two weeks of troubleshooting, increasingly thinner nerves (according to my wife and working colleagues) I finally quit,deleted this peace of ..... (you know what) and threw the game to the cellar.
I am very dissapointed about Firaxis. When I see the forums, I see that a lot of people are having similar problems, and this 3 years after Civ4 came out. Is this the way they treat their PAYING customers?
Someone in the forum wrote that playing this game is very expensive. I agree with him. Bying the game, and bying additional hardware to be able to play it is WAY TOO EXPENSIVE.
OK, looks like I'm writing a novel here, so I'll just stop. If someone from Firaxis is reading this, here is my message:
YOU HAVE LOST A CUSTOMER. FOR FUTURE VERSION OF THIS CRAP, I WILL FIRST DOWNLOAD IT FROM SOME PIRATES-SITES, SEE IF IT IS ANY GOOD. IF IT IS, I WILL MAYBE DESIDE TO BUY THE GAME. STOP RELEASING UNTESTED PRODUCTS THAT DON'T WORK ON AN AVERAGE PC!
Bah, I had enough of this.
