So what about players who love civilization but rarely have a PC that can handle it?

Immortal Ace

Prince
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I for one was lucky as hell in having a PC that could handle Civ4 when it came out. I spend money on all the new consoles because I know any game released for it will work unlike a PC which will be obsolete within a year and half and can no longer play the new games.

Am I to be screwed because I can't afford a top of the line PC every 1 1/2 years to two years? It has nothing to do with laziness, as such have ignorantly stated but one of finances. I don't know about anyone else, but I can say for myself that I am less reluctant on forking over hundreds on a machine that can play games for the course of it's cycle life than a machine that can, at best, play games for a year or two before I need to buy another one.
 
the Civ development team have always had this problem when designing civ pc games, thats one of the reasons they were happy about making a console game for a change, you can really get the full potential out the game as you know what system every person is using.

When making civ games, they have to build the game on a balance, on making the game look and feel much better, without alienating all the civ fans who have shoddy computers.
 
Dunno. Maybe they should look and see how blizzard does it? Blizzard games have normally done well at playing on older, crappier systems while still looking good on newer system. Before I bought this current computer, I was playing World of Warcraft just fine on a computer that was 5+ years old. (It wouldn't have run civ4 which is why I never purchased it). Granted I can play with higher setting on my new computer when I run WoW, but it still ran fine on the old computer.
 
Dunno. Maybe they should look and see how blizzard does it? Blizzard games have normally done well at playing on older, crappier systems while still looking good on newer system. Before I bought this current computer, I was playing World of Warcraft just fine on a computer that was 5+ years old. (It wouldn't have run civ4 which is why I never purchased it). Granted I can play with higher setting on my new computer when I run WoW, but it still ran fine on the old computer.

EA does a fairly decent job on this with The Sims games on PC too...
 
:confused: Civ4s minimum requirements are pretty low; 1.2 Ghz processor, 256MB RAM, 64MB Video card, and 1.7GB free hard drive space. A top of the line PC should last ~5 years with minimal upgrades.
 
Civ4 runs very poorly with the minimum requirements (large/huge maps unplayable usually).

Alot of this could have been fixed by giving an option for 2D graphics rather then 3D.
 
Civ4 runs very poorly with the minimum requirements (large/huge maps unplayable usually).

Alot of this could have been fixed by giving an option for 2D graphics rather then 3D.

If you don't want to play a 3D Civ, then stick to Civ III
 
If you don't want to play a 3D Civ, then stick to Civ III

Thanks for missing the entire point of my post which was they could have done a better job making civ4 work better on older computers. It's no longer an issue for me because I can play civ4 on huge maps with no problems whatsoever, with no waiting in-between turns on my current comp. However, for many people this isn't the case and they can't even play on huge or sometimes even large maps.

I'll assume reading comprehension isn't one of your strong points, but trolling is.
 
yeah, that would have been a REALLY good option.........
 
Thanks for missing the entire point of my post which was they could have done a better job making civ4 work better on older computers. It's no longer an issue for me because I can play civ4 on huge maps with no problems whatsoever, with no waiting in-between turns on my current comp. However, for many people this isn't the case and they can't even play on huge or sometimes even large maps.

I'll assume reading comprehension isn't one of your strong points, but trolling is.

Giving Civ4 an option for 2D graphics would of been too much work just to implement something that people will stop using after a couple of years.

It's those kind of suggestions that come from people who've never actually had to design a game. Imagine how much work it would put on the graphic designers if they had to make two sets of graphics. And the modders wouldn't be much better off, mods like FFH2 and VD would of taken twice as long is they needed to make two sets of graphics.

You might as well of asked for a button that turns the game into Civ3.
 
Giving Civ4 an option for 2D graphics would of been too much work just to implement something that people will stop using after a couple of years.

It's those kind of suggestions that come from people who've never actually had to design a game. Imagine how much work it would put on the graphic designers if they had to make two sets of graphics. And the modders wouldn't be much better off, mods like FFH2 and VD would of taken twice as long is they needed to make two sets of graphics.

You might as well of asked for a button that turns the game into Civ3.

Giving 2D graphics as an option was only a suggestion. Your right in that I'm not a graphics designer or programmer, etc (I'm a biochemist actually so not alot to do with computers), that said, I know it's not impossible to create a game that runs all spiffy on newer computers and still runs well on older, crappier systems, because other companies do it.

Turn the game into civ3? The game-play between civ3 and civ4 varies significantly, so no, that's most certainly not what I was asking for.
 
I'd suggest like if the game sold well, they could make the same game without all the options that make it HAVE to have a top-of-the-line computer........
 
And who would design that option and what would they gain? There's no sense in completely overhauling the game's engine and wasting countless man-hours so people can play the game on their Voodoo 6 video card.
 
And who would design that option and what would they gain? There's no sense in completely overhauling the game's engine and wasting countless man-hours so people can play the game on their Voodoo 6 video card.

It didn't have to specifically be that option to make it easier on older computers.

But by doing so you widen your market. Most people won't buy a new computer if a game comes out that they had hoped to buy won't play on their computer. In the case of civ, they'll just play an older version of civ.

Thats all well and great except they don't make any money when you keep playing an older version instead of buying the next civ to come out.
 
If your computer can't handle Civ4 even with the lowest settings available (including toggling low res textures and single unit graphics) then you're probably too poor to afford computer games anyway. Even an old and cheap video card from four years ago can handle Civ4 on the highest settings and I doubt future Civ games will be any different.
 
If your computer can't handle Civ4 even with the lowest settings available (including toggling low res textures and single unit graphics) then you're probably too poor to afford computer games anyway. Even an old and cheap video card from four years ago can handle Civ4 on the highest settings and I doubt future Civ games will be any different.

I've already stated in this thread my computer handles civ4 just fine, even on high settings and huge maps.

If you pay attention to the forums though, you'll see alot of people who say they can't play large/huge maps because it slows their computer down way too much.

People who don't own the game but think maybe they'd like to buy it, read stuff like that and it turns them off.
 
That sounds more like a problem caused by not having enough ram or having a too weak processor, I had to exact same problems in Civ3 until I saved up enough to get more ram.

Making the game less graphics intensive isn't going to reduce the strain caused by huge maps with 12+ players at once.
 
The strain civ places on a PC is more related to CPU/RAM then graphics I suspect. The graphics in Civ even though 3D are relatively simple. This point can be proven easily.

An interesting experiement would be to take an older PC (1.6 - 2GHz, 512 RAM) and play a game on Civ 4, huge map with 1 other civ. How does it perform? Then play Civ 4 again with a huge map but with max # of civ's. Do both scenarios with graphics turned down as much as possible. I wonder if the slow performance is more related to the # of units that exist across the entire map?
 
It has more to do with map size then number of opponents.

People can play standard maps with 18 opponents (usually one city challenge) who can't play on huge maps.
 
Back before I upgraded to a new PC, I learned that I could play huge maps with very few opponents and it ran OK. (Not Great, just ok) If I added lots of opponents it was unplayable.
EDIT: It was mainly unplayable towards the end of the game. It started out slow and got worse.
 
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