v1.52 Patch results

[The Condor]

More than 100 people viewed my poll! Thank you people for helping me break my old record. @KingTux Also, yeah the barbs and Ai both seem more angry than usual. @Pie-es-Tasty Just look at the xp then if yu really must know (up it wins nothing it either dies or retreats).

 

[EdCase]

Well.. I only ever got stuttering movies on huge maps, high graphics settings.

Now I don't
So yes for me the patch is perfect.

 

[Pie-es-Tasty]

@Pie-es-Tasty Just look at the xp then if yu really must know (up it wins nothing it either dies or retreats).

You can't see that when you're defending, cause it's not your turn. That's why I had health bars on, and that's why now they're useless (to me).

 

[The Condor]

Oh, while defending then oh can't help you then. Also, you mean they are turned off during that now too! Dang, I too always relied on those during defense.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

The patch makes the multiplayer interface much, much better. To say it is smoother too (in-game) is for certain - played an 11 players all on standard map, played smooth as my bum

P.S Online CivIV I'm known as DeviousDevil

 

[Seven05]

Ok, had a chance to test out the wonder movies in a recent late game save (it even worked) and they're pretty smooth for me now. And as much as I like the option to have automated workers leave forests it looks like kills the AI players since their workers won't chop them down either. I'll have to test that some more to confirm it but that's what it looks like so far.

 

[Charles 22]

So far, so good, but the main test for me will be if it doesn't CTD, which the Harkonnen patch fixed. I will also be playing marathon speed so I don't truly know if Hark's would have worked on that length, but soon enough I will know for v1.52.

 

[michael_rem]

The patch works fine for me.
Before when i zoomed out to view the world i would only get buggy graphics.
Also it runs lot smoother now.
So a 10/10 from me

 

[Danielos]

Question to those that have played the patch:

Is the new "Marathon"-speed good? Is unit- and building-cost increased proportionaly to the increased timeline?

 

[MrCynical]

Marathon speed is indeed good. Building cost is increased proportionally to the timeline, but unit cost isn't increased as much so you can get much more use out of them before they go obsolete. One slight warning; the barbarians are an order of magnitude worse in marathon speed games.

The patch seems generally good for me. The game runs faster and seems more stable, the graphics glitches have cleared up and as I've indicated the marathon speed is a lot of fun. The only slight problem is with the wonder movies. These ran fine with version 1.0, but became very stuttery with 1.09 and with the arrival of 1.52 invariably cause the game to lock up completely. Still the gameplay's a lot better, and I had the wonder movies switched off most of the time anyway.

 

[Reignking]

I'm loving the new charts -- now, they are line graphs, so that you can see your progress throughout the game much easier.

 

[azzaman333]

The patch is a big improvement. Now i can watch the wonder movies without everything grinding to a halt. Definately worth the 5 minutes it took to download.

 

[The Fonz]

Hi everybody,

The game looks allright to me after the patch (but it wasn't too bad after 1.09 either). They certainly succeeded in lowering the memory usage. So i'm quite satisfied for now, but it is too soon to say the game is perfect. There has been many changes and bug fixes so it would not be suprising when new problems are introduced.
So my answer would be between the first and the second of the poll.

 

[The Condor]

Well, it is nice to see so many people are getting good results with the patch.

 

[Mendel]

The latest patch seemed to make a stab at some of the technical problems, but I don't really see that it improved the basic game. Some of the gameplay (specifically, city support cost) appears to have changed to the player's detriment. It almost seems that Firaxis wants every player to use the exact same strategy in every game, leaving little room for 'alternative' strategic approaches.

Many of the basic annoyances were untouched (maintaining the custom world setup options from game to game -- how difficult can this be?). The patch also reset almost all of my in-game options.

I still have scrolling issues, and avi performance issues. The game is slow to respond to the keyboard at times, and too fast at other times. Many times, building completion, especially wonder completion, scrolls the game out from 'just-under-the-clouds view' to cloud view. Popup windows for the AI leaders seem to take forever.

Overall, patch 1.52 is still not enough. Civ 4 is easily the least competent implementation of the Civ games. I wouldn't recommend it to my friends.

 

[Adam7Eight]

Wow, just wow. Something's obviously wrong but I'd have no clue where to start. That's pretty much the exact machine I was going to buy (ended up spending a little more, but eVGA card and everything). Sorry that things aren't working well

I figured it out. Installing the Blue Marble terrain after installing the v1.52 patch was causing all the problems. This time I installed Blue Marble, then the patch, and now it runs like a champ. What relief.

 

[Jonny Greenwood]

Well the game for me now runs much smoother but I don't know about it being perfect.

 

[hclass]

..., but I don't really see that it improved the basic game. Some of the gameplay (specifically, city support cost) appears to have changed to the player's detriment. It almost seems that Firaxis wants every player to use the exact same strategy in every game, leaving little room for 'alternative' strategic approaches.

The problem is it becomesmore and more restrictive:
What you can't (which you can in earlier ver) is much more than what you can (which is only available in current ver). The extend is deteriorating from Civ2 to Civ3 and from Civ3 to Civ4

In the name of "making the game more challenging", "removing exploits" or "to prevent overkilling power" and so on, many features are removed or being limited in the way player can use it... So yes eventually everyone has to go with "exact same strategy" or similar way of playing in every game.

The worst part is the group of Civ fans who like "Building of big empire" is totally forgone by the game designer. A big empire of many cities is quite impossible to be managed in Civ3 and it is now even worst, it is impossible to establish a huge empire with a lot of cities. I am not talking about expending with the ICS strategy, I am talking about building in a reasonable pace, picking all reasonable location for cities and progressively building a real BIG empire (under EPIC or the newly introduced Marathon mode)

 

[Haderach]

The patch worked very well for me with enormous performance improvements. The game was playable to me out of the box, albeit with huge slowdowns on huge maps and later stages of standard maps. Now I don't see that. Cheers to Firaxis.

Had

 

[The Condor]

That's good. Also, people who have gotten good results with the patch still outweigh those who have had less fortunate experiences.