A Unique Problem?
- Thread starter cpnichol
- Start date
The card has been in my machine for about a year, the manual has a declaration of conformity dated april 9th 2004.
I have v1.52 and the problem is corrupted graphics/text, there are some good examples attached on page one of this thread. There may be other issues but I can't play it for very long before the constant flashing becomes too annoying.
I have v1.52 and the problem is corrupted graphics/text, there are some good examples attached on page one of this thread. There may be other issues but I can't play it for very long before the constant flashing becomes too annoying.
wildandhairy
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 24, 2006
- Messages
- 5
Hi. I'm new to most forums, hopefully I have the etiquette down.
Re Civilization Four: HELP!!
I never played Civs 1 and 2, but was introduced to 3 and fell in love. I think we even had babies together. When I was told Civ 4 was coming out, I thought, hey, grandchildren!
Unfortunately, I have two very large issues with Civ 4, one technical, the other what has been done to the game play. Before going negative, I'd like to note the game looks great, the music is terrific, etc. Like someone else, I miss the right click, and I especially miss being able to click on a unit and then drag it where I want it to go.
But, the big issues, and any advice is welcome!!!:
a) Memory. I play on a six month old Toshiba notebook. P 4 3 ghz chip, half a gig of memory, the latest Windows XP everything. I can play other games with no problem. With Civ 4, in the "duel" and "tiny" worlds, the game generally works okay. But even in the "small" world, as the game progresses and, I guess, the computer has to remember more and more, my computer slows to an eventual crawl.
At times I have had to bail from the game and go back into it, at times even reboot. Sometimes this helps the memory problem, other times no. The game also has problems clearing its memory when you go to desktop--seems to take way too long. At times the game takes so long to play, it is literally unplayable. I take no joy in writing this, by the way.
A friend at work who has an older standalone can play the game but it is slow very early on, to the point where the game is unplayable. He has experienced numerous crashes, even after the patch download (which helped, but not enough). I downloaded the patch also, which did nothing obvious.
So, fed up, I and my friend made separate decisions to return to Civ 3 for the time being. I had a great time when I returned to Civ 3, and apart from the memory issues, here is why:
b) Civ 3 is a lot more fun. Yes, Civ 4 has many great bells and whistles. However, it seems to take forever to get a decent number of cities started and producing military units. I'd say right now it feels nearly impossible to win any game in the B.C. time era. In Civ 3, one of my favourite games was to try and win before I hit A.D. You can build early in Civ 3, with warriors in your first city maybe taking five turns, more often three.
However, Civ 4 skewed the gameplay, and not always for the better.
I've rarely seen a first city, even with accelerated production, that produces a warrior in under 12 turns. 12 turns is accelerated? In addition, before you could just get horses by building a road. Now you also need a pasture.
These and other changes have turned the beginning of the game into a prolonged exploring, which ends quickly, following by a boring period of simply waiting and waiting while you build stuff--even at the accelerated level.
The middle part of the game, you're then set for military conquest. By the way, Civ 4 seems jigged even more than Civ 3 to win by military conquest, rather than diplomatic or the space race. I tried the Apollo programme way of finishing the game (which I've done a few times in Civ 3), and all I can say is, good luck!!! It seems to take FOREVER to win by space, compared with Civ 3.
I like the new units (gunships are cool), but feel short changed when hitting the modern world, which appears significantly truncated from Civ 3.
So the short version is I find Civ 4 has not only NOT solved the "problems" in playability of Civ 3, but it has made them worse. Civ 3 could get tedious at the end game stage, where you are just building units and moving them, to get those last enemy cities. Civ 4 gets tedious a lot sooner than that.
Again, I have no joy writing this. There are many aspects to Civ 4 I enjoy. But someone thought cluttering up the game was good game play, that slowing down the game was good game play, and sorry but I personally can not agree.
Further, there is simply no excuse for the game running poorly on a standard machine. Perhaps it is just me and my friend, but I gather other people have experienced at least some slowness problems. Could someone please tell me it's all my fault, and I can just love Civ 4 without the worry????
Re Civilization Four: HELP!!
I never played Civs 1 and 2, but was introduced to 3 and fell in love. I think we even had babies together. When I was told Civ 4 was coming out, I thought, hey, grandchildren!
Unfortunately, I have two very large issues with Civ 4, one technical, the other what has been done to the game play. Before going negative, I'd like to note the game looks great, the music is terrific, etc. Like someone else, I miss the right click, and I especially miss being able to click on a unit and then drag it where I want it to go.
But, the big issues, and any advice is welcome!!!:
a) Memory. I play on a six month old Toshiba notebook. P 4 3 ghz chip, half a gig of memory, the latest Windows XP everything. I can play other games with no problem. With Civ 4, in the "duel" and "tiny" worlds, the game generally works okay. But even in the "small" world, as the game progresses and, I guess, the computer has to remember more and more, my computer slows to an eventual crawl.
At times I have had to bail from the game and go back into it, at times even reboot. Sometimes this helps the memory problem, other times no. The game also has problems clearing its memory when you go to desktop--seems to take way too long. At times the game takes so long to play, it is literally unplayable. I take no joy in writing this, by the way.
A friend at work who has an older standalone can play the game but it is slow very early on, to the point where the game is unplayable. He has experienced numerous crashes, even after the patch download (which helped, but not enough). I downloaded the patch also, which did nothing obvious.
So, fed up, I and my friend made separate decisions to return to Civ 3 for the time being. I had a great time when I returned to Civ 3, and apart from the memory issues, here is why:
b) Civ 3 is a lot more fun. Yes, Civ 4 has many great bells and whistles. However, it seems to take forever to get a decent number of cities started and producing military units. I'd say right now it feels nearly impossible to win any game in the B.C. time era. In Civ 3, one of my favourite games was to try and win before I hit A.D. You can build early in Civ 3, with warriors in your first city maybe taking five turns, more often three.
However, Civ 4 skewed the gameplay, and not always for the better.
I've rarely seen a first city, even with accelerated production, that produces a warrior in under 12 turns. 12 turns is accelerated? In addition, before you could just get horses by building a road. Now you also need a pasture.
These and other changes have turned the beginning of the game into a prolonged exploring, which ends quickly, following by a boring period of simply waiting and waiting while you build stuff--even at the accelerated level.
The middle part of the game, you're then set for military conquest. By the way, Civ 4 seems jigged even more than Civ 3 to win by military conquest, rather than diplomatic or the space race. I tried the Apollo programme way of finishing the game (which I've done a few times in Civ 3), and all I can say is, good luck!!! It seems to take FOREVER to win by space, compared with Civ 3.
I like the new units (gunships are cool), but feel short changed when hitting the modern world, which appears significantly truncated from Civ 3.
So the short version is I find Civ 4 has not only NOT solved the "problems" in playability of Civ 3, but it has made them worse. Civ 3 could get tedious at the end game stage, where you are just building units and moving them, to get those last enemy cities. Civ 4 gets tedious a lot sooner than that.
Again, I have no joy writing this. There are many aspects to Civ 4 I enjoy. But someone thought cluttering up the game was good game play, that slowing down the game was good game play, and sorry but I personally can not agree.
Further, there is simply no excuse for the game running poorly on a standard machine. Perhaps it is just me and my friend, but I gather other people have experienced at least some slowness problems. Could someone please tell me it's all my fault, and I can just love Civ 4 without the worry????
Valaraukar
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Messages
- 5
My system has a similar issue. In my case pretty much everything has the rending screwed up, even the world on the menu screen. The rending of anything 3D is done wrong. The error occurs all the time and never gets any better. It is pretty hard on the eyes, makes it very hard, and takes most of the fun out of the game, but is playable.
I have another post here with some screen caps, specs, and DXDiags.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134506&page=24
I have another post here with some screen caps, specs, and DXDiags.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134506&page=24
Valaraukar
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Messages
- 5
My graphical glitches were caused by having my bios set to AGP 2x instead of 4x. More detail described here.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...134506&page=24
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showth...134506&page=24
If you've got a motherboard that supports it, you might consider running a program like ASUSProbe to check the voltage levels and make sure your video card is getting enough power. If this is the case, try unplugging your floppy drive (if you don't need it) to see if the extra power helps.
Hello,
Thanks for the tips.
Martron, don't suppose you know you know a program like asusprobe that would work on an Asrock motherboard would you? I've had a look on Google but couldn't find any mention of one. If not then I'll try unplugging my floppy anyway as I never use it.
As for the bios thing, I've never changed any settings in bios, or my graphics card on this machine. How would I tell what my bios settings should be for my comp? When I've got a bit more time I'll have a look my bios settings see if they show up anything.
Thanks again, you're putting 2K customer support to shame (not too hard to do).
CP
Thanks for the tips.
Martron, don't suppose you know you know a program like asusprobe that would work on an Asrock motherboard would you? I've had a look on Google but couldn't find any mention of one. If not then I'll try unplugging my floppy anyway as I never use it.
As for the bios thing, I've never changed any settings in bios, or my graphics card on this machine. How would I tell what my bios settings should be for my comp? When I've got a bit more time I'll have a look my bios settings see if they show up anything.
Thanks again, you're putting 2K customer support to shame (not too hard to do).
CP
Valaraukar
Chieftain
- Joined
- Feb 18, 2006
- Messages
- 5
cpnichol said:
Looks like your video card (Nvidia GeForce MX4000 128mb) comes in AGP and PCI. There are a number of ways to check which interface you have (DxDiag comes to mind as one). The AGP version supports 8x (at least eVGA's version does). I have an Epox 8KHA+ mainboard that only supports 4x AGP though. So anyhow, just jump into BIOS at start and look for AGP settings. You should be able to find the AGP multiplier in there and set up to 8x if you can. Otherwise use the highest you can. There might be other sort of settings in there that could help like voltages and fast write, you can always try tweaking others if the first thing doesn't help. I know some GeForce cards had issues with being set on lower AGP and I think that was my issue.
