Another Reason Not To Buy Warlords

[bassist2119]

My main problem is the thread title. The majority of people would have Warlords working well, or would know the limitations of their computer. There is always the small group of people who feel they must stop everyone else from buying a game with a couple of bugs (which is to be expected). It took at least 1 patch to get Vanilla in decent working shape, but some bugs still arent ironed out in the 3rd patch (1.61). Warlords has few bugs on release, even if you compare it to patches 1 and 2.

EDIT: and i play Civ 4 on a 1 and a 1/2 year old laptop, and it runs fine until the late game when the map is revealed, when it just lags a lot more.

(My laptop is below reccommended specs)

Sorry, I have to disagree with you completely. You are correct; the title of the thread would deter people from buying the game. I only wish I knew of this forum when I bought Vanilla CivIV only to find that I couldn't finish a game due to late game crashing. I would have happily continued C3C until 1.61 was out rather than cursing at the computer, having a stack of save-games that were "almost victories" that were then no fun to go back and finish.
Although I didn't experience any of the problems he's describing, it's good to be forewarned that you may encounter such problems.

As for the barking match between Charles and Solidarity, the latter has a point that you'll get more help with honey than vinegar, but I COMPLETELY understand the aggression that comes after spending money on something that makes your game worse.
Solidarity: let him vent, he's pissed and with good reason.
Charles: As aforementioned, I can totally understand your anger. But I would advise against belittling someone's help. Someone else probably has your solution, but may be hesitant to post it if he interprets your responses to other's help as rude.

 

[Charles 22]

Sorry, I have to disagree with you completely. You are correct; the title of the thread would deter people from buying the game. I only wish I knew of this forum when I bought Vanilla CivIV only to find that I couldn't finish a game due to late game crashing. I would have happily continued C3C until 1.61 was out rather than cursing at the computer, having a stack of save-games that were "almost victories" that were then no fun to go back and finish.
Although I didn't experience any of the problems he's describing, it's good to be forewarned that you may encounter such problems.

As for the barking match between Charles and Solidarity, the latter has a point that you'll get more help with honey than vinegar, but I COMPLETELY understand the aggression that comes after spending money on something that makes your game worse.
Solidarity: let him vent, he's pissed and with good reason.
Charles: As aforementioned, I can totally understand your anger. But I would advise against belittling someone's help. Someone else probably has your solution, but may be hesitant to post it if he interprets your responses to other's help as rude.

Understood, but some of the posters apparently weren't interested in helping, rather in attacking, and it was to those smart-alecks to which I responded in that way. It amounts to a certain amount of hypocrisy, it's like somebody telling you not to call people names when in the same sentence they were calling you a name; totally useless. I've seen plenty of other threads like this, irrespective of the OP's original demeanor, as if there's a competiton going on amongst some of them as if they want to see who can be the rudest to the highest amount of OP's or most anyone else.

It's a simple concept, if you can help without resorting to some form of attack you won't have a problem, but if the perspective helper considers a rejection of their idea as being rude, then such a person has no idea of what rude truly encompasses, as in fact getting all huffy because somebody didn't think it was the correct thing to do is a manner of rudeness itself. They're supposed to be suggestions, but if there are people out there like that, and I hope there are not, who think rejected advice is rude, then their suggestions have apparently gone more into the realm of 'orders' instead of suggestions. Why have a fit if somebody thinks your idea isn't the one they're looking for, the one that's not the solution? That's part of the process of getting a solution, as you get various approaches and weigh that against your own notions, and then decide.

I haven't been rude to someone who first wasn't rude to me, so if someone has the solution it's quite clear they can see this pattern, unfortunately as I admitted earlier, my attitude has changed somewhat from the first post, and it is only that post which may give such a person grounds for remaining silent. Frankly, as I alluded to, I think this problem is larger than any one person's help is going to be able to manage, as it's clear only the patch (or that quasi-patch) fixed it before. There's just too much guessing, and while in a lot of situations like this I defer to guesses, this one has a history to back up the view I'm taking now. I appreciate guesses normally, as I often do that myself, and know the IT business seems it's more guess than fact, but with this particular problem the guesses just aren't convincing. That's just the way it is for me.

In any event, I am currently playing on a guess fix, as I mentioned earlier as well, that involves a supposed memory defrag, which one poster already said didn't work for them, but I am testing it nonetheless. I see no point in trying multiple guesses at the same time as I could be worse off than when I started. If this fails as indeed I expect it will I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm as certain as I can be that a driver upgrade isn't going to fix this for warlords (it didn't for vanilla), if for no other reason than simply this problem hasn't been reported widely enough for it to generate that sort of fix, but maybe a few more people playing in such a manner as I have here, and mentioning it in a more general forum like this, might just help get that process of making such a driver possible.

 

[azzaman333]

I only wish I knew of this forum when I bought Vanilla CivIV only to find that I couldn't finish a game due to late game crashing. I would have happily continued C3C until 1.61 was out rather than cursing at the computer, having a stack of save-games that were "almost victories" that were then no fun to go back and finish.

I would have to agree that on release, Civ 4 was an extremely unstable program at the best of times. But from my experience with 1.61 and Warlords, it is in a stable, working state. Late game slow downs are to be expected due to the 3D graphics which i absolutely detest. I'd pay Firaxis $10AUD just to use Civ 3 style graphics again.

 

[Duuk]

The Nvidia 5600 is badly out of date. For 30-50 dollars you can pick up a 256M 6200 that works fabuously for me.

 

[bassist2119]

I would have to agree that on release, Civ 4 was an extremely unstable program at the best of times. But from my experience with 1.61 and Warlords, it is in a stable, working state.

Right, and I would have preferred to have been advised of the former so I would have refrained from buying it until the latter. Though few of us seem to share the OP's difficulties, I actually appreciate the heads up.

I'd pay Firaxis $10AUD just to use Civ 3 style graphics again.

This is a GREAT idea!

It amounts to a certain amount of hypocrisy, it's like somebody telling you not to call people names when in the same sentence they were calling you a name; totally useless.

I understand and empathize; I've been in this situation. However, if you request help from others you may receive belittlement for having the problem in the first place. Which is, then, more important to you: fixing your problem or protecting your ego as viewed by rude people? As is often the case in life, the problem is much more likely to be solved if you simply take these slants on the chin. Completely ignore the rude posts that don't help you and focus on the ones who are trying to.

As the level of civility of the thread seems to be stepping up, I'd like an update on how it's going. I'm no tech specialist, but I would point out that calling the 800# in the manual had 50% returns for me (First time I waited on hold for too long only to get an incomplete solution, the second time they promptly emailed me step-by-step solutions that did just the trick.)

 

[Charles 22]

The Nvidia 5600 is badly out of date. For 30-50 dollars you can pick up a 256M 6200 that works fabuously for me.

That may be so, but I don't buy a new card just because it's so old. It works just fine on everything I have, including Civ4 vanilla. I include Civ 4 vanilla because it got to working with the patch and also because I've seen plenty of people with new cards go down with the same probelms, so there'a no iron-clad guarantee that new equipment of any sort is going to fix it. How pathetic is it to spend money on a new card you don't need, only to see encounters the same problem? At least with a memory add-on, and yes, I've seen where that didn't help with this problem either, you would at least get some needed use out of ti somewhere. If I'm not plying FPS all the time why would I want something newer. As far as I'm concerned it works briliantly on everythign I have; except the warlords, but then I don't think it's the acrd's fault anyway. If I buy enough cards I surely liable to find one that will work with the game, but i don't drop big money for one lousy $50 turned $80 game. Not doing so with vanilla saved me the price of a new card and I may yet do so again.

 

[Charles 22]

Right, and I would have preferred to have been advised of the former so I would have refrained from buying it until the latter. Though few of us seem to share the OP's difficulties, I actually appreciate the heads up.

This is a GREAT idea!

I understand and empathize; I've been in this situation. However, if you request help from others you may receive belittlement for having the problem in the first place. Which is, then, more important to you: fixing your problem or protecting your ego as viewed by rude people? As is often the case in life, the problem is much more likely to be solved if you simply take these slants on the chin. Completely ignore the rude posts that don't help you and focus on the ones who are trying to.

As the level of civility of the thread seems to be stepping up, I'd like an update on how it's going. I'm no tech specialist, but I would point out that calling the 800# in the manual had 50% returns for me (First time I waited on hold for too long only to get an incomplete solution, the second time they promptly emailed me step-by-step solutions that did just the trick.)

I'm not sure you understand the mentality. People who are attacking you like that, they aren't interested in helping you even if they have the solution. Yes, I do usually ignore, but there are times where I see enough of it that I decide they need some comeback. Some resort to reporting them to the moderator, but I usually find that a bit sissified, so I usually ignore and on occasion fire back. This forum generally needs more of the latter it seems.

Also, going along the lines that rude aren't interested in helping, the non-rude are, if they have the information, interested in helping, and from what I find are more interested in helping and using the ignore for the miscreants such as to achieve helping. So I'm not too worried about the odd one or two persons that does irritability checks on people having problems and decides to not help those who don't measure up. You saw the same thing here, somebody was being somewhat of an annoyance to me IIRC and they off-handedly mentioned a problem they had and I directed them point-blank to the solution. I've seen too many screwy things like that happen in forums to think that all the people who irritate me can't be of some help, but anyway I'm getting boring by now.

As far as an update goes, it will be a while most likely. If I'm getting whooped I will start a new game and consider myself defeated (and this had happened at least a couple of times since I first saw the problem). Until I do well enough to get into the modern era I can't possibly see if it works with that method. If I can't play well enough to get there, there's certainly no point in caring if it works on my part. It's only when I get there that it matters. I know no way to artifically get myself there in an instant. Like I said earlier. I'm currently testing/playing under the memory defrag program idea.

As far as calling a tech number, well I don't put a lot of faith in that, and given the time the vanilla fix took I wouldn't expect phone conversations to even remotely come close to working in this case. In any event, due to my work hours it's next to impossible anyway, due to the fact that I basically don't get up until 1600CST anyway.

 

[Wodan]

I'd pay Firaxis $10AUD just to use Civ 3 style graphics again.

You can force "overhead" graphics right NOW. There's a hotkey that turns it on.

Wodan

ps Be sure and send in your $10.

 

[weasel77066]

I originally ran a 5600 and civ4 ran fine on it. Now I bought a new computer and radeon 9550 256 mg and believe it or not, civ4vanilla wouldnt have run on it. Before I updated the drivers, I installed the 161 patch and it runs fine... way better than on my old system. (this new one is AMD athlon 64 x2dualcore processors,3dnow, 1Gig RAM.)
I accidentally ran into warlords while getting the kid a new PS2 paddle, and decided to get it. I put it on and everything runs EVEN better.

 

[azzaman333]

You can force "overhead" graphics right NOW. There's a hotkey that turns it on.

Wodan

ps Be sure and send in your $10.

Actually, I just want the Civ 3 graphics replacing the Civ 4 ones. Nice try though.

 

[weasel77066]

the Civ4 graphics bothered my eyes really bad... eyestrain in a single evening. Civ3 I would last at least three or four days before a break in routine.
I installed the blue marble satellite graphics and the civscale program.. then I adjust the font, color and size of the reading, size of units and improvements, etc, took out the cloud strenght. Now I dont have a problem at all. It actually appears alot more like civ3. It really is pleasant.

 

[bassist2119]

You can force "overhead" graphics right NOW. There's a hotkey that turns it on.

Wodan

ps Be sure and send in your $10.

Thanks ! Never noticed that. If I ever have a game go REALLY long (haven't built a spaceship yet...) this'll come in quite handy!

 

[Minmaster]

i have to agree with the statement that performance is horrible in Warlords. I would compare the performance problems with when Civ4 first came out. Late in the game, things will bog down, graphics get corrupted and i get the "virtual memory out of space" or whatever error that i get from all the memory leaks. i wouldnt say dont buy this game, but i see where the original poster is coming from. you would think an expansion would address and alleviate some performance issues, instead of going back to square one. btw, my PC is a P4 2.8, 768mb RAM, GF4Ti 256.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

this sounds like it should be in the tech support forum, not in the whine-about-my-computer-but-i'll-post-it-in-the-most-notable-semi-relivant-forum.

LOL I gotta agree with sirford here! Barring a rare miss-print on your version of the disk, it sounds like a computer issue! My game runs smooth and beautiful. I can zoom in from the furthest outer-space view to city view with very little lag on a Huge map with satelites and 18 civs. It really sounds like a hardware issue.

Running on:
AMD X2 4400+
2 gig Ram
250 Gig HD
nVidia GeForce 7800GTS 256mb

 

[Charles 22]

Followup: My current game is around 1760 now, very close to where my previous problems basically started. So far I have had one or two odd slowdowns, but it wasn't for the map contours and units disappearing or anything similar. It looks like the memory defragger at least did a pretty good portion of help, though I wonder if it will help me enough to get me through the game entirely (no turn limit).

 

[Duuk]

That may be so, but I don't buy a new card just because it's so old.

Then you need to accept that there are some things you won't be able to do.

 

[weasel77066]

Followup: My current game is around 1760 now, very close to where my previous problems basically started. So far I have had one or two odd slowdowns, but it wasn't for the map contours and units disappearing or anything similar. It looks like the memory defragger at least did a pretty good portion of help, though I wonder if it will help me enough to get me through the game entirely (no turn limit).

it sounds like youre running fairly good now. I run a huge map, lots of land/less ocean, and 15 AI civs. Mine runs fast except for when Im buying a map. WHen it goes to "update" my world map, it bogs for about 30 seconds, sometimes longer. I never did update my video driver.
My PC- AMD athlon 64X2 dual core 3800+//1igig ram//ATI radeon 9550 256mg (driver version 6.14)
Later in the game I turn the graphics down to medium, just to make sure it doesnt drag.. and I defrag my drive every night.

 

[Charles 22]

Then you need to accept that there are some things you won't be able to do.

Yeah, like run the latest FPS's which I don't buy. You shouldn't need a top-of-the-line video card for blasted el cheapo 3-d like civ, anyway, it's obvious it's not the card, because not only did the patch fix the problem without a card switch for vanilla, but also there are plenty of people who had better cards here who had the same problem. I don't exactly see a valid reason why the video demands are any greater than from vanilla, if so, you might then be right. In any event, I'm up to like 1870 today and it's runniing fine. It looks like the memory defrag took care of at least the first stages of the problem.

 

[Charles 22]

it sounds like youre running fairly good now. I run a huge map, lots of land/less ocean, and 15 AI civs. Mine runs fast except for when Im buying a map. WHen it goes to "update" my world map, it bogs for about 30 seconds, sometimes longer. I never did update my video driver.
My PC- AMD athlon 64X2 dual core 3800+//1igig ram//ATI radeon 9550 256mg (driver version 6.14)
Later in the game I turn the graphics down to medium, just to make sure it doesnt drag.. and I defrag my drive every night.

I don't think I will do those things, on principle alone. I didn't have to do them for vanilla, and I don't see how this game is so much more a pain for the computer. The only thing I regularly don't use to speed play is to not use the tile border rendering. I run into the small map problem like you said, with vanilla and with warlords, and I don't see that as a problem. There's a logical reason why that takes a brief while longer, as it's a function not normal to the general flow of the game. My movies, btw, are speed deluxe, so surely that's not causing a problem. They were a bother with the original un-patched vanilla however, but it's patch fixed that too.

 

[Civmatrix]

No troubles with Warlords generic here (even with 18 . Never use sound so I wouldnt know