Any reason not to uninstall?

[vinstafresh]

I agree with first poster on one thing: the game has been dumbed down to please kids who are not clever enough or too lazy to learn to play a strategy game

Bollocks... Some people play to have fun as a stressreliever from school or work. Remember that this is a game for everyone, not only for an elite group with a lot of time on their hands.

 

[azzaman333]

Great... Another thread where the 2 lucky people who can actually play the game without problems tell the person with problems with their game to piss off.

Civilizaiton 4 is a beautiful looking (if your computer can run it) dumbed-down version of C3C.
They wanted more variety in the units bulit, yet they took away paratroops, helicopters etc.
They wanted to change it so you didnt plan cities everywhere, yet they took away colonies so if you need a resource you have to build a city on/near it.
Diplo vic is even worse than C3C, since its the lazy-mans Domination.
Culture victory is stupider now than in C3C. If you can get 3 cities with 50,000 culutre, your not playing on a hard enough difficulty.
Unit promotions make Civ 4 look like a war game, rather than an empire building game.
The 3D graphics look stupid, and cause peoples computers to crash.

I could go on, but i'd rather play Civ 3 tbh.

 

[Mr Moron]

I don't get why people get so up in arms over crashes... they are a minor anoyance at best. I'm playing on a machine below the "Requirments" in some aspects, It runs at acceptable rate through most of the game. Sure, sometimes it crashes.. but thats no big deal realy.. it takes what? Less than a minute to re-open the game and re-load your last autosave. Behind like 3 turns at most.

 

[azzaman333]

I don't get why people get so up in arms over crashes... they are a minor anoyance at best. I'm playing on a machine below the "Requirments" in some aspects, It runs at acceptable rate through most of the game. Sure, sometimes it crashes.. but thats no big deal realy.. it takes what? Less than a minute to re-open the game and re-load your last autosave. Behind like 3 turns at most.

Because a game I paid $80AU for should work without crashing. Civ 3 does, so does Counter Strike: Source and Age of Empires 2. Civ 4 otoh, crashes once every 2-3 hours because it was poorly made.

 

[Mr Moron]

Because a game I paid $80AU for should work without crashing. Civ 3 does, so does Counter Strike: Source and Age of Empires 2. Civ 4 otoh, crashes once every 2-3 hours because it was poorly made.

Eh. If it's playable and enjoyable it's playable and enjoyable. I've had other games lock up and crash on me. Heck my old NES would totally bug out if somebody just sat down too hard in a nearby chair. I just took it in stride, sure it was annoying to have those things happen from time to time... but they have all still been fun. Nothing worth getting all steamed about.

 

[jayeffaar]

ATI RADEON 9800 PRO
3GHZ Pentium 4 Northwood Core
1GB memory, Dual Channel Configuration

When I turned graphics to low it played fine without lag, then all of a sudden CRASH TO DESKTOP after 2.5 hours. Unacceptable.

I know you don't want to hear that, but with these respectable specs, and assuming recent drivers, the crashes are most likely the result of hardware instability.

Last week, after installing a extra 512 meg of memory to bring my system up to 1.5 gigs, I started experiencing frequent crashes in Civ IV, for the first time ever. Everything else ran fine, except for Civ IV... and a memory/cpu torture test that repeatedly found problems in under 20 minutes with the new memory stick installed. It's good quality Kingston memory that _should_ work without a hitch in my box and does for the most part but Civ IV and the prime95 test program apparently push it so far that it fails now and then.

This isn't an isolated case for me. I had similar problems on a different system a couple of years ago when running Far Cry. Again, it was the only game that crashed on my box and at first I was blaming it. Someone convinced me to run memory test programs and I found out that slowing down my memory bus speed a bit (and it wasn't overclocked to start with) fixed my problem that time. It sucked that I had to do that, but there was no other choice and it wasn't the game's fault after all, in spite of appearances. Some games just exercise different parts of your computer and expose pre-existing problems that you had never encountered.

Why don't you get your hands on prime95 (or a similar program) and try letting it run overnight. You might be surprised by the results...

 

[gunkulator]

They wanted more variety in the units bulit, yet they took away paratroops, helicopters etc.

So how often did you use these units in C3C? Were there any strategies that these units provided that were better than build-tank-armies-and-go-kill?

They wanted to change it so you didnt plan cities everywhere, yet they took away colonies so if you need a resource you have to build a city on/near it.

This is a good point, however I rarely find the need to create more than 1 or 2 "garbage cities" in order to get a resource. Although they rarely came into play, C3C style colonies were a tad exploitive: you could get a valuable resource for the cost of the cheapest unit in the game with no recurring cost. In Civ4, you have to plant a city and that means paying maintenance.

Diplo vic is even worse than C3C, since its the lazy-mans Domination.

Domination is a lazy man's conquest.

Culture victory is stupider now than in C3C. If you can get 3 cities with 50,000 culutre, your not playing on a hard enough difficulty.

So.... play a harder difficulty level.

Unit promotions make Civ 4 look like a war game, rather than an empire building game.

Looks can be deceiving. Civ4 combat is far richer than the boring A/D method of C3C.

 

[SpriteSODA]

my computer is amd 1800+ and geforce 5700le 256mb and it runs the game great on high at 1024X768... I think that your problem is some unfortunate bugs and i would recommand re-installing the game.
About the AI, what level have you played?
And, of course that if you are at lead you are rocking the AI...you are at LEAD...

Oh and BTW would you mind talking nicer? we owe you nothing so show the minimum respect.

 

[Smidlee]

* AI in this game is stupider then my pet rock. Once you are in the lead, it is so easy to win. And by the lead, I mean, you are at 4,000 some odd points and the next AI is at 1.7-2k points. The AI, designed to maximize its gameplay, loses every time by failing to take risks. You never get gang raped and you are always safe as long as you build military units [as far as I can tell, the AI algorithm to attack you seems to be obsessed with comparing army size]

AI is dumb as a rock in every Pc game. the reason why people complain so much about the AI is TBS is the countless hours you play the game. Most sinlge game FPS I play and forget (then only play online). RTS is nothing but how fast you can hit keys vs a AI who doesn't have to yet still dumb.
It's a lot easier to make the game look better than making a complex AI which will eat up the CPU time.

IMO Civ4 AI is very good compared to the time the AI takes between turns. civ4 AI is an improvement of the easy exploit civ3 AI

 

[Reignking]

BTW, if you are at 4000 pts, and the next closest civ is at 1700, you are playing at an easy level of difficulty...

 

[Ranjrdanjr]

3rd conclusion: I should quit gaming entirely because all new games seem to suck these days and don't capture the feeling of the older titles such as Ultima VII, Civilization I, Master of Magic, Final Fantasy 7, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Morrowind, etc etc etc.

Agree, disagree, or discuss?

Try Zork. Sounds like just what you're looking for.

 

[pub hero]

Great... Another thread where the 2 lucky people who can actually play the game without problems tell the person with problems with their game to piss off.

I could go on, but i'd rather play Civ 3 tbh.

Gee, I didn't notice that only about .2% of the hundreds/thousands of posters on the Civ IV forums could run the game without it falling on its ass.

Honestly, you're making it out much worse than it actually is.

 

[Catcher]

Great... Another thread where the 2 lucky people who can actually play the game without problems tell the person with problems with their game to piss off.

While I agree that people might be a bit harsh, the OP seems to be asking for it by posting such an inflammatory, rhetorical question in the General Forum. A bit more patience in the Tech Forum probably would have paid off better without the flames. Now, on to your irrelevant venom.

Civilizaiton 4 is a beautiful looking (if your computer can run it) dumbed-down version of C3C.
They wanted more variety in the units bulit, yet they took away paratroops, helicopters etc.

then later...

Unit promotions make Civ 4 look like a war game, rather than an empire building game.

Would you like to makeup your mind?

First you want more units (which, BTW, would mean more animations and models to make the game even more unplayable for the low-end) then you take the (IMO) brilliant response of the Promotion system and say CIV is not supposed to be a wargame. Here's the brilliance of Promotions: even with just 3 levels, CIV has more units in the basic game than C3 imagined having WITH years worth of Mods. It adds an incredible strategic (Take a Promo that further enhances a Unit's strength or one that covers a weakness) and tactical (take a Promo now for fast healing or later to tailor to an unknown enemy) layer.

They wanted to change it so you didnt plan cities everywhere, yet they took away colonies so if you need a resource you have to build a city on/near it.

This is either misinformed or misinformation. Try this out on a game (preferrably with a Creative Civ for faster culture coverage): wait until a resource that is outside one of your city's fat crosses enters your cultural radius, then improve it and build a road between it and your trade network. Check your city's resource box Used this on a recent game where I had Copper right next to my Capital, but best available Iron was several squares off. No need for the extra Worker of C3.

Diplo vic is even worse than C3C, since its the lazy-mans Domination.

Ever seen the guy here who won a Diplo victory with Ghandi without building a single Unit? That's an impressive Domination by a Poor Man.

Culture victory is stupider now than in C3C. If you can get 3 cities with 50,000 culutre, your not playing on a hard enough difficulty.

So winning the game by turtling should be easier? You already have the strategic advantage of being on the defensive without the dependance on AI partners of the diplo victory, what more do you want? Oh, and Religion stinks too.

The 3D graphics look stupid, and cause peoples computers to crash.

Funny that message has never made it to my old box which has yet to crash with CivIV under either 52 or 61. The point isn't to say "NYAHHH! NYAHHH! I can play and you can't," but there are quite probably many more people who can play fine than can't and several of those have seen their problems fixed. Claiming a problem that some people have as a general fault of the game is rather shoddy reasoning.

I could go on, but i'd rather play Civ 3 tbh.

Please do and enjoy! I'll play CIV and enjoy that and we can all get along without dumping excrement and calling it fact.

 

[Reignking]

pub hero: PLENTY of people have trouble running this game, from CTDs to massive end-game slowdowns...

 

[Alistic]

I used to think it was dumbed down too, when I first got it. Then again at that time I automated my workers too.

One things for sure, all that stuff in the previews of this game about using less soldiers, less cities is all bs. Its basically exaclty the same thing as civ3 with some new strategic routes. If you havent found them yet, I envy you. Because when you discover some of the cool stuff you can do it will spark new life into your civving.

 

[Xanikk999]

He is right about one thing though. Tech support for the company that makes the game is non-existent and that is unacceptable.

Why should we have to go to an unofficial forum to get tech support?

 

[Alistic]

I work in the field and let me tell ya 99% of the time the issue is with the End Users rig, and not the game.

Although I have to give a thumbs down on the way they handled the peer issue. The connecting to peer issue in multiplayer is not caused by firewalls like they claim. There was no peer issue before that 2nd patch. Now after the latest one its improved alot, but it still happens from time to time. Thats really not a support type issue though.

I understand having a tech support department for an OS but for a game? Spoiled arent we.

 

[aaronflavor]

To the OP:

jayeffaar is right. It is almost certain you have a hardware problem. Hardware problems are much more common than most people realize. Besides what he said, I would suggest getting memtest86. memtest86 will tell you with a very high degree of confidence whether or not you have a memory problem that needs fixing. If the memory is OK, it's probably going to be harder to narrow down the problem, but targetted benchmarks the CPU and GPU are probably the way to go. It's most likely you have a memory problem, though.

I have a vaguely similar configuration to you, and I'm playing a Huge Terra hotseat game with absolutely no crashing. (Hotseat seems slower than ordinary games for some reason.)

Incidentally, I did have a very unusual Civ4 crash once. Since I am a computer scientist of the programming inclination, I investigated, and it turned out to be a very small defect in one of my memory modules that only manifested itself under certain conditions. Imagine that...

If you're complaining about your powerlessness in general to solve these sorts of problems, and you're feeling screwed by the business world in general, I feel your pain. What you are feeling is the consequence of an mostly unregulated free market. If you've taken a class in government, you should know what your next step is. If not, well, take the class.

 

[King Flevance]

The original post makes some good points.

-Tech support from 2k nor Firaxis has never responded to emails I sent from Oct-Jan to date. The support offered is simply a tab on civiv.com - Yes, they made patches, but they had better if they wish for sales to still be made on Civ 4. I see no proof this is "for us" entirely. To believe that is rediculous, this game's release has shown exactly why big business does what it does. In case you dont know yet, money - not the customers.

-The AI willnot take risks, I have never seen them do it once. All they worry about is score and as the OP has mentioned, army size. However they hide even when they hold more power than you.

-Saying the AI doesnt plop a city on worthless sites anymore is a bold face lie. I have seen cities built on 1 tile of ice that my culture would inevitabley swallow in a matter of turns. Within 5 turns of them founding the city the current pressure already around it allowed them 3 tiles to work.

-You dont have to play multi-player to know its busted. And if you try to - Connecting to peer.............................. (Good thing it was built from the ground up for multi-player, oh but it was ready for release.)

-If you played any previous Civ version it isnt hard to see it has been dumbed down alot. Hopefully this is just a result in the fact they werent finished and with more stuff it wont be that bad. Micromanagement is neccessary still, if minimally.

-The combat system I don't agree with the OP on. It seems the mechanics are the only things that work as intended. I honestly beleve this was all they had time to finish before T2 was patting them on the butt to get them to move quicker and get it on the shelf. I am not thrilled about particular promotions but that isn't a big problem, easy to work around.

I agree with alot of what you say Sovietof17. As for whether or not to uninstall it? I have before. I reinstalled it after 1.52 and waited for 1.61. I may soon be uninstalling it again. I am in the MTDG on the boards and that will probably give me enough civ for a while. I am currently playing to see how the new patch has effected different areas so that I dont request something stupid in the MTDG. But knowing me I still might.

This game is very under par with the previous releases to civ to me. They got better with each version to me until now. They did some cool stuff I will admit but the short comings are too much for me. My graphics card is pretty low and I have no choice but to go to low res graphics. But, I have a memory leak that is hell in lategame on huge maps (all I play) and I too refuse to go smaller. Even if I reveal the map early in the medievals and there is all that animation going on across the entire map, the slow down isnt bad. There is something in the industrial-modern Eras besides planes. This is where it always occurs.

I would say to take it off if you just find yourself not playing it anymore. But maybe your thread you started and feedback like mine will show people out there looking into the game to do more investigation on it before buying in regards to the gameplay. Like checking out the demo first and not judging the gameplay only by the first two eras.

I like the medieval era myself but after that the gameplay just goes downhill, I almost feel the medieval era wopuld be a good place to put the endgame. just because once you get to the end of the industrial age and begin into the modern era the fun has left. How far does the demo get to? Can you play a full small map game on it?

 

[warpstorm]

-Tech support from 2k nor Firaxis has never responded to emails I sent from Oct-Jan to date.

Last time I stopped over to visit them, Firaxis didn't have a tech support center at all. They are mainly programmers, artists, designers, and producers. They are a very small company (~60 people, roughly half artists), not exactly big business. 2K does all of the tech support, AFAIK.

FWIW, the original poster should just delete it and move on.