Dear Sid

[combathanger]

Nforce3 mobo
AMD 3800+
1.5 gigs ram
SB Audigy 2 soundcard
2x250gig sata harddrives (no raid)
geforce 6800gt 256 meg


All drivers current, nothing overclocked, and this install of XP Pro is only 1 month old, no viruses, no spyware, no addware etc..... I still get graphics corruption and the checkerboard video corruption of doom requiring hard reboot.

So exactly what about my system is so wild and outrageous or underpowered as so many fanboys like to claim when people have issues? The game is BROKE, and they shipping it knowing damn well it was broke.

 

[opticaljim]

"There is a large difference between trolling and constructive criticism. When did you buy this MX 4000 for $150? It is outdated. I found this card sells now for $32.
Clearly your graphics card is the problem. This is also why you have black spots on the terrain."

First of all, I purchased the card from a Best Buy for about $85 and paid a guy $60 to install it for me. Secondly, the problems were all there before the installation and this was supposed to be the solution, regardless of how old the card is it is still 128MB card and, according to the "recomended" specs, an improvement over what I had before.

Clearly, you don't know what the hell you're talking about, not that I'm interested in getting into a pecker contest as to who knows what about computer design. I didn't pay the money I did twice for a lesson in software/hardware engineering.

And as far as attempting to teach me the difference between constructive criticism and "trolling" if you think I'm doing this simply to get a rise out of some of the people on this board and not out of complete and total frustration and anger that many of us have been jacked then you simply don't want to deal with the fact there are enough folks out there that feel the same way I do to the point that this must be dealt with. I intend to deal with it by never purchasing a Firaxis product again.

Moderate that.
Moderator Action: He is actually trying to help. If this is the attitude you are going to take with people who try to help you, then I don't think many people will bother.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Tempete]

I'm am sure willing to give it a shot.

First of all, what are your system specs. Try to answer the questions as best as possible.

Mobo: Gigabyte K8VM800M
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+
RAM: PC3200 512MB DDR
Video: Nvidia Geforce FX 5200 128MB
Sound: Integrated
OS: Windows XP Professional with SP2
Other software: DirectX 9.0c (08/2005), Geforce Forceware 81.85
Misc.: GPU core freq. OC'd 15%. 1.5GB paging file, no fragmentation. HD defragged.

Problem: No bugs or glitches, but the game runs at 5~10 FPS maximum at the lowest graphics settings (including screen res.) Tried turning off trillinear filtering in config ini, to no avail. Globally disabled v-sync and anisotropic filtering, no use. Tried forcing Shader 1.1, and only gained roughly 5 FPS. Now, I also run Battlefield 2 at low settings, but at least there I get ~30 FPS. Please don't tell me that a turn-based strategy game is more graphically demanding than a first person shooter released in the same year . There are many others who are also experiencing poor performance with similar or better sys specs. If you could help, then that'd be great.

 

[vertigofm]

Signed Frank

 

[opticaljim]

"He is actually trying to help."

No, he is actually not trying to help. He is attempting to minimize my outrage and the outrage of hundreds more by suggesting that the problem lies with our inability to understand the minimumn and recomended requirements of this game.

He is also suggesting that some of us deserve our plight due to our lack of technical knowledge when it comes to how computer systems operate. To wit: "I found this card sells now for $32." Either he's attempting to make me seem stupid or he's calling me a liar.

I paid for a product. I expect that product to work so long as the minimum requirements are met. The minimum requirements have been met. In fact the recomended requirements have been met. It does not work.

My only reason for this original post was to express what many on this forum already feel. If enough outrage is expressed in enough places Firaxis must listen and react.
I would be doing the same thing if I had received an inferior product from any other type of manufacturer.

Obviously, my feelings are not in the minority. Wish to test that assumption? Run a satisfaction thread from all posters to see if their expectations have been met. I would be interested in a final score. My prediction is it will be an eye-opener.

Why did you feel it necessary to refer me to the rules of this forum? Are moderators beyond reproach?

 

[ainwood]

Why did you feel it necessary to refer me to the rules of this forum? Are moderators beyond reproach?

Respect the authority of moderators
Public discussions of moderator actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, signatures, or any other profile information. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private. If it's not resolved or if you don't receive a reply from the moderator after 24 hours, you can then PM or email Thunderfall.

If you have a complaint about what he said, then take it up with him via the Private Messaging system.

 

[Ape Drape]

I'm going to endorse the original poster's letter.

Let me first state this. I play World War II Online. Okay, got that? I know all about how every computer is different and blah blah blah. WW2OL has been 5 years of buggy beta. Civ 4 has it beat hands down when it comes to frustrating bugs.

Let me start with the #1 frustrater.
The game doesn't autosave even though it says it does. Now, this has nothing to do with my graphics card, chipset, soundcard, anti-virus etc., but it sure has a hell of alot to do with frustration.
See, I lose some much time spent playing the game, having to reload from the last manual save after a CTD ( for God only knows what reason), that I've stopped playing the game.
Oh, I've broken out Windows Explorer and tried to hunt down autosaves, but it's a snipe hunt.

#2 The CTDs.
Now look, game developers may USE an Nvidia or ATI or whatever graphics and soundcards they have. Their machines have whatever chipsets they have and whatever processors that they have. We all may have something different. What we all have in common is OpenGL, OpenAL, and DirectX. And those three are what determines compatability. If Fireaxis wanted to make the game available to Mac users, they would have programmed with OpenGL & AL instead of DirectX.
That there is ANY issue with the two most widely used graphics platforms and the two most widely used graphic chipsets (Nvidia and ATI) that are all latests version of drivers and versions is a DIRECT fault of the developers and not MY computer(s) (I have three. Yes I have tried on all three machines.)

Listening to the suggestions "Try uninstalling your anti-virus program." ...
Wow... folks, DO NOT UNINSTALL YOUR ANTIVIRUS.
I can't believe that suggestion was even made for a multi-player game that can be played on the internet. Folks, don't even go on the internet with a clean install of Windows untill you have installed an antivirus program.

Face it, the tech support on the Civ 4 website is not even close to being as good as outsourced techsupport located in some 3rd World craphole.

I expect answers and solutions from Fireaxis, not suggestions like "Try wiping your hard drive and completely reinstall Windows."
They ever tell you just how long it will take to do all the security updates and such after doing that? No, they don't. God help you if your copy of WinXp only has SP1 and not SP2. Do NOT reinstall.

Check for spyware and ad ware(Ad Aware is a great free program, Google it)
Do a virus check.
Disk scan.
Defrag.
Update all your chipset, video and audio drivers.
Make sure your fans are working and your heatsink/cpu fan is clean in your computer.
That is all you can do. The problems existing after that are solely the responsibility of FireAxis. And they are responsible for alot.

Lastly... I hate to see people get ripped off. If someone paid $150 for a GeForce MX... you got screwed. Hard, with no lube or a reach around.
Stay away from Best Buy, Circuit City, or bqasicly any retail store when buying ANYTHING having to do with computers.
Try looking for gear at www.pricewatch.com. You can find alot of places selling everything you need to build a smoking fast computer real cheap.
My personal preference is Mwave.com or Newegg.com
For $150 at one of those places you could have got a Nvidia FX6600.

I do not respond to fanbois. I love the Civillization games and am a huge fan of them. The same is not true for game developers. If they drop the ball and release an unfinished product, they will get called out on it.
It's like buying a book and finding out there are pages missing.

My system specs:
AMD Athalon XP 3200+
1 gig (2x512mb) Kingston DDR400 (PC3200)
Asus 9550 (Nvidia FX5900 Ultra w/ 256mb DDR ram)
Video drivers Nvidia 77.77 (These are the latest WHQL drivers. Remember, they developed a game for Windows, not Nvidia. Nvidia's drivers are in the 80s versions now, but mine are the latest WHQL drivers.)
Sound is onboard AC97 Nforce2.
motherboard is Asus A7N8X deluxe
DirectX version 9.0c (dxdiag says all is peachy on my computer)
2 200gb Western Digital SATA 150 set in a striped RAID set
1 180gb Maxtor ata 133

 

[Dida]

my game just crashed to desktop for no reason. damn it.

 

[Ape Drape]

You screwed yourself. Did Firaxis or Sid Meier put a gun to your head and FORCE you to buy 2 copies? Nope you did that on your own action.

Guess its obvious the non-technical oriented, [edited] people have gotten their hands on the game. Wait for a patch. Threatening only solves nothing.

That was completely ********. People shouldn't have to be "technically orientated" to buy a finished, packaged game, install it and play it problem free.
You contribute absolutely nothing to this thread with your comment, and you as a person, probably contribute absolutely nothing to society in general.

No he wasn't FORCED at gunpoint (idiotic statement for you to bring up in the first place.) to buy the game. He was MISLED into buying the game by the promise of a great game and all the paid for, glowing reviews.
He tried to give Fireaxis the benefit of the doubt and bought a 2nd copy just to make sure that it wasn't his original disk set that was flawed.
See, technically orientated (note the proper usages of "technically". See? I can belittle you and make you look stupid too! Weeeeee!) people understand, and have run across corrupt files on one CD ROM, and find out that on a different copy, the files are not corrupted at all, stuff happens.

Try not to be a fanbois of the developers. Be a fan of the game itself, that's fine. I loved Civ, Civ2, and Civ3. Does that mean that because I loved those games, the developers walk on water and can do no wrong? That because three previous titles were good, Civ4 isn't a buggy POS that wasn't ready for release? He's not even criticizing the gameplay, neither am I. Gameplay is great. The game itself is buggy.

 

[DeathInABottle]

"A lemon is a defective car that, when purchased new or used, is found by the purchaser to have numerous or severe defects not readily apparent before the purchase. Any vehicle with these issues can be termed a 'lemon,' and, by extension, any product which has major flaws that render it unfit for its purpose can be described as a 'lemon'."

 

[Tanstaafl]

I go with the original poster and lay the blame, fault and poor quality at the man's door whose name isn on the box...Sid.

I have a good computer, reasonable intelligence and followed the directions in the box...the game is "black" where the terrain should be...all the other things show up fine but I can't tell a forest from a hill unless I put the cursor on it.

 

[hehateme]

If there's a patch within about 5 days and fixes most problems il be happy enough

 

[GIDustin]

Wow. Frankly I am disgusted by the remarks of some of the people on these forums.

First, PCs are not like consoles. Not every one is the same. Trying to code a game to work with 100+ motherboards, 15+ MAJOR video cards, 4-5 major operating systems.... It's tough to get it perfect for everyone on the first attempt. I do agree that alot of these bugs should have been killed in the beta testing, but if the beta testers posted bug reports as "detailed" as the ones I am seeing here, no wonder they were never fixed.

If anyone thinks that Sid and his team worked on this game for as long as they did just to neglect the fans after they pay up, you are sadly mistaken. How do you expect them to make sense out of all the bug reports and put together a patch overnight? It doesnt help that people make posts such as "Help, the game crashes, any ideas?". That really narrows it down for the bug-killing team over at Firaxis doesn't it?

The best thing to do at the moment is give detailed bug reports of what is happening, when it is happening, and your complete PC specs. Sid and his team cannot make a patch to fix the bugs until they find them, and though it isn't our job to find them for them, it speeds up the process.

I am currently playing LAN with 2 friends, and our computers vary greatly in stats. I can honestly say that the Leaderhead memory leak is a bug.

Just like all great games (Civ 3), I think this will be a rough start, but trust me in that a patch is on the way. If you want to throw away your $50 CDs just because you can't play the game right away, go ahead. Otherwise, in the meantime, instead of spamming forums and sending out blame in every direction, play something else. Posting threads like this only hinders getting problems solved.

- GIDustin

 

[tecknogyk]

That was completely ********. People shouldn't have to be "technically orientated" to buy a finished, packaged game, install it and play it problem free.

Uh, if you are at all into computer gaming then, yes...you had better be technically orientated (or know someone who is) or you're going to be in for a big letdown. There are way too many combinations of hardware and software to be able to develop a game without any bugs....

Contrary to popular belief...a PC is *not* an appliance.

-teck

 

[BleckLord]

I feel that an open letter of complaint is well within the rights of everyone who bought Civ 4 and has had major problems that prevent the game from being playable. If anyone id unhappy, they have a right to voice that opinion without being belittled or flamed.

I have built my computer, I am confident about installing any pc hardware, I know what to pay for a component because I'm always shoping. James and many others have the same rights on this forum as everyone else, even if they don't have the same technical skills as others. I know several people that will not install components in their machines: they either ask me to do it, or have it done at BestBuy like James.

Go on James, I'll sign your letter. (I don't blame Sid, but maybe he can help)

 

[GIDustin]

I am not against your complaining. In fact, that is how problems become known. What I am against is a post demanding that the problems be fixed. Was there ever any doubt that Sid would let this buggy game go on unpatched? I don't know Sid personally, but I would bet that he has plans for projects after this one, and unless he releases patches for this game his rep will decrease and his career will dwindle. You bet there is a patch on the way. We just have to be patient.

If you have any ethical sense of what is right then you will be on this website apologizing and offering something substantial to make up for the disappointment and frustration you have put so many of the Civilization fans through

An apology would be great, but not needed. It would show their dedication to the fans. But exactly what kind of compensation are you expecting?

Just remember. Civ3 released, and WHILE IT WAS SHIPPING a patch was released. It was released with the same number of bugs as Civ4. This is a publisher problem wanting to get the game out before it is ready. But just like civ3, civ4 will have patches.

 

[Flavdogg]

I'm a little dissapointed too.
I took a day off, went to buy the game. Due to some kind of shipping delay in Canada, I was running around the city and calling everybody, trying to find a store that had a few extra preordered copies. After about 5 hours in total, I come home with a precious copy of the game only to find out it doesn't work.

Three days in, and I can finally run it, in a semi-playable state.

I'm not going to blame anybody except myself for being too eager to play the game... Actually that's Sid's fault

And I applaud the devs for showing up on the forums as soon as people started reporting problems.

On the other hand - what exactly was the rationalle for creating a fancy non-scalable 3D engine for a turn-based strategy game?
They know that most of their customers are people with somewhat older computers, right?

Oh well...

I think this is an excellent reply. I'm glad someone is not blaming everyone and everything around them. Props )


But I think it's not fair to release a virtually unfinished game. I'm not an ace with computers but I think too many people here think it is ok for the finished version to be full of bugs.. well, I'm just waiting for the patch. Those who think you SHOULD be technically fit to put a CD in the drive and play a game, then you have the wrong idea. This is consumer America my friends (unless you are elsewhere=o) )

To all that are angry, don't worry: Things allways work out. If Take2 really did mess up (specially with such a well-reputed title as Civ) then even lower with their reputation. Eventually this will get fixed up and we will all be happy. And maybe a little reluctant to purchase another product by poor Sid, who did nothing but create great concepts =(

Flav

 

[Nothingman]

Did I miss a magical post somewhere that fixed all of the problems? I've been living here at the tech support forums for the last 4 days. Along with most of the people here I've tried several solutions and though a few have certainly lessened the extreme lag and crashing problems this game still does not run well. I'd guess most games in alpha/beta stages run better than Civ 4 does after tweaks.

Honestly, I appreciate the work the community and the admins have done to solve some of the issues but please don't say that most of the major problems have been fixed. I would guess there are still 25-50% or more of us having major problems with this game. Severely slow game play, random crashes to desktop and even worse, complete reboots are still widely plaguing a huge portion of the customers who meet or exceed the recommended specs.

 

[BleckLord]

That being said, I'd love some of this help that people keep offering. If you can fix this problem you can say that you are more leet than me. You can even put it in your sig.

Description:
Civ 4 randomly crashes to desktop. Rondomly meaning I can't associate it with any particular activity (ie wonders, movement, zooming, end-turn, start-turn, anything). Started crashing every couple of hours, slowly the crash frequency has increased, it now crashes almost every turn. In short, the game is completely unplayable for me -> 'lemon'

Computer Specs:
AMD Athlon64 3000+ (Socket 754, 2.0GHz, no OC, no CnQ)
1GB (2x512MB, kingston Value RAM, DDR400/PC3200, 2.5-3-3-3)
MSI K8N Neo (mobo, Bios version from 1/20/2005)
Abit ATI Radeon 9600XT - VIO w/ 256MB RAM (DX9.0c as per Civ 4 install disc, Omega driver and/or ATI catalyst 5.10)
SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS (driver ver. 5.12.2.444, Civ 4 set to 'use system default')
DVD: Lite-ON SOHD167T
DVDRW: Lite-ON SOHW 1213S
Huappauge WinTV PVR250 (driver ver. 1.18.21.22266, running BTV3)
2x 200GB Seagate SATA HDD (ST3200822AS), no raid

WinXP Pro SP2
All updates EXCEPT: KB891122,KB900930,KB896344,KB887797,KB831240

Log info:
Crash to desktop shows up as two events logged in WinXP Application Event Log (included in zip file). The last things in the audio.log file is always an error loading Sounds\CrowdCheer. The LSystem.log file always reports a huge number of missing scene nodes for certain shadows (this may not be a problem, the nodes might not even have shadows). Both logs are included in the zip file. Also included is my complete DXdiag report.

You'll have to find the zip file on the other thread, it won't let me upload it to this thread.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134506

Good luck helping me! I'd love to finish off my game.

 

[CurtSibling]

Dear Sid,

You screwed me. Bad. Not only did you screw me but you screwed a large percentage of your most loyal Civilization fan base.

Don’t try to convince me that you didn’t know there were several bugs in the program before you released it. Don’t bother trying to convince me that you didn’t count on folks
that have waited months and even years to rush to the stores last Wednesday to get their copy to provide you with information on those bugs so you wouldn’t have to make the effort yourself. You should be ashamed. You should be embarrased.

The so-called tech support that you provided from Take2? What a joke! If they weren’t being completely rude in their typical quaint English fashion then they were just outright
hanging up. The E-mail I sent them last Wednesday? Still haven’t heard from them!

I tried downloading different drivers. I tried reinstalling several times. I paid $150 to install a graphic card that was recomended. That’s right, recomended, not required! For crying out loud, Sid, I even purchased a second copy just to be sure I hadn’t messed up the discs!

And I still got the usual bugs, too many to list. By now, you know what they are, the ones you didn’t already know about, that is. I mean, c’mon, Sid, the install disc and the play disc were interchanged? Must have been a pretty rigorous debugging period, huh?

What is it that all the so-called “game experts” in the trade magazines are saying about Civilization IV? Intruiging? Powerful? Spectacular? They can have my copy. They can have both!

I’m calling you out, Sid. You and Firaxis. If you have any ethical sense of what is right then you will be on this website apologizing and offering something substantial to make up for the disappointment and frustration you have put so many of the Civilization fans through. Frankly, I don’t think you’ll do it.

And just in case you want to question my personal motives and sense of fair play please feel free to contact me via E-mail at opticaljim@yahoo.com.

Cordially,
James Green

Pffft!

And what about those gamers who are happily playing without problems?

Just because you have issues, it does not mean the rest of the world
has the same situation. Perhaps if people would check their systems have the
correct technology and that it is updated to the proper level, then we would
have less doomsaying and melodrama such as the 'open letter' above...

Again, I say - Pfft!

.