Today when I was playing multiplayer with some friends, suddenly I couldn't join their games properly. When I tried, I was greeted by something like "Your game version is different", and then civ crashed to the desktop (I did have the same version of the game - we all had the latest patch installed).
After some experiments, we found that what differed between my installation and the others, was that I had installed the game onto a FAT32 partition, and the others on an NTFS one.
Uninstalling CIV4, and installing it again on FAT32 did not solve the problem, but uninstalling yet again, and installing it on a NTFS partition, made the problem not appear again.
As you might know, the resolution of file time stamps on FAT32 and NTFS differs, so that if you copy a whole directory tree from an NTFS-drive to a FAT32-one, file modification times may no longer match.
I suspect that the game checks the file contents, and their modification times, and it therefore thinks the FAT32-user has messed with his files.
It may of course have been a fluke, but if any of you people have the same problem, and have installed civ on a FAT32 partition, it might be worth trying to install it on an NTFS-partition, if possible.
After some experiments, we found that what differed between my installation and the others, was that I had installed the game onto a FAT32 partition, and the others on an NTFS one.
Uninstalling CIV4, and installing it again on FAT32 did not solve the problem, but uninstalling yet again, and installing it on a NTFS partition, made the problem not appear again.
As you might know, the resolution of file time stamps on FAT32 and NTFS differs, so that if you copy a whole directory tree from an NTFS-drive to a FAT32-one, file modification times may no longer match.
I suspect that the game checks the file contents, and their modification times, and it therefore thinks the FAT32-user has messed with his files.
It may of course have been a fluke, but if any of you people have the same problem, and have installed civ on a FAT32 partition, it might be worth trying to install it on an NTFS-partition, if possible.
