General complaint poll

[Naokaukodem]

As i'm lazy to see all the complaint posts, and I want to know averagely how many people encounter problems in playing Civ4 before I get a copy of it, I'm doing this little poll to know if I can decently go buy it or if I have to wait further patches to buy it, or even if the problems are so unbelievable that I may never buy it.

You may precise briefly what are those problems and eventually give a link to a more precise description of them.

 

[webhsu]

Black Terrain (running on Dell 700m, 1.4 Ghz, 1 G Ram, 64 MB no TNL Extreme Graphics Intel card)

Game is a little slow.

Black Terrain is gone after I get Satellite Tech.

 

[zsc]

It all depends on your system, most of the problems people are having is due to their video cards. To get a better idea of whether it will run on your system, please post your system specs, be as detailed as possible. keep in mind that even people whose systems are way beyond "recommended requirements" are having problems with it, and I'm talking about GeForce 7800 kinda systems.

also check out this website, http://www.srtest.com/. be aware that it will ask you to install an activeX plugin. this site was mentioned in this forum many times and I have used it on both my laptop and desktop and it did not cause any problems.

Also, there's this, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=136884, which has the list of the "acceptable" cards, but also be aware that I have a card that is on the list and i am experience some Crash-to-Desktops (CTDs) and some reboots.

To summarize, wait for a patch, there's a thread here somewhere that says it's coming this upcoming week.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Well ok, 60% people seems to have serious problems with Civ4!
OMG, it seems that I will definitely NOT buy it, for the moment at least...

 

[zsc]

You should take into consideration that while it's 60%, that's only 15 people out of hundreds in the forum. But, it's better to stay on the safe side and wait till the patch release and see if the major problems are corrected.

BTW, post your specs so we'd have a better idea.

 

[Bast]

I encountered minor problems that are a result of me having a very old computer - 256 MB RAM says it all really.

 

[Ignatiuz]

I can't even play the game
It want me to insert the right DVD...

 

[pygbe]

Well ok, 60% people seems to have serious problems with Civ4!
OMG, it seems that I will definitely NOT buy it, for the moment at least...

Be Seriuos... 90% of people browsing technical forum is because they HAVE problems

Don't be scared by percentages. Why someone with perfectly running game should bother read this forum instead of actually PLAY and have a lot of fun?

As I'm here, you understand I encountered big problems...
And I think this poll IS useful, because someone outta there think everything is ok only because hHE is ok... so let'e make Firaxis hear our voices, and hope in their hard work.

I trust you, Firaxis! Gimme a patch!

Oh, my experience:
AMD Athlon XP2200
512 Mb RAM
GeForce6600GT 128Mb AGP8x ,81.85 drivers
Windows XP SP1
Integrated soundmax Audio.

I get quite frequent Crashes to Desktop and some reboot.
Tried Everything in my power.
Waiting for patch.

 

[Thracius]

pygbe, try Windows XP SP2. I heard it has done the trick for some.

I'm using GeForce2, AMD XP2700+, 1.0 GB RAM - only minor sound issues & no crashes after 20 hours game play.

But, yes, wait for the patch, if you are worried about it.

 

[pygbe]

Thankyou Thracius,

but as you sai I'm waiting for the patch: as all other thing on my PC are going well I fear every change, so I still don't dare upgrading more my XP.
And people with SP is reporting problems too, so I'm waiting a bit, but that's next step.

Enjoy your Civ for me too

 

[civspain]

It all depends on your system, most of the problems people are having is due to their video cards. To get a better idea of whether it will run on your system, please post your system specs, be as detailed as possible. keep in mind that even people whose systems are way beyond "recommended requirements" are having problems with it, and I'm talking about GeForce 7800 kinda systems.

also check out this website, http://www.srtest.com/. be aware that it will ask you to install an activeX plugin. this site was mentioned in this forum many times and I have used it on both my laptop and desktop and it did not cause any problems.

Also, there's this, http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=136884, which has the list of the "acceptable" cards, but also be aware that I have a card that is on the list and i am experience some Crash-to-Desktops (CTDs) and some reboots.

To summarize, wait for a patch, there's a thread here somewhere that says it's coming this upcoming week.

sorry to burst your bubble but it is not mainly peoples video cards it is the game itself it has massive memory leaks,which can be mistook for someone video cards not being good enough when that is not really the case

 

[zsc]

True, I was too quick to put all the blames on the video cards, but a good number of problems that have been reported seems to suggest video issues.

In my case, I just upgraded to a new video card and have seem an improvement in gameplay, though I havent played long enough to say that it has fixed all the problem. BTW, I'm not suggesting that everyone should go out and spend money on a new card just to play this. I havent really upgrade my PC for 2+ yrs now, figured it's a good time.

I agree that memory is still a big problem. Before AND after the upgrade, task manager still reports that Civ 4 is using around 600MB of my 1024MB RAM. I don't normally play PC games so I can't tell whether that's normal, but from the forum, some suggest that it's way too much.

Worst case scenario, it's both and then some. For the sake of the Civ community, I really hope that it's not the case, otherwise even more loyal Civ fans will be disappointed and turn away from the franchise.

 

[Fibber]

I have a CTD problem here...

Everything else, all good.

All who say they have no problems have not been playing the game long enough...

 

[Naokaukodem]

You should take into consideration that while it's 60%, that's only 15 people out of hundreds in the forum. But, it's better to stay on the safe side and wait till the patch release and see if the major problems are corrected.

BTW, post your specs so we'd have a better idea.

Well that's a percentage. For example, there are now 34 people that have major problems and the percentage is still around 60%.

Pygbe: do you think I should put this poll in General Discussion?

 

[pygbe]

Well that's a percentage. For example, there are now 34 people that have major problems and the percentage is still around 60%.

Pygbe: do you think I should put this poll in General Discussion?

If you can move it, do it, but not start a new one, we could lose votes

Also, I feel that in General discussion could be felt as an instigation to complains. Let it grow here

 

[Gato Loco]

Dell Inspiron 8000
Pentuin III, 900 MHz
256 MB ram
Nvidia Geforce 2, 32 MB
Mildly water-damaged from a leaky roof incident a couple years ago.

The game crashes about 50% of the time on startup. Once a game has started proplerly, it will run ok for hours. I also have the annoying but hardly disasterous bread bug. Finally, my ram and video card barely meet the requirements, so the game runs very slowly, with frame rates getting as low as 1 per second if I do something stupid like zoom out too much. This is annoying but possibly tolerable for a complex turn-based game since you spend a lot of time thinking and planning anyway.

My take on the system compatibility problem is that Firaxis and Take2 were in a bit of a bind about their marketing strategy for this game. Usually, teenagers are the best market for most games. The problem is that Civ4 is a game that actually does appeal quite a bit to older gamers who are still loyal to the franchise but who are too busy and short of cash to upgrade their system every year. There's still a thriving civ2 fan base after all, and many of those people will try to run the game on computers that haven't ever run any game published after 2002. So it's a lose-lose situation. Either they make a game that's playable on 20th century computers and doom civ4 to being a money-losing niche product appealing to a small cult following. Or else they make a modern, mainstream game and alienate much of the existing civ community. Quite logically, they chose the option that doesn't involve the company going bankrupt.

 

[zsc]

Congrat on getting the game to work, you're the first person i know on this forum who got it to work with such a spec, especially with the water damage.

 

[maartena]

Well ok, 60% people seems to have serious problems with Civ4!
OMG, it seems that I will definitely NOT buy it, for the moment at least...

No. 60% of the people responding to your poll have serious problems, not 60% of the players. The data is not very reprasentive for all Civ 4 players, as you are placing the poll in an area that will attract all the people that have problems with this game.

Setting up a poll in a technical support forum on a Civilization forum on the buggy state of the game is the same as going to a Micheal Moore fan club site and holding a poll on whether Bush lied.

People come here because they have technical problems. The people that will never read your poll are the vast majority of players happily playing the game.

 

[DreamTheaterSFG]

2 weeks. Very responsive. But no stress guys,relax, take your time, take a few days off, a few much deserved days off...i mean i cant believe how much time you guys took to ensuring quality and satisfaction..it really shows straight out of the box how careful you where with your spotlight franchise.

At this point, even when the patch comes out, half of Firaxis image has already been flushed down the toilet.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Maartena, we already dealt with that issue.

Though, 60% anywhere seems quite high to me.