Go To Another Windows Application without Quitting Civ4

[SmallBrain]

[If] you are in the middle of a game, and you need to do something else, can you pause Civ4 [I know how to do that], and temporarily leave Civ4 while you (say) send a message, and after, return to the Civ4 screen where you left it ?

I know I can save my game and restart, but I don't want spend the 5 minutes or whatever while it loads.

I'm sure many other people asked this question, but I can't find any threads pertaining to this subject.

I hope I've posted my question in the right place.

SmallBrain
4.April.2016

HP Pavilion dm4-1050ea - Windows 7 Home Premium (it warns of compatibility issues on starting, but I've never come across any, in my limited experience: I've only tried single player though)

 

[Colon]

Just alt+tab.

 

[SmallBrain]

Thanks Colon, didn't think think of that I tried 'esc' which usually reduces reduces fs to a smaller size (e.g., youtube) but that didn't work.

However I eventually found this



by Rayanth giving instructions how to run Civ4 in windowed mode (I have tried it briefly and it seems to work very well, with minor drawbacks to my mind)

SmallBrain
9.April.2016

 

[SmallBrain]

Of the two methods above, both work.

I prefer Colon's Alt+Tab way because it makes best use of my full screen; Although setting the screen up in a window does allow me to have a no-distortion game view (I think the game must have been designed for ' 15.6" ' screens 640x480; 4:3, but my computer's screen is 1366x768;~16:9 and my monitor's is 1920x1080;16:9. On the latter (16:9) the planets that appear on the opening animation are overly oblated spheres, whereas in the former (4:3) they are nearly circular. No distortion is very noticeable at any other time, but it must be there, changing the shapes of animated figures.

SmallBrain
10.April.2016