I'm just going to warn you, i want to ***** and moan in this thread because I'm sure it'll make me feel better. If you want to defend this piece of buggy software, tell me my system is pants, tell me to shut up because there are loads of happy civers out there and I don't count then go ahead...I'll probably even read it as I've been checking out this forum almost daily for some way to get CIV 4 to work with no joy whatsoever. I'll even post my dxdiag at the end so people can see my system is up to scratch and tell me to update my drivers, blah blah.
CIV 4 is the best game I haven't played properly yet. When I first DL'd it (off D2D) it worked for some reason I cannot fathom. Maybe my stars were in alignment or I held my breath while it installed or possibly it was because I had crossed my fingers without being aware of it. Still it played smoothly until the late game when it became slow but still playable. THEN for some reason it stopped working- it took nearly 10 mins to load - and then during the game the sound and animations jerked and popped all over the place. Turning the ambient and effects sounds made it smooth again but I could never face the 10 min load times so I didn't bother. ALSO I like sound in my game when I've paid $50 (call me picky)
Anyway a few days ago I read a thread about changing the Regional and Language settings to US rather than UK for some arcane reason to do with XML parsing or something I think. At the same time my AV software expired so I uninstalled it and used the Zonealarm suite instead. On a whim a fired up CIV 4 and it loaded in seconds and very smoothly went through the menu's to the game where it promptly crashed very messily after 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds were the best I've seen the game so far. This happens every time I try it (sometimes it hardlocks and other times it seems that my computer might explode)
Which of these things changed things I haven't got a clue-maybe it was the full moon- but I've never in all my years of gaming met such a finnicky piece of software. It reminds me of the days of loading ZX Spectrum games and praying to the gaming gods that they would work. Or playing about with memory settings in autoexec.bat/config.sys during the DOS days. I thought things were supposed to be easier these days...
The upshot of all this is that I still can't play the bloody game I paid for. I hope that a patch will put things right for me and a lot of other frustrated users.
Here's my dxdiag for what it is worth. If anyone can suggest anything helpful which doesn't involve reinstalling windows or buying a new PC then I really would be grateful. Oh and I have installed the 1.52 patch.
There I feel better now.
CIV 4 is the best game I haven't played properly yet. When I first DL'd it (off D2D) it worked for some reason I cannot fathom. Maybe my stars were in alignment or I held my breath while it installed or possibly it was because I had crossed my fingers without being aware of it. Still it played smoothly until the late game when it became slow but still playable. THEN for some reason it stopped working- it took nearly 10 mins to load - and then during the game the sound and animations jerked and popped all over the place. Turning the ambient and effects sounds made it smooth again but I could never face the 10 min load times so I didn't bother. ALSO I like sound in my game when I've paid $50 (call me picky)
Anyway a few days ago I read a thread about changing the Regional and Language settings to US rather than UK for some arcane reason to do with XML parsing or something I think. At the same time my AV software expired so I uninstalled it and used the Zonealarm suite instead. On a whim a fired up CIV 4 and it loaded in seconds and very smoothly went through the menu's to the game where it promptly crashed very messily after 30 seconds. Those 30 seconds were the best I've seen the game so far. This happens every time I try it (sometimes it hardlocks and other times it seems that my computer might explode)
Which of these things changed things I haven't got a clue-maybe it was the full moon- but I've never in all my years of gaming met such a finnicky piece of software. It reminds me of the days of loading ZX Spectrum games and praying to the gaming gods that they would work. Or playing about with memory settings in autoexec.bat/config.sys during the DOS days. I thought things were supposed to be easier these days...
The upshot of all this is that I still can't play the bloody game I paid for. I hope that a patch will put things right for me and a lot of other frustrated users.
Here's my dxdiag for what it is worth. If anyone can suggest anything helpful which doesn't involve reinstalling windows or buying a new PC then I really would be grateful. Oh and I have installed the 1.52 patch.
There I feel better now.
