How to play civ 4 on windows 10

masterjacob

Chieftain
Joined
Feb 1, 2021
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3
Hello

I wanted to start playing a little civ 4 again. Last time I played was a couple of years ago. But this time when I try to play the game it just won't launch. I did install it but I had some troubles installing it as well.

Is there any way to play civ 4 on Windows 10?
 
In my experiance the must have steps for getting CIV4 to run on 10 are to set it to windows 7 compatibility mode and to run as administrator.
 
Install normally, Right-click the .exe , switch to compatibility Tab, set to "Windows 7" and check "Run as Administrator" .
 
Is there any way to play civ 4 on Windows 10?
Simple answer is yes. Most here are playing IV on Win 10.

Certainly perform the steps Cereal just mentioned just above. However, I'm not sure if that is the whole issue, as the problems associated with Compatibility don't prevent the game from launching.

We really need more information from you. What version of IV are you running (disk, download, Steam)? Are you trying to run the Vanilla IV or BTS?

You mentioned troubles with installing. Can you provide details of these troubles? Was it a "reinstall" or "install"?
 
The issue i'm having is playing civ 4 on a laptop with intergrated graghics i have a lot of lag
 
The issue i'm having is playing civ 4 on a laptop with intergrated graghics i have a lot of lag
This day and age, integrated graphics cards should be sufficient to run civ 4. Problem is that civ 4 was original designed with a memory leak that has never been resolved. The game simply does not utilize RAM efficiently. No matter how good your machine the game will start to lag after a certain amount of playing, and mods will make it worse. Some huge mods can be terribly slow. Regardless, when the game starts to slow down for you, use Ctrl+Shift+Esc to bring up the task manager. You will get some relief for a while, then do it again. If it is lagging from the start, then there may be other issues with the specs of your laptop that are not evident here, or you are trying to run huge mods.
 
Thanks for your reply i do have the Bug mod maybe that is causing the lag but when i install the game without the Bug mod it won't even run at all
 
What version of CIV4 do you have specifically? Base? Warlords? BTS? What patch? And where did you buy it from?
 
I have BTS i have all the patches I have a cd that is how installed it.I copied it from a desk top pc on put it on my laptop
 
I have BTS i have all the patches I have a cd that is how installed it.I copied it from a desk top pc on put it on my laptop
Please expand on what you mean by copying from your desktop. I don't think that would make for a proper installation. 10 caused some issues for the cd version, but once BTS is installed and patched you should be fine.
 
Please expand on what you mean by copying from your desktop. I don't think that would make for a proper installation. 10 caused some issues for the cd version, but once BTS is installed and patched you should be fine.
He means to say that he had the game installed on another computer and than just copied the folder over to his new one when the old one died/was replaced.
This approach works fine for some programs but not others. And I am not sure where CIV4 falls on that list.

He should probably try a clean install directly from the CD if possible. If not, at the very least he should try and manually repatch it to 3.19.
 
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He means to say that he had the game installed on another computer and than just copied the folder over to his new one when the old one died/was replaced.
This approach works fine for some programs but not others. And I am not sure where CIV4 falls on that list.

He should probably try a clean install directly from the CD if possible. If not, at the very least he should try and manually repatch it to 3.19.
Do you think if I uninstall the bug mod that might fix the lag problem I have? I have a desktop PC with Windows xp with a pretty good graphic card I can play Civ 4 pretty good with that PC and only has 1 gig of Ram but with a graphic card.I then copied the game file on a flash drive and put it on my laptop has integrated graphics but with 16 gigs of ram but when the game starts it is not playable from so much lag.I did the compatability thing did not change a thing.I removed some services i didn't need running in the back ground and did a lot of stuff just to make the cpu faster nothing seems to work
 
Do you think if I uninstall the bug mod that might fix the lag problem I have? I have a desktop PC with Windows xp with a pretty good graphic card I can play Civ 4 pretty good with that PC and only has 1 gig of Ram but with a graphic card.I then copied the game file on a flash drive and put it on my laptop has integrated graphics but with 16 gigs of ram but when the game starts it is not playable from so much lag.I did the compatability thing did not change a thing.I removed some services i didn't need running in the back ground and did a lot of stuff just to make the cpu faster nothing seems to work
Honestly I do not see what you can do at this point. CIV4 can't use more than 2GB of ram anyway so RAM isn't the issue. And neither can the graphics card because if that was the problem the game wouldn't run at all. Mods can't be a problem either.
I assume you are not running it off the flash drive but actually put it on a hard drive on your PC?
 
Honestly I do not see what you can do at this point. CIV4 can't use more than 2GB of ram anyway so RAM isn't the issue. And neither can the graphics card because if that was the problem the game wouldn't run at all. Mods can't be a problem either.
I assume you are not running it off the flash drive but actually put it on a hard drive on your PC?
Yes i put it on the hard drive the reason i done that was the cd's i had to install would'nt work so instead buying new civ 4 i tried to copy it.
 
Have you tried applying the 3.19 patch manually on top of the installation you copied? That might work.
 
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