Nervous about buying game

Im convinced that the "vocal minority" here, most of which claim to be industry QA experts, or long time computer techs dont run a clean windows system.

Did all of those people reporting slowdowns in the end game trim their systems before play? Kill unnessissary processes/memory resident apps? Have they defraged with something other than the crappy windows defrager? Defragged the swap file, or off load it to a secondary drive for performance? Cleaned out older video/audio drivers and cards in safe mode? No? These are standard maintenance chores for any windows install! And should be checked frquently!

The only logical answer to why some people have no troubles with hardware config A, and others with the same hardware setup have enormous troubles has to be general system health.

Evidence for functional game installs seems to favor those who seem to take care of their systems. As for the others who cant.... well it just makes you wonder a bit...
 
ilgross said:
Would someone more computer literate then me, tell me if these specs are OK?

Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.50GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro

WOW! A TNT2! That takes me back...

In short, you will likely be able to run it at the lowest performance levels IF, and I mean IF, you replace your video card. That thing is ANCIENT. You can get a GF3-Ti500 or GF4-Ti4200 for under $50 on eBay. Even a (shudder) GF4MX will run better...

Venger
 
Runriot said:
Im convinced that the "vocal minority" here, most of which claim to be industry QA experts, or long time computer techs dont run a clean windows system.

Did all of those people reporting slowdowns in the end game trim their systems before play? Kill unnessissary processes/memory resident apps? Have they defraged with something other than the crappy windows defrager? Defragged the swap file, or off load it to a secondary drive for performance? Cleaned out older video/audio drivers and cards in safe mode? No? These are standard maintenance chores for any windows install! And should be checked frquently!

The only logical answer to why some people have no troubles with hardware config A, and others with the same hardware setup have enormous troubles has to be general system health.

Evidence for functional game installs seems to favor those who seem to take care of their systems. As for the others who cant.... well it just makes you wonder a bit...

Another clown! Is the circus in town?

Who on earth are you to have any idea what any of these systems are like? Defrag? What is this, 1997?

What possesses someone to make broad statements about computer systems he has absolutely NO CLUE about? Hubris? Ignorance? Stupidity? The trifecta?

It HAS to be general system health? Huh? Is that why there is an unpak procedure for ATI card owners, because they didn't defrag, and have poor "system health"? Tool, your ilk of defrag snake oil peddlers is TIRESOME. People here have reported problems across a variety of systems, most reporting that Civ4 is THE game that gives their computer problems.

There is nothing more exhausting than the remote diagnosis of someone else's computer problem when you haven't a clue about it... wait, I have to go "kill unnessissary processes/memory resident apps"... did it occur to you that if you maintain a system properly, you won't HAVE such things?

Where have all of these folks handing out bogus prescriptions come from? Did Geek Squad or Fry's just have a huge layoff? Yikes...

Venger
 
ilgross said:
Would someone more computer literate then me, tell me if these specs are OK?

Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.50GHz
Memory: 512MB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 Model 64/Model 64 Pro

Yikes! A TNT2? I didn't know there were still any of those around (except in my old desktop which I don't use anymore. It could barely run Civ 3).

I wouldn't recommend it...
 
Jecrell said:
It's worth it. And if you can't play it you'll have to wait for a patch or try the various solutions on the forums.
But if you do get it to work -- you will love it. :)
I actually did that! No I'm not kidding.
Well there were other thing like XP and browsers that wouldn't work as well.
Of course my old one, that is this one, is like 6 years old so it didn't hurt.

As for my specs: I have only a 1.3 GHz and 512 RAM.
At normal settings and map size it works fine.
I do have a higher graphics card though so that may be more important.
I should look at it at some time.
I did have one bug though.
When I alt-tabbed out to notepad, it didn't work properly on returning.
It works fin though.
 
Venger said:
Another clown! Is the circus in town?

Who on earth are you to have any idea what any of these systems are like? Defrag? What is this, 1997?

What possesses someone to make broad statements about computer systems he has absolutely NO CLUE about? Hubris? Ignorance? Stupidity? The trifecta?

It HAS to be general system health? Huh? Is that why there is an unpak procedure for ATI card owners, because they didn't defrag, and have poor "system health"? Tool, your ilk of defrag snake oil peddlers is TIRESOME. People here have reported problems across a variety of systems, most reporting that Civ4 is THE game that gives their computer problems.

There is nothing more exhausting than the remote diagnosis of someone else's computer problem when you haven't a clue about it... wait, I have to go "kill unnessissary processes/memory resident apps"... did it occur to you that if you maintain a system properly, you won't HAVE such things?

Where have all of these folks handing out bogus prescriptions come from? Did Geek Squad or Fry's just have a huge layoff? Yikes...

Venger

haha Thank you good sir! :goodjob:

While I am usually one to blame most computer problems on end users, this is obviously not the case. And even if my OS was in the worst possible shape fragmentation wise, a simple defrag isn't going to raise my framerate from ~1 to 60. Give me a break. Do you guys work on a L1 helpdesk or something? :mischief:
 
Venger said:
Another clown! Is the circus in town?

Who on earth are you to have any idea what any of these systems are like? Defrag? What is this, 1997?
So you havent been taking care of your system then? Just reinforces my point. Thank you :)
Venger said:
What possesses someone to make broad statements about computer systems he has absolutely NO CLUE about? Hubris? Ignorance? Stupidity? The trifecta?
What broad statements are you refering to? Maintaining a clean system? That is every endusers chore, onerous as it may be. As for making these statments, what "possessed" me to do so was the incessant whining about the game here on the boards.

Venger said:
It HAS to be general system health? Huh? Is that why there is an unpak procedure for ATI card owners, because they didn't defrag, and have poor "system health"? Tool, your ilk of defrag snake oil peddlers is TIRESOME. People here have reported problems across a variety of systems, most reporting that Civ4 is THE game that gives their computer problems.
First of all, nice name calling, glad you resisted the urge to flame and debate in a civilized maner. Secondly, ATI troubles are related to the manufacture of the card itself, and how it handles large files. Did ATI release this info to anyone? No one seems to have heard of it before now, so it is logical that the devs hadnt either. Also, those problems were limited to a small percentage of ATI chipsets.

So, are there varieties of systems running the game without harddrives and virtual memory? Are you daft? Just about every computer since the 486 has had HDs and swapfiles for virtual memory, so there most certainly can be a "common thread" in these diverse "variety of systems."

As for the GAME giving these systems problems, how do YOU explain people with the same hardware configs having wildly differing performance in the game?

Venger said:
There is nothing more exhausting than the remote diagnosis of someone else's computer problem when you haven't a clue about it... wait, I have to go "kill unnessissary processes/memory resident apps"... did it occur to you that if you maintain a system properly, you won't HAVE such things?
Well, seeing as how I make my money doing remote diagnostics of computers for Brighthouse Networks (call me 1-877-892-3278 ask for tech 1085) I can agree that there IS nothing more exhuasting as dealing with incompetent end users who think they understand how to take care of a system.

And yes, it did occur to me that some people may have already trimmed processes down, but what about the rest? Whens the last time you cleaned your registry or booted into safemode to remove ghost hardware? Never would be my guess.

Venger said:
Where have all of these folks handing out bogus prescriptions come from? Did Geek Squad or Fry's just have a huge layoff? Yikes...

Venger
Such ire from someone who, by the tone of your post, have already gone through these steps and kept a clean windows install. Such venom from someone not even mentioned in my initial post at all.

Put it this way, you dont what to tweak your system, run it clean? Well you dont have to. No one is holding a gun to your head making you do it. But then if you dont, you would have to take some mesure of the responsibility on yourself. Firaxis and 2k are not responsible for your cluttered, unkempt windows environment.

Also, its quite immature to flame me for my opinion while you have spent days and days on this board shouting to whoever would listen about your opinion of the game.
 
Not defragging your hard drive would be a major mistake. You also need basically 20% free space on your harddrive for swapfiles and such.

My specs: Athlon XP 2800, 1 GB RAM, ATI Radeon 9600, on-board sound. Falcon NW computer, not a terribly expensive or new one. I didn't need to use the unpack utility, which was released the day after the game was released if I remember correctly, which is a great response time. Except for stuttering wonder movies, the game runs flawlessly except on huge maps. I get some slowdowns there with map trading, and occasional crashes to the desktop. I figure the crashes are the game's way of telling me I've been playing long enough, since they have yet to happen if I've been playing less than two hours. I'm sure a patch will fix this anyway. Oh, I've also found that running in windowed mode is significantly more reliable than full-screen. Counterintuitive, I know.

Basically? I think I bought a Tetris that ran perfectly once. Civ 4 unpatched is better than any other game unpatched I've played in the last 5-8 years that I can think of. Better than Sims 2, Morrowind, Dungeon Siege 2, Knights of the Old Republic 1 or 2, Temple of Elemental Evil (*shudders*)...

And I trust Firaxis to release a patch that actually FIXES problems. They seem to be really on the ball and involved with the community.

Make sure you have Hardware T&L on your video card. I cannot stress this enough. Make sure all your other requirements at least meet the minimum specs. Don't browse web forums while playing on a huge map (that crashes me every time :mischief:). After that, there's a small chance you'll run into something weird that will mess up your game, but that's true of every piece of software, and I do believe that chance is a small one.

If you're still worried, wait to buy the game until the first patch is out. I usually try to do that, but Civ 4 came out around my birthday, and I'm thrilled to have it. I'm actually somewhat neglecting World of Warcraft for it, and that really shows what a great game it is.
 
MNGhost said:
Yikes! A TNT2? I didn't know there were still any of those around (except in my old desktop which I don't use anymore. It could barely run Civ 3).

I wouldn't recommend it...

Hey, I got a TNT2 :lol:

I am updating the entire system in a couple of months though to play C4. I suppose I could do it now, but I'd rather wait and then be able to afford with a 939 socket CPU rather than a 754 Sempron socket :)
I will be getting a GeForce 6600 instead of the TNT though. Seems to be way better than the 6200 and a bit better than the 5500 :)
 
The TNT2 won't run this game.
 
Euphoric One said:
I would tentatively say buy it in hopes of the patch resolving most of the issues people are experiencing. If I had to bet on it, I would think Firaxis had little control over the rushed out the door product that we are playing now.

Like I said though, I don't blame Firaxis, I damn sure don't blame Sid Meier (because that is beyond stupid. Seriously, go turn the oven on and stick your head in it if you blame Sid), I blame Take Two. The product was obviously rushed, but when it is fixed, it will be my game of the moment for a long time.

I suppose they should not be blamed for the bugs in unpatched Civ 3, Civ 3 PTW or Civ 3 Conquests either. :rolleyes: When you put your name on a product you better make sure you can control what is in it when released. The product is out now to create buzz so it will be on the Christmas list of many people, and the profits will roll in, and none of them wanted to stop it IMO.

Right now I have no desire to give these people more of my money. Besides I'm still adicted to Civ 3.
 
For the record, I defraged my computer before I installed Civ4 and it was barely 3% fragmented. No viruses or mess on either Ad-aware or AVG. Cleaned out old files, even dumped nearly a gig of music to clear out space, disk clean-up defragmented AGAIN. Played Civ4 and had all the problems I talked about.

I wish it were just sloppy housecleaning on my part...I could actually fix that. I've spent more time messing aorund trying to get my computer in shape to play this monster than I have playing it.

That's my two cents and that's why I tell people to hold off buying it. And I think all the positive reviews on the Gamesites are doing the buying public a great disservice. They obviously got de-bugged copies of the game, are computer experts who aren't telling the whole story about the rigs they play it on, or, as I believe the majority of users who have NO problems at all are, they just got damn lucky. Whether "luck" means they hit the sweet spot where their own rig's specs measure up with what the game needs doubleplus overrides the inherent bugs; or that there's actually cleaner copies of the game in circulation I do not know. I do know it's been a ***** on my system and a whole passel of frustration.

Luck should have nothing to do with product quality. You pays your money and you take your chance.
 
Picky1999 said:
Luck should have nothing to do with product quality. You pays your money and you take your chance.
Now see, this I can understand, and agree with you 100% Luck shouldnt have anything to do with how or when the game will run.

The trouble is, I can see no other reason people with similar or even the same hardware have such widely differing experiences with the game.

I suppose their could be "cleaner" copies of the game, especially since many mainstream reviewrs say next to nothing about the problems others experience :shrug: Its still a mystery I guess, though if it IS individual issues or poor upkeep, then the patch might be the best way to tell. You would think that the patch wouldnt fix the issues if it was just a poorly kept windows install....

Time will tell
 
I am considering adding this game to my X-Mas list, but am a bit concerned given some of the things I have read. I am not a very technical person, to put it mildly. My processor is an AMD Athlon 3000+, I have 512 MB RAM, and a NVIDIA Geforce 6600 graphics card. Having checked the minimum specs I appear to be above them, although RAM might be a concern.
 
Fundamentalist said:
I am considering adding this game to my X-Mas list, but am a bit concerned given some of the things I have read. I am not a very technical person, to put it mildly. My processor is an AMD Athlon 3000+, I have 512 MB RAM, and a NVIDIA Geforce 6600 graphics card. Having checked the minimum specs I appear to be above them, although RAM might be a concern.
RAM will be a concern on larger map settings, just be aware of that.

Also, read the posts in the tech help forum, there is alot of VERY good info in there that has helped many many poeple :)
 
Runriot said:
So you havent been taking care of your system then? Just reinforces my point. Thank you :)

Please, sir, I own a company that does this for a living. Defrag hasn't been an important part of system stability since Windows 2000 came out. Defrag in fact never impacts system stability, merely PERFORMANCE, and with today's drive sizes and OS's, it simply is a waste of time to recommend it. In fact, I bet most people running XP right now were they to go to the Disk Defragmenter would be told they do NOT need to defrag the drive.

What broad statements are you refering to?

Do you read the post before hitting send?

"I'm convinced that the "vocal minority" here, most of which claim to be industry QA experts, or long time computer techs dont run a clean windows system."

How in the hell WOULD YOU KNOW, CLOWN? You know, I need a clown smiley. Dopey look, point hat. Someone get to work on it for me...

Maintaining a clean system? That is every endusers chore, onerous as it may be. As for making these statments, what "possessed" me to do so was the incessant whining about the game here on the boards.

Perhaps the incessant whining is due to the incessant CRASHING and LAGGING and GRAPHIC CORRUPTING that occurs during Civ4 for a GREAT many people? This program AIN'T RIGHT. PERIOD. And I won't suffer fools who have no idea about my system or anyone else's to come out and say I don't run a clean Windows system, when you HAVEN'T A CLUE, KNUCKLEHEAD.

First of all, nice name calling, glad you resisted the urge to flame and debate in a civilized maner.

I resist none if it - I will not suffer fools.

Secondly, ATI troubles are related to the manufacture of the card itself, and how it handles large files. Did ATI release this info to anyone? No one seems to have heard of it before now, so it is logical that the devs hadnt either. Also, those problems were limited to a small percentage of ATI chipsets.

ATI owners, have you had to unpak files for any other game? Seems to me most ATI owners report, much as I as an Nvidia owner do, no problems with ANY OTHER FREAKING GAME.

Do you spin plates? I love clowns that spin plates...

So, are there varieties of systems running the game without harddrives and virtual memory? Are you daft? Just about every computer since the 486 has had HDs and swapfiles for virtual memory, so there most certainly can be a "common thread" in these diverse "variety of systems."

This paragraph has no cohesive point. Try again.

As for the GAME giving these systems problems, how do YOU explain people with the same hardware configs having wildly differing performance in the game?

SAME hardware configs? Please, you are looking at Video card and CPU to determine the SAME config? PLEASE! The fact is there are THOUSANDS of various possible hardware configs, having the same video card and CPU as me does NOT mean we have the "same config". I in fact have a config that is in the less than 1% range - tell me, clown, where is the person running the MSI 6600GT with the K7D motherboard with Dual Barton's at 2200Mhz on the 1.06 BIOS using the 81.85 Detonator drivers with the WHQL certified Audigy 2 drivers? Now here's the next question, does my system have the AMD IRQ masking bug caused by a fault in the northbridge? Inquiring minds want to know, chump.

What you SHOULD be asking is - what other programs give you difficulty? And the answer is almost invariably NONE. Nada. Not a one. As I told another person, I hadn't even SEEN my BIOS screen in over a month. Now with Civ4, I get to see it all the time...

Well, seeing as how I make my money doing remote diagnostics of computers for Brighthouse Networks (call me 1-877-892-3278 ask for tech 1085)

In one hour today, I'd wager I'll clear more than your day, son. I'm glad the help desk is working out for you.

I can agree that there IS nothing more exhuasting as dealing with incompetent end users who think they understand how to take care of a system.

End users do not possess the techincal knowledge to do such things. This is equivalent to asking everyone who owns their car to do their own tune up. It's stupid. Please stop acting like everyone should do what you do on their home computer.

And yes, it did occur to me that some people may have already trimmed processes down, but what about the rest? Whens the last time you cleaned your registry or booted into safemode to remove ghost hardware? Never would be my guess.

Sigh... do you know what these things are? Probably not. Clean your registry? HAH!

This is the problem with those manning the help desk. They have a LITTLE knowledge - enough to act like they know what they are doing.

Are you telling us that Civ4 isn't running because someone didn't "clean their registry"? Tell us, what is IN the registry that would cause Civ4 to crash? Have you examined the EXTENSIVE use of the registry by Civ4? Yeah, what I thought...

Such ire from someone who, by the tone of your post, have already gone through these steps and kept a clean windows install. Such venom from someone not even mentioned in my initial post at all.

Son, what I've done is listen to clown after clown pontificate that there just MUST be something wrong on ALL of these systems causing Civ4 not to run, without even MENTIONING there JUST MIGHT BE A PROBLEM in the game. No, sir, if you wanted to be constructive, you could have mentioned, back when nobody already had, useless tips like defrag and registry cleaning (good grief). You could have asked more information - have you had problems with other games? Do you run any other Direct X 9 games? Nope... none of that. Just an idiotic exposition on how there just MUST be something wrong with the computers of everyone who runs the game. Hurry! Go defrag your swap file, as if it MATTERED!

Put it this way, you dont what to tweak your system, run it clean? Well you dont have to. No one is holding a gun to your head making you do it. But then if you dont, you would have to take some mesure of the responsibility on yourself. Firaxis and 2k are not responsible for your cluttered, unkempt windows environment.

See, here's the problem. You have no idea about my system. None. So stop diagnosing it, sight unseen.

Also, its quite immature to flame me for my opinion while you have spent days and days on this board shouting to whoever would listen about your opinion of the game.

Do you see the response to my post from Euphoric One? It is quite common when I behead a clown who has trolled in here to pontificate on the source of all of our evils. You know why? Because they are TIRED of being told that the one game they have a problem with isn't the problem, but the system that only HAS a problem with that one game is.

Let me know how senior high works out for you.

Venger
 
I'd like to add that calling their tech support number puts you on hold for 5-10 mins then hangs up on you. My emails have gone unanswered except for one stating that they are very busy. I'm sure dealing with the few minorities having problems.

Need a Hot coffee MOD. Thanks for your great post.



Picky1999 said:
Buy it? Unless there's a patch soon I think there oughta be a class action suit!

The issues I had with the product (and I must say so far I've loved what I've actually played of the game) did not become immedately apparent "out of the box".

I'm proud to say as a customer I personally disuaded two different people in Best Buy from buying the game because I think as it exists now --- bugged, cds mislabelled, not performing to minimum specs listed in promotional material, memory leaks, no patch (and not official word that one is coming), et. al --- the product is flawed and you are totally gambling whether it will work on your system. And not all of this apparent right away.

I thought I avoided ALL the problems (video card, unpak, troubling installation) that the "vocal minority" have done so well to publicize, and thought, as I played my first day a week ago, "ah naysayers...the game runs perfectly!" I have a older system that still exceeds the minimum specs and meets the recommended in memory and hardware.

It started off so well, too! That is for an hour or so until I saved, came back, and crashed hard when I produced not my first to second by my fourth wonder. Fine. No biggie. I turn off the Wonder movies, and play for an hour or so, and then it freezes up, and stays freezed up as these little chesire squares dance around the screen for 45 minutes, and then mysterious disappear and I can play fine. That's how it's been every night I've sat to play the game...load saved game, make one turn, freeze up for a half hour (45 minutes on later ages in game) as it does obscene things to my virtual memory, the occasional crash, and fingers crossed I might play for a few hours or so. Until the next time I sit down, and it's the damn routine all over again. I cleared 2 gigs of open space off my hard drive and it has had no impact on these problems. I haven't even been able to finish one single game and I've had since 11-2-05.

I just quit my game tonight (which I played over 3 hours of on a small map with 5 Civs last night after the long wait for the load and the long wait after the first turn for the dancing chesire sqaures to disappear) . I got digsusted with the crashes and the interminal wait for the cehsire quares to disappear after the first turn.

Long frustrated story short:The game is lots of fun but the product is defective. Do not buy it until there's a patch at least or you'll .... be .... sorry....!
 
Venger said:
...snip


Do you see the response to my post from Euphoric One? It is quite common when I behead a clown who has trolled in here to pontificate on the source of all of our evils. You know why? Because they are TIRED of being told that the one game they have a problem with isn't the problem, but the system that only HAS a problem with that one game is.

Let me know how senior high works out for you.

Venger

Hmmm...do you have some control issues my friend? Personal insults are not exactly the indicators of a stable adult.
If you actually do have a company that troubleshoots computer problems. I would suggest you hire someone to teach your techs customer care, other than yourself.
Calm down , take a breath and get over yourself.
 
Finally had some time to sit down and play some Civ last night. I too was worried that I would experience some of the problems others in the forum have had even though I meet or exceed all of the Recommended Requirements. Anyway, to make a long story short, I kind of got into it and OMTS took over, and I ended up starting and finishing my first game last night. The game extended well into the modern age before I won with a Space Race Victory. At no time during the game did I experience any slowdowns or graphics problems. The wonder movies all ran fine.

For reference, this is my system:
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 Socket 939 3200+ (~1.8 GHz)
Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce 6600GT
Memory: 2 GB

All-in-all, I really enjoyed the game, especially all of the new features. Gameplay has definitely changed significantly. For anyone thinking of purchasing the game, I would say to go out and buy it.

A lot of the problems for people that have a system that meets or exceeds the Recommended Requirements seem to be hit-or-miss, and even if you do experience some problems a patch should be coming relatively soon.

-MM
 
I wouldn't recommend buying it, the game is buggy as heck right now. If you want to buy it, then do yourself a favor and goto Ebay,there seems to be alot of Civ 4 games, slightly used for sale... Makes a person wonder why...
 
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