New member seeking technical advice.

[Kodika]

Hi, I am a new member and want to get into strategy games. The trouble is that I do not have a desktop but a laptop. I have an HP G60 217-EM Notebook with an AMD Turion Duel-Core RM 72 processor and a GeForce 8200 M G video card. I have 1407 total available graphics memory, 256 MB of dedicated video memory and 1151 MB of shared system memory. I have 2.8GB of Ram (system memory 2,814 and graphics memory of 1,395). My operating system is Vista 32 bit (Service Pack 2).

I was also hoping to play the game Empire: Total War and went to the site "Can You Run it?" to see if my pc could run the game. It said that it passed the recommended requirements but when I visited the site www.twcentre.net I was told in no uncertain terms that my laptop was totally unsuitable as it does not have a good enough graphics card or gpu to copw with any of the Total War Games.

I was also thinking in buying a Civilization game, so I asked the guy who was helping me on that site whether my pc could cope with either CIV 3 or 4. He said that it could, but that it could not cope with CIV 5. (That was confirmed by "Can you Run it?"). He also gave me a link to your site.

However, before deciding which game to go for, I thought I would post on this forum to see whether members on here agree that the games will play okay on my laptop. It would also be helpful to get some advice as to which game will work better on my system. Another consideration, not having played any Civ games before, is which game would be best to start with?

As I am a complete novice, any help that anyone can provide will be appreciated.

 

[Kodika]

I see nobody has yet replied to my thread. When you do, could you please confirm whether CV 3 and 4 will both work okay with Vista. (I intend getting the complete versions of both games which I understand are fully patched.) Am I correct?

 

[God-Emperor]

Civ 4, including the expansions, should work just fine. That notebook is not exactly the highest performer by todays standards but is over the "recommended" specification for the Beyond the Sword expansion.

If you buy it via getting actual CD/DVDs then Civ 4 Complete is almost certainly not going to come fully patched. I don't know why, but they never seemed to make it available with the 3.19 patch already applied to Beyond the Sword (BtS). After installation check the version of the BtS expansion (you can find it via "about this build" on the "advanced menu" from the main menu in BtS). If it is not 3.19 it is not fully patched. Do not use the in-game updater as it almost never works but does not tell you it failed (also, it sometimes locks up completely). When running BtS at 3.19 not only do you get all the bug fixes and other tweaks they ever did, it will also run without needing the CD/DVD to be in the drive (assuming you get it that way - digital downloads never needed one, of course).

There is not any real need to run Civ 4 without BtS. You might run the base version, no expansions, once just to play the Tutorial which is only available that way - it can help you learn what is what in the user interface and how to do the basic things you need to do. Other than that you should not bother with the base version. Warlords has some scenarios that some people like, so if you like playing scenarios you could try that. Otherwise just play with the Beyond the Sword version. If your Complete version comes with Colonization that is actually a completely different game that was built using a modified version of the Civ4 game engine, so you could play that too.

Civ 3 should easily run since your notebook is probably better in just about every way than a top of the line PC was when that game's last update happened. The later Complete version(s) should presumably work on Vista with no messing around needed, but I don't know for sure. You should probably check the Civ 3 forums.

 

[Kodika]

Thank you very much God-Emperor for your very detailed and helpful reply. It is reassuring to know that Civ 4 will work okay in my laptop. I have one question raised by your response. If the complete disc version does not come fully patched, is there any benefit in buying the disk version of the game, bearing in mind that you say I will not require the disks to be in the drive once I have downloaded the 3.19 BtS patch? As you warn me not to use the in-game updater, do I get that from Steam? Would it be better to download the complete game from Steam?

Your assistance is much appreciated.

 

[Furiey]

Complete works fine on Vista.

You can find the 3.19 patch here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=cat&id=12

Buying on steam is convenient, but personally I would buy the cheapest I could find. I managed to buy complete for £2.75 on steam in a sale when my disc version failed, but it's not on sale at the moment, it could be cheaper elsewhere.

 

[Kodika]

Thanks for the link Furiey. Am I correct in my assumption that if I buy the disc version of the game, I will not need to take up so much space on my hard drive compared to if I buy the download version from Steam?

 

[Furiey]

It all installs onto the hard drive whether from the disc or from steam, so there will be no difference in size.

 

[Kodika]

Thanks for clearing that up.