No futher patch

[Reignking]

Willems right, if you meet the recomendations you will have no problems. You can't really blame Firaxis for that.

That's not even remotely true.

 

[vbraun]

My best guess is that Sid or some executives of Firaxis invested large sum of money in Nvidia's stock. So they have keen interest on market success of Nvidia's sales. That means that Ati should lose their market share considerably. So they conspired to use their influence to ruin reputation of ATi graphics chip and throw mud at it. So they intentionally avoided testing their game on ATi's.
They don't have to give specific order to do so. Just buy Nvidia card only and put it in all the developer's computer. They have perfact excuse for it. Nvidia is market leader on grahics card so they bought it.
Is this seems to be quite probable and resonable explanation for why they did not tested their games on Ati's?

It has been posted before that many Firaxians use ATi cards. And how would they stop the beta testers from running an ATi card? Sure they could throw some people out of the testing, but why would they want to do that? Why would they want Nvidia to get more sales?

Remember Firaxis makes games, not diabolical schemes for getting lots of money for nothing.

 

[Willem]

My best guess is that Sid or some executives of Firaxis invested large sum of money in Nvidia's stock. So they have keen interest on market success of Nvidia's sales. That means that Ati should lose their market share considerably. So they conspired to use their influence to ruin reputation of ATi graphics chip and throw mud at it.

Did it ever cross your mind that maybe ATI cards aren't really that good? I've seen other games that have had issues using them as well. Obviously there's a reason why Nvidia has twice the market share as ATI, their products are just better. I've always been an ATI user but after becoming more aware, I'll be switching to Nvidia soon. There just seems to be less issues with them all around.

 

[scooter]

That's not even remotely true.

Note I said recommendations, not requirements. I'm barely at the recommendations and I have a default, uncustomized video card that dell packages and I have yet to have a problem. The game has crashed ONCE so far for me and that was in the unpatched format. The biggest key stats are the RAM and the video card. if you meet/go above the recommendations for those categories you're fine. If not... I call user error

 

[Elhoim]

I used ATI once, and won´t own another in my life...

 

[Reignking]

cds: I don't have the crashes, but the slooow gameplay has made the game unplayable for me. And I would love to have the opportunity to play a huge map!

If we could merge the stability and smoothness of GalCiv2 and the gameplay of Civ4, we'd all be happy

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I can say, with some authority, that the later ATi cards (well, at least the 256MB Radeon cards) are complete crap-nothing at all to do with Civ4.
I had one for around a month, and Doom3, GoogleEarth and Civ4 were constantly crashing. I switched down to a 128MB card and-guess what?-all of these programs are running beautifully. My point is: don't be so quick to blame the game for what could be a hardware issue-even if said hardware is 'technically' above specs.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Harrier]

ATI updated their drivers about a month ago, so maybe you should try them if you have not already done so. The current version of Catalyst is 6.3.

 

[Makdadi]

Note I said recommendations, not requirements. I'm barely at the recommendations and I have a default, uncustomized video card that dell packages and I have yet to have a problem. The game has crashed ONCE so far for me and that was in the unpatched format. The biggest key stats are the RAM and the video card. if you meet/go above the recommendations for those categories you're fine. If not... I call user error

I suggest you browse around the forum and read the posts from people with 2 Gigs of RAM and the latest video hardware, before you post falsehoods and drivel like this again.
You also should make yourself aware of the critical showstopping bugs in multiplayer, for which Civ4 was built from the ground up.

 

[Tae]

Just chiming in on ATI. I to think they have way too many issues with compatibility and their drivers. The ones that shipped with my Radeon wouldn't even work, I thought I had a bad Video Card until I upgraded the drivers. Then later on after a few more driver "upgrades", I couldn't get Kotor to work. Went online and found I had to downgrade the drivers if I wanted to play that game. Never had these type of issues with my old TNT's. So I went GeoForce on my upgrade last month and Nvidea drivers worked out of the box as they should. Also the settings interface is much better IMO.

So unless ATI all of a sudden starts blowing Nvidea performance out of the water, I will stick with Nvidea.

 

[Mr. Do]

To be honest, if the patch is not released more than a week before the expansion pack, I will download the expansion pack from the internet, illegally, for free. I trust that all the cheerleaders have no problem with my stating this, since they're so sure that the patch is coming.

That is how you do a bet of this nature, Drogear. I recommend everyone else make the same pledge.

 

[zx1111]

I object! Software piracy is just same as shoplifting game box from the store..
I wouldn't say in public that I will commit a crime even as a empty or imaginary togue-in-the-cheek threat.
But we may punish them by postponing the purchase of expansion pack ( if you choose to buy it anyway) for few weeks until the price come down. Teeth for teeth, delay for delay...
It is perfactly legal and even good for your purse. It is right thing for us to do for the health of our capitalism and consumerism that we pay less for game with less quality. Lets pay full price for full quality top-notch game and let their endeavor be compenated in financial way and show our thanks and respect to the developers.
But let's pay less price for game which is so buggy and made in cheaper way and too many corners were cut. By this, we can punish them in financial way. This is only and most effective way to let our angry voice be heard by those game developers who gave us more agony and anger than pleasure.. This will be most apelling and chilling threat to them.

 

[King Flevance]

Note I said recommendations, not requirements. I'm barely at the recommendations and I have a default, uncustomized video card that dell packages and I have yet to have a problem. The game has crashed ONCE so far for me and that was in the unpatched format. The biggest key stats are the RAM and the video card. if you meet/go above the recommendations for those categories you're fine. If not... I call user error

Once again, a lie. I am over the recommended specs if only by 256MB RAM and a few Mhz on the processor, but that doesnt matter. The fact is I am over the recommended specs and still having graphic issues. My computer is default WinXP. With the exception of having the newest drivers for my video card, the ATI Radeon 7500 ALL-IN-WONDER 128MB.

It is not user error as it is default as I said. I have nothing special running on here that would conflict. Unless they managed to have it conflict with WinXP which I doubt because I bet the majority of the people on this site run WinXP. It should be pretty easy to test for my setup so long as the Radeon 7500 AIW was tested. I dont think it was so I was unfortunatly left out of the "playable circle".

When the game was released I, along with many other ATI users I saw, had the black terrain issue. Some were able to fix it with the unpak deal. Some weren't. I remember people disabling anti-viruses and stuff which is crazy. You still have to turn off any firewall to play multiplayer I believe. But anyways, I think I was able to get it to show white ground eventually after days of messing with it. Then 1.09 gave me some color. 1.52 did nothing for me. Although, the game isnt worth playing in the later stages.

I do play on huge maps. I know a ton of people are thinking "play a smaller map" but I think huge is too small. I have no interest inplaying a smaller map. I want a larger map. My specs are over recommended and I feel I should be able to do this. Although, I can't and honestly I would rather not play if I can't play the way I want to along with bad graphics to boot.

The real deal is, cds, many basic setups were not performance tested. And I firmly believe the "shoutouts" to beta testers in the back of the manual was probably 60-70% of the number of systems this game was tested on before release. The mixed up CDs (Yes, here we go with that again, sorry but its undenyable proof) are hardcore proof of how rushed this game was. AOE3 had T2 so worried about losing money on their newly bought company their heads where in a twirl trying to get this game out as fast as they could. If the CDs arent enough proof for you somehow, look at the tech trees that were outta whack. I got lucky and got an english one. Didnt matter though, couldnt play it.

 

[King Flevance]

I object! Software piracy is just same as shoplifting game box from the store..
I wouldn't say in public that I will commit a crime even as a empty or imaginary togue-in-the-cheek threat.
But we may punish them by postponeing the purchase of expansion pack ( if you choose to buy it anyway) for few weeks until the price come down. Teeth for teeth, delay for delay...
It is perfactly legal and even good for your purse. It is quite resonable that we should pay less for game with less quality.

Also, I decided back in January that Take 2 has tarnished the Civ name for me. So long as they hold the title, I can wait a few months and see a couple price drops before I buy.

 

[Overcast32]

I never buy games over $40.00 - I almost always wait for them to come down in price some.

I can trade a bit of patience for a bit of cash

I never rush through games, at all - I like to take my sweet time playing them through. Then, by the time I'm ready to move on to another game, I'll pick something that's been out for a while - has already been bug-fixed and I can jump out on the web, read the forums for the games and see what kind of complaints users had and if the company addressed them.

I *HATE* getting an otherwise good game and not being able to play it because the developer decided not to maintain it. That's not the case with Firaxis at all, IMHO - their reputation is pretty good in that regard (I'll hold any comments about take2 - at the moment 8-0) . Sometimes the patches take a little while - but when they release them and they fix more than they break, I'm a happy consumer!

 

[Civrules]

To be honest, if the patch is not released more than a week before the expansion pack, I will download the expansion pack from the internet, illegally, for free. I trust that all the cheerleaders have no problem with my stating this, since they're so sure that the patch is coming.

That is how you do a bet of this nature, Drogear. I recommend everyone else make the same pledge.

Moderator Action: No you will not. You should know this site's policy against piracy: Zero Tolerence. Warned.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Reignking]

Overcast: I felt the same way -- I wanted to let GalCiv2 sit out there for a while, and see if players liked it as much as reviewers. Last week, it was on sale for $30 at Fry's, so I couldn't pass that up.

 

[`DG`]

Regarding Civ4 issues, I always take forum rants on game stability with a pinch of salt. Nothing personal, just that it's hard to aviod the pattern of easily 4 out of 5 "game issues" I read about end up with the game not being responsible, regardless of what game it is.

I was nearly caught out myself: if it wasnt for me having another game having a similar problem ("Civ4 has encountered an error and needs to close", every 20 mins) I'd probably have been effing about the place. But on a suggestion I was given (and probably would have thought to suggest myself, if not blinded by the usual assumption that MY PC is of course totally fine) I turned off CPU fan speed control. no more problem. CPU temp was never hitting the 50C threshold to put fan on full speed, so insufficient airflow over the RAM I think. Nothing else I play uses the quantities of RAM that Civ4 and that other game does.

About the ATI vs Nvidia offtopicness, I went from a Nvidia GF3ti200 to a ATI 9800pro to a Nvida 7800GTX and my own experience with drivers has certainly been favourable to ATI, but I certainly wouldnt suggest I'd never buy either company's products again. The more attentive would have noticed I already have gone back to Nvidia, my only consideration was who had the best peforming card for the money I had available.

 

[Mr. Do]

It is perfactly legal and even good for your purse. It is right thing for us to do for the health of our capitalism and consumerism that we pay less for game with less quality.

...

But let's pay less price for game which is so buggy and made in cheaper way and too many corners were cut. By this, we can punish them in financial way. This is only and most effective way to let our angry voice be heard by those game developers who gave us more agony and anger than pleasure.. This will be most apelling and chilling threat to them.

That's why I will refuse to pay at all for the expansion pack if the patch gets held over for it.

However, piracy is wrong, so I retract my "pledge", and I will not pirate Warlords.

However, I still like the idea of some sort of bet about this. So how about, if the patch does not come out more than a week before the expansion pack, one of the people who is happy to guarantee it will be out by then will offer to buy me that pack so I can still play it. And if the patch is released well before the expansion, then I will agree to never, ever even think about pirating any video games for the rest of my existence?

Just to be clear finally: I will not be stealing Warlords in any way at all

 

[Philips]

Drama queen.

Living in the world you do, seeing the things you see on the news, having sufficient resources to own a home and still have enough to pay for electricity, a computer and computer games - for you to turn round and claim that you're "suffering"... Well. You need to develop a little perspective.

You are not abandoned - how many times do you need to hear that. If you are being ignored it is because you are one of many thousands of people who are *ignoring* what the game developers have said.

You are not suffering. You are impatient. You are too used to getting your own way and you seem to honestly believe that drama-queening on a forum is the way to solve your problem. That is the online version of throwing your toys on the floor and stamping your feet. Grow up.

=====

Apologies to the rest of you for the above - having spent the last week reading posts both here and on the Oblivion boards, I am appalled by the number of posts by the "suffering masses".

This one is hilarious!

When a company releases a defective product people can and should complain about it. Companies should be held accountable for the quality of their product and without a software equivalent of Consumer Reports, word of mouth is the best way to do that.

One reason a company like Take2 buys a company like Firaxis is to acquire a trademark that is associated with quality so that they can fool people into buying their junky products.

Everyone who has problems with Civ IV should post about them, so that their fellow Civ fans will know what sort of quality comes out of this company, and so that the Firaxis trademark will loose it's ability to mislead people as quickly as possible.