online downloading expansion "CIV- 4 BEYOND THE SWORD

[canepolekid_no1]

Used An On-line Download System To Purchase Civ 4 Beyond The Sword Game Expansion, Installed Product And Was Informed That This Edition Was Not Recognizable To The Retail Edition Of Civ4.being An Old Time Gamer, I Played Civ's I,ii,and Iii, I Immediately Purchased Civ-4 Beyond The Sword At My Local Walmart ,same Price, And Successfully Loaded And Played The Game. Note To The Wise

 

[jkp1187]

You should contact the online retailer and tell them about your problem.

I purchased mine from Direct2Drive.com and had absolutely no problems. The only difference is that you have to get the patch from Direct2Drive instead of using the in-game updater. (FWIW, the 3.03 patch was up on Direct2Drive almost simultaneously with it being available via the in-game updater.)

 

[Goncyn]

For what it's worth, I bought Civ4 + BtS from Steam and I've had no problems. (Well, unless you count being stuck at version 3.03 with no option to downgrade as a problem.) It's actually extremely convenient being able to play without needing a CD in the drive, especially when I take my laptop away from home.

I know that doesn't directly apply to your problem with combining retail Civ4 and downloaded BtS, but I wanted to defend Steam as a good quality purchase option. Which "on-line download system" did you purchase the game from? That little detail might help people make a more informed decision.

 

[ori]

The problem is that in quite a few cases the download version and the retail version do not mix, i.e. Vanilla retail and BtS Steam do not install and vice versa. There is a similar problem for some people with Gold Edition and BtS - Take2 did go out of its way to make sure that using different versions of this game causes problems
(I do believe that this was inadvertently done, but having 3-4 different versions of the same game out that all have different file systems and are not easily compatible with each other is not a great feat on their part).

 

[Welnic]

Direct2Drive says that their BTS is compatible with the box version of Civ IV vanilla. I don't know if it actually works as I have the D2D version of both. They work great for me.

 

[Goncyn]

Vanilla retail and BtS Steam do not install

Actually the Steam version of BtS explicitly states that it does work with a vanilla retail install. From the Steam site (emphasis mine):

Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword requires Sid Meier's Civilization IV to play and will work with boxed retail versions as well as the Steam version.

You can check it yourself here: http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=8800&cc=US

 

[ori]

Direct2Drive says that their BTS is compatible with the box version of Civ IV vanilla. I don't know if it actually works as I have the D2D version of both. They work great for me.

Actually the Steam version of BtS explicitly states that it does work with a vanilla retail install. From the Steam site (emphasis mine):



You can check it yourself here: http://www.steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=8800&cc=US

I know what they say AND I know the issues reported in the tech support section and bug forums here:
I did not say it never does, but said "in quite a few cases" - just search this forum and you'll find lots of reports where they did not match. Especially the BtS installer seems to have issues with non-boxed or gold edition Vanilla since most people describing install problems here have the problem that the BtS installer tries to update Vanilla to 1.74 and cannot find it because it either is a downloaded version or gold edition and then aborts making it impossible to install BtS. For some reason this does occur mainly with those versions but not for every user

 

[jkp1187]

Direct2Drive says that their BTS is compatible with the box version of Civ IV vanilla. I don't know if it actually works as I have the D2D version of both. They work great for me.

I have box vanilla and Warlords, D2D BtS. No problems with either.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

The Direct2Drive download works with the vanilla box. I bought the vanilla version at Target and have downloaded all expansions/patches and never had a problem. Just remember that you MUST get the patches from the source you downloaded the expansion from (IE if you got BTS from Direct2Drive, you must get the official patches from Direct2Drive)

EDIT: Never ever shop at Walmart. The evil empire
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