Patch 1.09 released!

[Charles 22]

I agree that this possibility should be mentioned in a fair review. Actually, the first line in my review to my friends was something like "It's a great game, but watch your specs, and try whether the game runs before you buy it."



My problem with this is that if your technical problems are so rampant that they merit a score of 1.0, then you simply wouldn't be able to play enough to rate gameplay at all. I also think that you don't make clear whether your review is meant as your private experience with the game (as the score suggests), or as an overview about how the game is generally received (as the usage of CFC polls suggests, which you chose and interpreted a little one-sided imho). But you're entitled to your opinion of course.

Anyway, this is vastly off-topic here. I do hope that Firaxis manages to fix your game soon.

I think you're missing his point; a point I agree with BTW. If you cannot play it, you might as well be looking at screenshots of it on the internet, which is to say it's worthless. Now his criticism didn't cover my angle on it, that I can play it up to mid-point, but it occurred to me that if I can play it up to mid-point and it crashes every time, without any hope of progressing beyond another 6 turns, only to see it crash again, it's almost worse than worthless, but just a tease. In other games, there are bugs which can be 'tolerated' so to speak, since even though it falls short of it's goal, it at least enables you to finish it. When the bug is being unable to finish it it's a complete waste of time to play it if the leak is never fixed. If they ever make civ into some kind of FPS hybrid - WATCH OUT!!!

The football equivalent of the memory leak bug, is that the coach says you're the best player in practice, that he knows you would be great in the game. Only he doesn't ever let you play in a game. The praise, or the gameplay in this case, is totally worthless if you can't actually finish and thereby win. A lot of guys have been out here practicing for a long time, and really want to play it "when it counts".

 

[Natronomonas]

Hey, on another thread in this forum dealing with memory leaks, a member named The_Kangaroo posted some changes he made to his .ini file. It's the last message on page 13:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=137706&page=13

These are the changes:

AllowScreenShots = 0
SyncInput = 1
D3D9Query = 1
LoggingEnabled = 1

I tried them and I was able to play for the last couple of hours with not one single CTD; from 1951 to 1988. Prior to making the changes, it was crashing on me every 1-3 turns. I wouldn't have tried the changes but another member posted that it had worked for him so I decided to try it.

It worked!! It worked!! I just played for 75 mins without a crash, then exited normally to come here and post. I had behaviour like Yrth, but it seems that memory leaks from the game are the problem!

I don't know what these changes do or why I didn't CTD tonight, but I hope they keep working for me (and hopefully it'll work for some of you as well even though our machines are different) The only drawback from the changes is that a) it seemed to take longer to load and b) the one wonder movie I got (the Internet) was choppy. But gameplay was good.

I didn't get any slower behaviour from the game - I run reasonable specs but not ultra high end (A64@2.4ghz, 6600GT, 1G ram). Movies weren't choppy.

For the record, I had reduced all my settings to the lowest possible prior to this and I didn't change them to make them higher. I just wanted to try out the .ini changes first. I would have kept going but I had to stop for the night. I have an Athlon 4000+ at 2.6 Ghz, 1 GIG RAM and X600 ATI. EDIT: I have the 1.09 patch (which I downloaded from in-game and installed without problem)

Just thought I'd let you guys know in case you wanted to experiment with your .ini file -- but just in case, make a clean copy of it before messing with it.

I left my settings as is - 1280x1024, no AA (though I'll try it now, I disabled it to try and get the game running - didn't make any difference) and all other settings to "high".

I'm happy someone has figured out something that helps - I'm just disappointed that there's no word from Firaxis about tips like these. If they've narrowed down a memory leak to something associated with those variables in the .ini, the could suggest trying some of the changes - ANYTHING other than the 5 basic Q&A they have on the "support" section of their site.

Yay for The_Kangaroo and Yrth for bringing it to my attention
I can finally start to enjoy the game a bit!

edit: I'm still unhappy I had to muck around in an "ini" file to get a game to run without problems, and don't think this should be necessary, but - I can play the game! That makes me happy

 

[Charles 22]

For you guys who think it works, I caution you to realize that immediate gains do not obliterate the memory loss problem. You guys have just seen it worse than the rest of us. I too thought seeing an immediate gain in the processing beforehand was a good sign that the memory loss had been dealt with, but the crashes have been more frequent if anything (about even actually).

I got so desparate that I actually uninstalled/reinstalled all over again to do it via the ingame download, whereas before I did it another way (I did want to have the actual zip if nothing else saved somewhere for later use).

If with your problems you can then play a large or huge game with the default amount of civs, past the midway point you may be on to something. For my part I will delay doing this until my latest attempt goes down the toilet.

 

[antontsai]

hello, i downloaded the patch 1.09 but can't get the game started, i guess that's because i am using the original windows xp, not the windows xp sp2. perhaps i should update my os to sp2. please let me know if you have encountered the similar problem, thank you.

 

[Natronomonas]

I'm only in the early game (started right at the start) on a large map, but it's a definite improvement on things. I'm a definitely concerned about problems arising when I play on huge maps or the late game, but for now, it's working. Fingers crossed.

 

[Natronomonas]

hello, i downloaded the patch 1.09 but can't get the game started, i guess that's because i am using the original windows xp, not the windows xp sp2. perhaps i should update my os to sp2. please let me know if you have encountered the similar problem, thank you.

I'm pretty sure they recommend SP2, especially if you have an ATI graphics card - it's pretty much compulsory in that instance.

 

[blue3c]

Read and weap all you ati lovers. But of coarse it does help to worship the antichrist himself (Sid) to get all this to work.

Minimum System Requirements

Operating System:
Windows® 2000/XP
Processor:
1.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent
Memory:
256 MB RAM (Windows 2000) / 512 MB RAM (Windows XP)

Hard Disk Space:
1.7 GB Free

CD-ROM Drive :
4X Speed

Video:
DirectX 9.0c-compatible 64 MB video card with Hardware T&L support ( GeForce 2/Radeon 7500 or better)

Sound:
DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card

DirectX®:
DirectX® version 9.0c (included) or higher



Recommended System Requirements

Operating System:
Windows® 2000/XP
Processor:
1.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent

Memory:
512 MB RAM

Hard Disk Space:
1.7 GB Free

CD-ROM Drive :
4X Speed

Video:
128 MB Video Card w/ DirectX 8 support (pixel & vertex shaders)

Sound:
DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card

DirectX®:
DirectX® version 9.0c (included) or higher



Supported Operating Systems

Windows 2000
Service Pack 1 or higher WITH Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Windows XP
Home or Professional w/ Service Pack 1 or higher




It is very important that you ensure that you are using the latest drivers and versions of all of your software. While doing this you might encounter some specific conflicts with the minimum specifications for Civ4.

For example, if you have an ATI video card and you are using Windows XP you must (it says recommends but when problems are present and no solutions present themselves it is sometimes necessary to make recommended a requirement) have Service Pack 2 installed to meet the requirements of the ATI driver.

 

[sgtfury]

I spent most of my evening last night updating my computer, defragging it, uninstalling Civ 4 and reinstalling it. Then, I tried unsuccessfully to download the patch. When downloading from the website, i get some kind of "file not found" error (sorry, I'm not a techie and don't remember the specific error language). Very frustrating. So, I tried to download from the game, which was impossible. I clicked on "check updates" and the game basically froze and refused to let me shut down. I had to actually unplug the computer to get it to reboot.

I appreciate all the tips and tricks to get the patch to work, but I am not very computer savvy and dont understand most of the instructions. Frankly, i am mystified at such poor quality. I understand patching for some gameplay tweaks and fixing goofy little errors. But, when the game is basically unplayable, you're not really trying to get a patch so much as rebuilding something that was unfinished.

I am really kind of my wits end here.

 

[blue3c]

I spent most of my evening last night updating my computer, defragging it, uninstalling Civ 4 and reinstalling it. Then, I tried unsuccessfully to download the patch. When downloading from the website, i get some kind of "file not found" error (sorry, I'm not a techie and don't remember the specific error language). Very frustrating. So, I tried to download from the game, which was impossible. I clicked on "check updates" and the game basically froze and refused to let me shut down. I had to actually unplug the computer to get it to reboot.

I appreciate all the tips and tricks to get the patch to work, but I am not very computer savvy and dont understand most of the instructions. Frankly, i am mystified at such poor quality. I understand patching for some gameplay tweaks and fixing goofy little errors. But, when the game is basically unplayable, you're not really trying to get a patch so much as rebuilding something that was unfinished.

I am really kind of my wits end here.

While you were downloading the patch from the in game installer. How long did you let it sit before you unplugged? Was the HDD still going, activity and such. Did you try to alt tab between windows? Did you try a ctrl alt del?
When you say froze, what do you mean? Could you still move the mouse?
What kind of internet connection do you have?
Can you play at all with out the patch?
Do you have lots of money you like to give away to people who help you?
What are you system specs? OS? SP level?

Its not techie. techie sounds to much like trekie, which most of us are but won't admit. Try Geek.

All hail sid the anti christ

 

[Cytadc]

Mine froze as well when I first tried to patch through the game. The problem was my firewall. The Firewall popped up asking if the program was allowed but CIV refused to release control of the screen so I never saw it and couldn't alt-tab ctrl-alt-del etc out and had to restart computer manually.

Simple Solution: Manually allow CIV to access the net on firewall. Even then it took CIV like 12 minutes to make the connection and find the patch in game... and that patch didn't work for me.

Maybe that is your problem maybe not. Just sharing.

PS: I could still move the mouse around just not click on anything and when I moved the mouse over the part of the screen the firewall query normally pops up from it changed from CIV cursor to windows cursor but no amount of clicking worked.

 

[sgtfury]

When I tried to download the patch from the game, the following occurred:

Lots of churning noises, which died down but not completely. I let this go on for about 20 minutes, with no message prompt or screen change.

I was able to move the cursor around, but could not select anything. Nothing came up showing that a download was in progress.

I tried crtl+alt+del to no avail.

I have a Dell Dimension XP (I have updated the service, I think it is SP2), a 2.4 gig hard drive with over 80% of available disk space, lower end of memory. I was online through Earthlink during the download. I have a dial-up, so it is slow.

If I try to play the game without the patch it crashes within the first 2-3000 years of gameplay.

 

[Artanis]

Just tried the D2D patch last night. As expected, it didn't work either (gave the exact same "no previous version installed" message, too ). Was going to try reinstalling Civ4 after playing another turn or two on my current game...so the reinstall kinda hasn't actually happened yet

Regarding your problem: Perhaps your Civ4 installation is incomplete. Did you have any problems installing? Did Civ4 register properly, does the game show up under "Settings -> Software"?

Yes, there was a Civ4 entry under Settings -> Software (unless I looked in entirely the wrong spot, which is certainly possible).

 

[Natronomonas]

If I try to play the game without the patch it crashes within the first 2-3000 years of gameplay.

I think that still happens for most people after the patch too.

It took me a couple of tries to get the patch to download; it always started and the progress bar moved, but would stop after 5% or so then say an error had occurred. This is on a 1.5mbit connection, not dialup. On about the 5th attempt it went straight through in about 5 or 10 mins and installed fine, which slightly astonished me. Didn't make any difference to my CTD though - I had to use the .ini tweaks described above to do anything.

 

[bugmenot17]

Just wanted to add my 2 cents.

Athlon XP2100, 768 MB ram, FX5600, XP SP2. Never crashed to desktop, but frequent black map and stuttering after a few hours of play, runaway ram use. Upgraded to 1.09 and newest Nvidia drivers (I know, I shouldn't have done both at the same time), now get black map whenever I scroll to undiscovered areas or other civs contact me. I've disabled movies and run at the lowest graphical settings.

 

[Natronomonas]

I got some strange graphics behaviour after I updated my Nvidia drivers - they went away (for the moment) after I started the game with the shift key held down (clears cache).
Give this a go if you haven't - I hope it helps, we all need it with this game!

 

[bugmenot17]

I was already deleting the cache before starting every game. Thanks for the tip though, Natronomonas.

 

[blue3c]

My graphics were fine until I installed civ iv.

 

[blue3c]

firaxis is fire axis, fire is what hell is all about. Hell is evil. So firaxis = axis of evil. hmmmmm.
sid and soren are the devil and they run the axis of evil.

all hail sid soren the antichrist

 

[bugmenot17]

Uhm, yeah. Could you put down the bong and wander into another thread, blue3c? That'd be great.

 

[Natronomonas]

My graphics were fine until I installed civ iv.

lol. It's funny except that it's true.

The problem is that there's no comprehensive diagnostics on the Take2/firaxis website, ie, try these things in this order, and you'll probably get the game working, just the same old 5 useless "tips".

I'm not sure even this forum has it - just "check your hardware, drivers etc". It's not really the job of forum volunteers to collate this information though, Firaxis tech support needs to do their job (if there are any people actually employed for this - I fired off an email about 3-4 days ago and am yet to get any sort of response).

N.