I just went through patching my CIV 4 up to 3.19, and ran into the problems many others have. After going through a lot of posts on this forum (some of them old, not applicable to Civ 4 Complete and/or contradictory), I thought it might be helpful to create a new thread with this information, and (hopefully) save some people trying to update Civ 4 Complete a little bit of time.
I was updating a version of Civ 4 Complete purchased in the Fall of 2009. I had tried numerous times to do it through the in-game installer, and thought it had been done for a while. Consistently, however, my version number would show as 317. First piece of advice - DO NOT USE THE IN-GAME UPDATE UTILITY- it never did work properly for me. It would simply download the file, then the installer would simply stop with no notice that anything was wrong.
In reading through the threads here (thanks everybody!), mixed in with other more technical advice, I kept coming across notations that said you must patch Civ 4 up to 3.17 before taking it to 3.19. Like many others, I ingored it, since the game was saying it was already on 3.17. I spent a more than a few hours of frustration going through the more technical stuff since I was convinced this wasn't the problem, until I finally cracked tonight and did the 3.17 patch. Here's the part that I haven't seen anywhere else - when I downloaded the 3.17 patch from the Firaxis site it was actually called the 3.17e patch. My suspicion is that Civ 4 Complete has the 3.17 patch, but not the final version of it, and that 3.19 will not run if this latest version of 3.17 is not installed. I was able to run the 3.17 patch (I saved it when downloading, then just double-clicked to run it). Then I downloaded (saved) and ran the 3.19 patch with no problems.
Quick and easy summary of how to update Civ 4 Complete to 3.19
- Do not use the in-game installer
- Download the 3.17 patch (preferably directly from Firaxis.com, but it probably doesn't matter). Save the patch anywhere on your system, then double click it to run it (again, you probably could just run it directly on the download, but that isn't the way I did it)
- Download the 3.19 patch (again, preferably from Firaxis), save it, and run it.
Hope this helps!
I was updating a version of Civ 4 Complete purchased in the Fall of 2009. I had tried numerous times to do it through the in-game installer, and thought it had been done for a while. Consistently, however, my version number would show as 317. First piece of advice - DO NOT USE THE IN-GAME UPDATE UTILITY- it never did work properly for me. It would simply download the file, then the installer would simply stop with no notice that anything was wrong.
In reading through the threads here (thanks everybody!), mixed in with other more technical advice, I kept coming across notations that said you must patch Civ 4 up to 3.17 before taking it to 3.19. Like many others, I ingored it, since the game was saying it was already on 3.17. I spent a more than a few hours of frustration going through the more technical stuff since I was convinced this wasn't the problem, until I finally cracked tonight and did the 3.17 patch. Here's the part that I haven't seen anywhere else - when I downloaded the 3.17 patch from the Firaxis site it was actually called the 3.17e patch. My suspicion is that Civ 4 Complete has the 3.17 patch, but not the final version of it, and that 3.19 will not run if this latest version of 3.17 is not installed. I was able to run the 3.17 patch (I saved it when downloading, then just double-clicked to run it). Then I downloaded (saved) and ran the 3.19 patch with no problems.
Quick and easy summary of how to update Civ 4 Complete to 3.19
- Do not use the in-game installer
- Download the 3.17 patch (preferably directly from Firaxis.com, but it probably doesn't matter). Save the patch anywhere on your system, then double click it to run it (again, you probably could just run it directly on the download, but that isn't the way I did it)
- Download the 3.19 patch (again, preferably from Firaxis), save it, and run it.
Hope this helps!
