Performance Questionare

[Junuxx]

1. Yes, the game works here.
2. Performance is okay. No long load times or turn lags. Now I've set Globe View Quality to low I don't have huge waiting times when zooming out either. But wonder movies are slow and the sound is weird, and sometimes I get crashes in the industrial/modern age.
3. I built my PC January 2005
4. Athlon 64 3000+, 1 GB RAM, Radeon 9600XT. Updated drivers 2 weeks ago
5. My favorite games are strategy games and I play them a LOT!

 

[Si_Lurker]

1. Yes, no problems

2. Yes, except for sluggishnes due to memory leak after several hours.

3. Built, recently rebuilt due to dead motherboard.

4. Chieftec DA-01WD, Antec TC550W, Abit NF7-S, AthlonXP-M @ 2.2GHz, 512MB PC3200, Matrox Parhelia 128 AGP4x graphic card (it's nor Ati, nor nVidia, it's Matrox ), had no problems FAA16x works perfectly, drivers are old due to other software which works best with them.

5. Strategies, often

 

[Red Wegener]

1. The game has worked for me. I had none of the problems others have posted about.

2. The performance during the late game gets bad for me. Scrolling or opening some of the advisors causes a lot of hard drive swapping. I tried playing a large map and it was much worse. It was playable on a large map but very slow. I think 1 gig ram is needed for maps larger than normal unless its a memory leak issue as some think. Has this been confirmed yet?

3. I bought my computer 3 or 4 years ago. I bought it at a small computer shop near me so I basically paid him to build it for me and told him what to use because I am too lazy to buld it myself

4. Intel 2.0 ghz, 512 ram, SB live, GeForce fx 5900xt. I updated the video drivers before installing. I am still using XP sp1 until I get ambitious enough to do a clean install of XP.

5. Other games I play are CoD, Guild Wars, NWN, DoD (as soon as I get DoD: source), Sims2 (that game is awesome don't laugh!)

 

[Bal Ur]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes, as long as I have Nvidia drivers 71.81 (I believe, I'm using the ones from March 11) installed or earlier, or else it crases every 5 minutes after 1500 AD or so. If I do have those installed it runs fine without bugs.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

Not especially, at least graphics wise. I am getting 10-15 fps at any given time. I am currently also playing Call of Duty 2, at a steady 40+ fps, and this sure isn't CoD2.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Bought a Dell, winter of 2003.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Pentium 4 at 2.2 Ghz
1 GB RAM
GeForce 5500 256MB, with 71.81 drivers

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Mostly strategy, RPGs and shooters, and I play them fairly regularly

 

[Psyringe]

1. Yes, the game works.

2. Yes. Based on the experience of former Civ games, and of the state of the gaming industry in general, I expected more problems. Gameplay and stability look far better than expected. However, I was surprised about not being able to play standard maps without mid/end game slowdown, but since I only have the minimal amount of RAM, it's logiocal that I run into performance problems on less than minimal settings. On tiny maps I have no problems at all.

3. I built my PC myself, new parts are added when the currently used ones grow too old.

4. Athlon XP 1800+, 256 MB RAM, GeForce 4 Ti 4200 with 64 MB RAM, Onboard sound, Windows 2000 SP4, latest drivers.

5. strategy & roleplaying; at least 20 hours a week

 

[Tholish]

. The game works with the exception that most of the time I cannot see the title under each city that says the city name, population, and what it is building. The text there is just colorful blocks. Also the wonder movies are stuttery. I just look at the city screen for more info, and watch the movies anyway, they're still cool.

2. I'm surprised it worked at all. Empire Earth 2 didn't.

3. I gave away my two year old 800 dollar 1.5 ghz Compaq and got a new Averatec at Computer Rennaisance for 1000 dollars. The salesman said 2800 meant its processor clock speed was 2.8 ghz, but the system information says it's just 1.8. The memory is only the same old half gig, and I can't find anyone to say what kind of graphics card it has.

4. I just answered this question above.

5. The first computer game I ever played was Tetris, which was the only game I could get on 5 1/4 floppy for my NEC Powermate 286 in 1994. Similarly, in 1998 I was hearing a lot of stuff about these here computer games being real fun, so I went out and got the best one I could find for my 486: Sim City 2000. I liked that and quickly got a Pentium 2 after I came back from Bosnia so I could play Sim City 3000.
After I came back from Kosovo, I was looking for a next version of Sim City at Staples I saw "original" Age of Empires and fell in love with it, and got all the upgrades. After 9-11 I was working in recovery efforts at the Pentagon, and one of the other workers told me if I liked Aof E I would love Civ 2. So as soon as I got home I went looking for it, but all they had was this here hot off the press Civ3. Which was almost what I really wanted: Sim City with a wargame element, Age of Empires with more of a simulation feel. I played it way too much, burned out, found the Editor, started changing things to keep it interesting, went to Iraq, eventually learned how to halfway hack up a mod, went to Korea and tried to do some future mods, came back and developed a technique for winning pretty reliably on Emperor (Pick "no barbarians" then beeline for the Literature, while settler rushing, making lots of workers with the new cities, who then put mines all around the capitol and then join it, maintain high entertainment spending in a pop 12 city while you quickly get the Great Library, then instantly turn off all research and sace all your money to fund research after you get education. You shouldn't be TOO far behind by the time you get into Industrial. There, beeline for Theory of Evolution while building a palace you will switch over, go Electronics and Atomic Theory for your free techs. By managing trades you can easily be in the forefront to get Fission and build the UN. By making Mutual Protection pacts at any price with everybody right before you get it, then declaring war on the largest power, you get everybody to vote for you their ally and win a diplomatic victory. Yawn. The Sumerians are best for it, and the most touch and go part is getting the Theory of Evolution. It's horrible when you get beat to it by one turn, but you can sometimes still get to the UN first.) So, I wasn't really playing much of anything, gave civ3 away with my old computer, and got civ4, which I preordered, a week after it came out. I am currently playing on Noble level as Huang of China starting in mesopotamia in the Ice Age (after losing a points game with Ghandi acting the role of the Japanese on a big island all to himself until the late middle ages, er industrial era for everybody else.)All day. And at night. So in answer to the original question, it varies.

PS
And yes, I've ALWAYS played civ like the Civ4 AIs. Except like the third civ 3 game I ever played, when I just decided to get crazy and try emperor and came out swinging as the Romans, and took down a couple of other civs with just Warriors, then just kept conquering. I didn't even know how to do a lot of the interface or what a lot of things were, I was just attacking. And I won a domination victory, the only Emperor victory I had for a long time.

Sorry to go off topic. Sort of a eulogy for Civ 3 I guess.

 

[Dominico]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes!

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

Yes, but sometimes in the later era when i have religion in a lot of enemy cities it can slow a bit. But lately this seems better if i shut down all background tasks.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Built it myself in 2001

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Athlon Thunderbird 1.4gig
512meg DDR PC2100 mem
Barracuda Hard-Drive
ATI Sapphire Radeon 9600xt 128meg (the 256meg one is slower )

As for drivers I make a point to NEVER update drivers. Updating drivers causes no end of compatibility problems. Dont get new drivers just when they come out because its not needed. If your game doesnt work and it seems to be a graphics issue then get new drivers. I still have the drivers from the disk with the card and they work perfectly with every new game i get. The only thing i ever update is Direct X. Everything else is left alone. The sound drivers are the ones from 2001! lol

My motto : If it works dont mess!

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Allsorts, my favourites are things like civ, Call of Duty, Silent Hunter III, Rome Total War (wish it had AI like this game)


Hope that helps!

 

[Lorteungen]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes the game worked right out of the box and I've only had a couple of CTD's which I don't think is unacceptable. The game seems stable, but then I've only played standard map size so far. I have only seen a couple of minor bugs, so far it seems more polished at release than Civ3 was.

Except...

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

No, it did not meet my expectations, in fact I was quite disappointed. Like I said I have only played standard maps with 7 civs but even at these settings I feel the game is sluggish even early on. Annoying delays everytime I click on a menu or a unit, move a unit basically everytime I do anything. They're not long delays but it sure isn't instant either and I'm a very impatient person when it comes to these kinds of things. I had expected the game to run flawlessly (at least performance wise) at the default settings on my machine, especially considering the screenshots I had seen, the recommended specs and the fact that all other games I have tried on this system have run without a hitch.
Basically I think the performance is unacceptable for such a graphically rather simplistic game. The game doesn't seem to be that much more complex than Civ3 to explain the huge performance gap.
Like I said, however, I will admit that I have a very low threshold for these kinds of things so what is unacceptable to me may be smooth to others.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

I built it myself, it's an ongoing project but I gave it a major overhaul just 3 months ago

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Athlon 64 3000+, 1 GB ram, Epox EP-9NPA+ Ultra, GF 6600GT/128. All drivers are updated. Win XP SP2, up-to-date on patches.

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

I don't play that much anymore but when I do it's either Civ or a few select teambased shooters. I also occationally play other stategy games like RTW, EU2, KoH and the like but usually only for a short period of time. Civ is the only game I frequently play.

I'm just trying to get an idea of how widespread these issues are. Thanks in advance.

You're welcome.

 

[xguild]

I was just hoping to get some information from everyone.

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far. Define works, if you ask Fraxis I'm not having a problem and the game is short of perfect.. end quote. I'm able to play but I'm unable to load saved games so unless I finish a game in one sitting each time I exit I have to start a new game.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not? For a turned based game on a high end machine like mine I would say the performance is horrible. Don't get me wrong it's playable, but I can't imagine how people with slower machines are managing. You would think with a 1 gig memory 3.2 Pent IV system on a Radeon Pro 9800 I would be in good shape

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that? Bought it, it's an Area 51 (Alienware), I have two of them, the one that I'm using I bought very recently.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers? My drivers are litterly updated the day they are released (all of them), my specs are as mentioned above but it suffices to say that they are way above recommended for the game and the performance is still "poor". I suspect a memory leak.

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them? I play Everquest 2 with all the settings turned up and experiance no lag. I play Neverwinter Nights with all the settings turned up and experiance no lag. I play Rome Total War with all the settings turned up and experiance no lag. Pretty much play any game you can think of with settings turned up and experiance no lag.

 

[Paalikles]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

-> Game works. I have updated my nvidia card to the latest driver, and have not tested it since that, but it worked rather well without crashing for attempts.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

-> To some extent. I have minor sound issues when playing wonder and end game movies though.

-> Was kicked out of the gamespy lobby after alt tabbing, and using the browser whilst remaining in the gamespy lobby when running civ4. In fact, not only was I kicked out, the program terminated.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

-> Yes, a little of both. I chose most of the parts, but they built it.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

WinXP home ed. SP2, fully updated as of Nov 12th
Gforce 5700 from Nvidia
512MB of RAM
Creative Live! 5.1 soundcard
Hansol 730E 17inch
AMD Athlon XP2100+ (which is a palomino processor @ 1.77Ghz
Around 20GB or more free HD space
Samsung DVD player
Network card + broadband connection

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Adventure and strategy. Not too often, because other obligations and such comes first

 

[warpstorm]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

1. Yes
2. Yes. Performance is better than Civ3 on my system.
3. Bought about 2 years ago.
4. I updated drivers when I bought a new video card a few months ago.
5. Action, strategy, FPS, RTS, RPG. All the time.

 

[magimix]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

The game worked flawlessly, out of the box. No issues that I've noticed; no crashes or anything.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

I can run the game at my monitors native res (1280x1024), with all the bells and whistles. Under the circumstances, the performance is wholly acceptable.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

I tend to build my own PCs. My current PC is over 2 years old now, and was built on a very tight budget.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Athlon XP2400+
1GB RAM
ATI 9800 (128MB)
SB Audigy

For the graphics card, a run Catalyst version 4.9, so far as I can see. I tend not to update my drivers unless there is a pressing need to do so.

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

I like RPGs and Adventure games (Knights of the Old Republic, Vampire: The Masquerade; Bloodlines, Fahrenheit, Beyond Good and Evil, etc), FPS games (Half Life 2), and Stealth games (Thief series). I play games fairly regularly, but for short periods of time. Maybe stints of a couple of hours a time, 2 or 3 times a week.

 

[Sylphic]

1. Yes it works brilliant, I don't get how you guys are complaining.

2. The performance is fine, there's a little lag upon zooming out to globe view, but atht's to be expected. Also, the lag between turns is to be expected. Better AI = Longer Algorithm = less performance. I don't mind waiting for 10 extra seconds, if the AI is smarter.

3. I bought my Computer, $CDN 2000 approx

4. Athlon 64 X2 3800 + @ 2.4Ghz
Asus Geforce 7800 GTX
Asus A8N-E Motherboard
1 GB Generic RAM
2x WD 120 GB SATA Drives
Antec TrueBlue 480W PSU
NEC 3400A DVD+/-R/RW/DL optical Drive
Lite-On CD-R drive

I built this in September. And the Drivers I'm using are the most updated versions from Nvidia.

Yup there we go.

 

[Tarkhan]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes, though I needed to do the Radeon Fix. I have an X700 Pro w/ 256mb AGP 8x

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

Yes, but I went into it expecting it to run much slower than Civ 3.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Bought in 2003, then heavily upgraded.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Celeron 2.5 Ghz, 1.5 GB RAM, Radeon X700 Pro, Onboard Cmedia sound (not like it matters )

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Strategy, Real time and turn based, roleplaying.

 

[Garwoofoo]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes it does. I have skipping sound on wonder movies, a couple of minor glitches and a very occasional crash to desktop. But it works well enough and I'm hoping these problems are solved in the first patch.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

I suppose so. It's definitely better than the state Civ III was release in.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Built it, about two and a half years ago, with a couple of minor upgrades since that time.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

P4 2.6, GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, 1GB RAM, onboard sound. I'm obsessive about updating drivers so they're all up-to-date, though I did revert to the Nvidia 71.89 drivers on the advice of this forum (didn't notice much difference either way).

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

My PC's getting a bit long in the tooth so I've been playing less PC stuff and more console stuff lately, though my favourite types of games would be RPGs and turn-based strategy (not RTS).

 

[AER]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Works fine.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

It exceeds my expectations. Not only does the game run fast, it runs faster than Civ III. It takes advantage of my dual-core CPU, and it also has native widescreen support, which was a big surprise.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Built, no particular time. I generally add and remove components whenever I have performance problems in a game. My oldest component is 7 years old, and my newest is about a month old.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Athlon 3800+ X2, Geforce 7800 GTX, 1 GB 4-4-8 DDR RAM, DFI LanParty NForce 4 (using NForce onboard sound). I run the drivers that came with the card and the motherboard - i.e., very old drivers. I have learned not to update drivers unless there is a specific problem (which there hasn't been, for me, since I got the components.)

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

I usually play FPS's. I was a hardcore UT2k3/UT2k4 player for a long time, where every frame counts. Now I usually just play the new games that come out - Quake IV, Battlefield 2, etc etc. I also had a 6-month love affair with World of Warcraft, but that one came on a bit too strong .

 

[BlueLikeYou]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

The game runs, but crashes frequently. Crashes seem to increase as I get further into the game. By the 1900s, it is almost impossible to complete a turn without a crash.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

Not really. Honestly, games with far more spectacular visual effects perfrom much better than this. I don't know why people think it is expected for it to lag when scrolling/zooming.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Built. Jan 2005

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

Athlon 64 3500+
1 GB RAM
Nvidia 6800GT PCIe x2

I've upgraded and downgraded drivers all week trying to get the game to work. I don't think drivers has anything to do with it however.

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Play all sorts of games all the time. This is the only one that has problems. Half-Life 2 (+ mods), Rome:total war, GTA:SA, Doom 3, BF1942, Guild Wars, Hitman: Contracts, Neverwinter Nights are the games I've been playing the most for the past few months.

I highly suspect that this is a memory-related problem of some kind, because it fits so perfectly. Slowdown, crashing would be expected if there is a memory leak or another problem related to memory allocation. Plus, such a problem could easily occur on one system, while not at all on a similar system. I think its safe to say this has nothing to do with hardware requirements, since both systems that are having problems and those that aren't seem to span the spectrum of low to high end machines

 

[AndrewN]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Yes, kinda. I can play the game in short bursts, a couple of hours in the early game and shorter periods as the game goes on until eventually my computer grinds to a halt (see below). I had to turn the graphics to the minimum and roll back to an older version of the graphics drivers to get it that far.

The game dosen't normally crash, it just messes up the screen and runs really (and I mean really) slowly. I can normally save the game I am playing, exit, reboot and continue.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

Yes, kinda. I was expecting to have problems and I do although I would like to finish a game

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Home built, nearly 4 years ago, hence the problems above. I have ordered a new one (from a company this time) which will arrive next week at which time I expect an improvement.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

1.4gHz Athlon, Ti4600 (forceware v71.89), Win XP Pro (SP1). I would go to SP2 but I suspect I need to reinstall Windows as well and I just don't feel up to that

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

Turn based games, mainly Civ and HOMM, nearly all the time. As HOMMV is out next year the new computer is to run that as well. I also play real time strategy games (Homeworld, mech commander etc), economy games (Railroad Tycoon etc) and the total war games.

 

[niffweed17]

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

yes, but it runs absurdly slowly in the later stages of the game.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

no. i still have choppy wonder movies, the intro is messed up, and the game runs too slow in the later stages.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

bought it from a small manufacturer who built it on the spot. either august or september of 2004.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

radeon 9200, 512 RAM, windows XP, AMD athlon64 3000+. not sure about sound card to be honest, but no problems with it.


5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

strategy and sports, very frequent gamer.

 

[walt526]

I was just hoping to get some information from everyone.

1. Does the game work for you, yes or no? If no, state where you're at with it and what you've done so far.

Has worked fine for me since I installed it the day it came it out.

2. Does the performance meet your expectations, why or why not?

I've noticed some of the bugs that have been reported and wish that the World Builder and Civilpedia were more rebust, but the game runs fine on my machine.

3. Did you buy or build your computer and when did you do that?

Bought it, April 2004.

4. What are your specs and when was the last time you updated your drivers?

P4 2.8, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9700 127mb, XP Pro
Last updated my drivers in late August, I believe.

5. What kinds of games are your favorite and how often do you play them?

In the past month or so, Guild Wars, OOTP, Doom 3, Rome Total War on PC (few others on Xbox). I probably spend around 20-30 hours a week playing games of some sort, not sure how I allocate my time between them though.