The final straw.

[Asterothe]

lot of people with Nvidia cards having this problem, pre- and post- patch. What driver version are you running? I think it might be specific to the 81.95 release but not sure.

I didn't have this problem at all before the patch.
I guess I have 81.95. I'll check this.

 

[mknash]

I would suggest that if the average, non Civ person were to go through this forum, and see what is being written by those who are willing to accept substandard performance, they would be convinced that the average Civ fan was a Wacko, and not smart enough to come in out of the rain.

Is this like buying a 200mph car then blaming ford cause the traffic laws don't let you go that fast??

Im playing huge maps with 18 Civ's and its decent enough. sure every now and then i get a 2 minute lag while the PC does it's thing, but then I just listen to the radio, or tidy up my desk.

I have a cheap car that can do 120 max and when it does the car shakes.. solution? i dont drive that fast.... (also i like to thik of myself as law abiding).

Just because the game CAN handle huge maps with multiple civs doenst mean it will for everyone.

Sure i would love to go the full speed of my car but it isnt practical without taking the consequences.

the sam applies to Civ, only the consequences are a slightly slower game

 

[Frewfrux]

Why does everyone keep using a car analogy? It's a flawed analogy people!

How is it flawed?

1) When you buy a car you know the traffic laws wont allow you to go full speed...at least where I live (there are places...)

2) When you buy a game you expect it to work as advertised.

3) Having a cheap car that doesn't perform well at high speeds is more like someone buying the game with only the minimum required specs...not like someone with a suped-up system who can't play the game at all.

Come-on people, think about your analogies before you use them.

 

[Darwin420]

I noticed that the only time I CTD is when my Norton programs pull a liveupdate in the background, or Norton starts a system scan. I tested it out, and it seemed to be the problem. When I turned off all the auto-update/scan options, I haven't had a problem since.

Check to see if you have something running in the background that you might not know about. Spy-/adware could be part of the issue, too, if that's the case.

Just something else to look into. Good luck.

 

[EdCase]

Hehe...I love car analogies..
My wives PC is equivalent to a Pinto (albeit a low mileage tricked out one)..yet it appears to be able to break the "speed limit" of Civ IV..Guess some machines need an oil change

 

[Clown2TheLeft]

Post v1.09 I'm getting the crash to 4-bit desktop as well.

This is a new and interesting feature. I wasn't aware that I COULD crash to a 4-bit desktop!

Egad.

Anyone have any extra rope? I'm at the end of mine...


Later!

--The Clown to the Left

 

[Nigel Stutt]

Just a thought but is everyone here who is experiencing problems using user configured Virtual Memory? I always set my own virtual memory as I am used toplaying flight simulators where every bit of speed is essential. I usually set up my Virtual Memory to equal at least three times my System Ram memory size. So For example I have 1026Mb of Ram (1 Gb) so I have sent up my Virtual memory to be 3072Mb. I dont have any slow downs or crashes on a moderate computer (P4 2.4GHz) so maybe this is it. Well worth trying as when I put it back to Windows configured virtual memory the computer becomes noticeably slower. Get to your Virtual memory using Control Panel>System>Advanced.

 

[gelbs]

CivIV 1.0 = proof-of-concept feature complete implementation.
CivIV 1.09 = reasonable beta release (it actually works on my laptop)
CivIV 1.15 hopefully a release candidate quality software
CivIV 2.0 should be good enough for a commercial release

The improvements from 1.0 to 1.09 were quite amazing! If you have the discipline to suspend playing for 3 months, it will be worth it

 

[Roach]

Is this like buying a 200mph car then blaming ford cause the traffic laws don't let you go that fast??

Im playing huge maps with 18 Civ's and its decent enough. sure every now and then i get a 2 minute lag while the PC does it's thing, but then I just listen to the radio, or tidy up my desk.

I have a cheap car that can do 120 max and when it does the car shakes.. solution? i dont drive that fast.... (also i like to thik of myself as law abiding).

Just because the game CAN handle huge maps with multiple civs doenst mean it will for everyone.

Sure i would love to go the full speed of my car but it isnt practical without taking the consequences.

the sam applies to Civ, only the consequences are a slightly slower game

Crap analogy, its more like buying a Ford and being only able to get to 40 MPH.

When you go to the Ford website to complain all the Fanbois tell you you should think yourself lucky you are driving a Ford at any speed.

 

[Dida]

I have not touched civ4 for the past 2 weeks. It just doesn't seem that appealing. I think I am going to uninstall it from my computer soon. This is the shortest time any civ game has spent on my HDD. Way to go Firaxis, setting a new record.

 

[anomalek]

As it is, this is an unplayable piece of garbage. Why don't we all just demand our money back?

 

[Dairuka]

Civ 4 still won't give me my watch back, and Rover hasn't been the same since.

 

[jeremiahrounds]

im running it with no probs on forceware nvidia version 71.89 Thats not to say you have to go back that far its just im slowing about updating my drivers. My experience has been the opposite of what retailers used to say:
get the new drivers!

Nowadays its more often:
use the old drivers!

I would try it if i was really detirmined to play. It wouldnt be the first civ game you had to use old drivers on to get it to work. Civ 3 was like that for me.

 

[snepp]

Crap analogy, its more like buying a Ford and being only able to get to 40 MPH.

When you go to the Ford website to complain all the Fanbois tell you you should think yourself lucky you are driving a Ford at any speed.

Sad part is, this is the most accurate car analogy I've read....

 

[Psyringe]

Using analogies as arguments in discussions is, for the most part, utterly useless. In any discussion there is an infinite number of possible analogies, and it is very easy to find *some* analogy which seems to back up your point - for every point. Use of analogies very, very rarely changes someone's mind. Usually, the respective counterpart in the discussion will either

a) claim that the analogy doesn't fit because of certain details (and these contradicting details can be found for every analogy in every situation, since every analogy is by definition at least somewhat different from the original situation in question)

or

b) present a "better" analogy of his own, which backs up his argument instead (and as I said, there is always an analogy that can be found to backup *any* point)

or

c) Do both of the above.

Analogies are nice to illustrate a point if two people share the same opinion already, or are close to that. They are useless in almost any discussion where this isn't the case. If you go anal on analogies, all you achieve is that you drift away fom the original topic.

So, back to the topic: Can we demand that we are able to experience a new game "fully", i.e. with max settings?

Well, max settings are nothing that is fixed. They are decided upon by the developers of the game. So, if you demand to be able to play a new game with max settings, then what you will get is game developers who dumb down the max settings of their games so that no one will get frustrated because he cannot max out the game on his machine. Is that really what you want?

Personally, I prefer that developers make their games with competent customers in mind, who know that their machine might not be able to take the full load of a maxed out game. I orefer this because it gives me, the customer, the power to decide where I make the cut. When I want to see pretty graphics in a game, and can live with low fps, then I want to be able to configure the game that way. When I want to play on large maps, and can live with the lag, then I want to be able to configure my game this way. This is *my* decision, and I like it to remain my decision. I wouldn't ever want a developer to strip options out of a game because of "well, many users expect to be able to experience this game with maxed out settings, so I better bring the max settings down to something most machines can bear in oder to prevent customer frustration". Which is a conclusion that a developer may actually get to after reading some of the posts in this thread.

 

[gelbs]

We haven't had any Cartesian analogies yet! So here's an attempt: it's like buying a basket full of apples, and then throwing out the bad apples by applying patches, until you only have reliable software left...

About the hardware settings... If there were only performance problems then yes, I would buy that stuff about PC being difficult to program for with all the varying configuration, but lots of stuff are just wrong... simple stuff you would do after testing and before releasing the product, such as making sure the score is modified by difficulty level.... But maybe that was also a problem with my graphic card, since there are modern compilers that can actually delegate some regular floating operations to the graphic card and run them parallel to the CPU.

I have not experienced so many problems with any game, on any platform, as with CivIV pre-patch. Fortunately for me, it is quite playable after the patch.

 

[groston]

Civ 4 was obviously written by great game designers, lousy programmers and was not tested by anyone. There is NO REASON AT ALL, for the consistent CTDs and other nonsense. If the developers simply wrote to the standard APIs, tested their code, etc., none of this would have happened. My guess is that for the sake of saving money, a lot of old code was reused - code that had to be massively hacked to fit within the new programming model.

I honestly believe that a class action lawsuit is called for. When I buy a product, any product, I expect it to work. Yes, some minor issues are OK. With my new car, there were some minor annoyances, none of which caused the car to stop functioning. CTDs every 10-15 minutes of play are not 'minor annoyances'. They are outright failures.

Whose for a lawsuit?

 

[snepp]

I've done my share of complaining about game performance and arguing with those that don't have issues, but if I see lawsuit mentioned again I'm going to spaz.

lawsuit

 

[Mazruk]

Civ 4 was obviously written by great game designers, lousy programmers and was not tested by anyone. There is NO REASON AT ALL, for the consistent CTDs and other nonsense. If the developers simply wrote to the standard APIs, tested their code, etc., none of this would have happened. My guess is that for the sake of saving money, a lot of old code was reused - code that had to be massively hacked to fit within the new programming model.

I honestly believe that a class action lawsuit is called for. When I buy a product, any product, I expect it to work. Yes, some minor issues are OK. With my new car, there were some minor annoyances, none of which caused the car to stop functioning. CTDs every 10-15 minutes of play are not 'minor annoyances'. They are outright failures.

Whose for a lawsuit?

Presumably you are suing Microsoft first as by definition a CTD is the operating systems response to something?

Then you'll be suing Microsoft again for the buggy DX9.0c?

Then you'll be suing nVidia or ATI for their crap drivers?

Then you'll be suing your PC manufacturer for the crap bios?

Then you'll be suing your anti virus company (because it only CTDs when your scheduled antivirus scan starts)?

etc.

Compared to the chance of winning any of the above, you'll be laughed out of court if you tried to sue Firaxis for Civ4 because all the defence would have to do is load it onto a PC that works and you have no case because, in software, the only difference between the working one and yours is your system so maybe you should sue yourself?

 

[Manty]

Is this like buying a 200mph car then blaming ford cause the traffic laws don't let you go that fast??

Im playing huge maps with 18 Civ's and its decent enough. sure every now and then i get a 2 minute lag while the PC does it's thing, but then I just listen to the radio, or tidy up my desk.

I have a cheap car that can do 120 max and when it does the car shakes.. solution? i dont drive that fast.... (also i like to thik of myself as law abiding).

Just because the game CAN handle huge maps with multiple civs doenst mean it will for everyone.

Sure i would love to go the full speed of my car but it isnt practical without taking the consequences.

the sam applies to Civ, only the consequences are a slightly slower game

its nothing like not knowing the laws, if you must use cars it like buying a 200mph car and the manufacturers not warning you this car may not run on normal fuel. since when do we all have to be computer experts to play a computer game, i don't see any warnings on the package