I am begining to think that the game, like many others in the past, is ahead of its time in terms of the 'average' hardware that people are using to play it with.....
When I play it using...
AMD Opteron 64 ran at 10x300=3000mhz
1GB Crucial Balistix
ATI 850XTPE 256mb
.... I am now at the year 1980 (large map) and it runs really fast and smooth at 1280x1024 and 2xAA with all the animations on. It takes around 5 seconds between each turn.
BUT I would expect it to run smooth with that hardware.
The minimum and recommended hardware for most games is a bit of a joke if you expect them to run well.
The same has applied in the past with, Total Annihilation, or more recently with Rome Total War, Far Cry, Half Life 2, Doom 3, Fear etc etc etc......
When it is posted....
My Computer is a 2.4Ghz P4, 512MB Ram and a Geforce 4 64MB Card. Now I know the Gfx card isn't great but I can run Age of Empires III.....
Well you are right your graphics card isn't great at all judged by some of todays games demands. If you were playing a FPS type of game then it could be expected that a top end piece of kit is going to be needed to get smooth gameplay, your memory and a P4 2.4 would be then be a problem as well as your card. This game, for me, is the first TBS (Turn Base Strategy) that I have played which demands comparable hardware to that of a FPS type.
I remember Civ 3 needing a pretty fast CPU when playing very big maps with many Civs well Civ 4 pushes that demand even further.
I have some thoughts that a patch or two can help to resolve some of the issues that people are having with CTD's and reboots, and maybe a little optimising might be possible, but I still think that to play the game quite well a top end PC is needed.