Unplayable

[CivDudeZ]

I'm really disappointed that Sid allowed this production's final release in the state it's in. The game is unplayable in it's current condition. I think Firaxis forgot the cardinal rule of games in any medium: Thou shall be fun to play. Having spent the last 5 days trying to find a way to avoid constant game crashes I have given up. I've been searching these boards and others trying to use the process of elimination to ensure there is nothing about my PC or configuration to explain why this program does not work. I have reached the conclusion that the fault does not lie with my PC and that there should have been additional testing prior to the release of this game. I don't care if the problem lies with graphics drivers or memory management. I want the game to play or a refund of the 50 dollars I paid for it. I hate to post this because I see genius in the visual and audio aspects of the game and the concepts are far more thought out and balanced than in previous versions. I am a great Civ fan and eagerly anticipated this release. If not I would not be on this web site publishing my opinions. For the entertainment of the PC crash rubberneckers out there I am providing my machine specs:

Owner Built
P4 3GHz HT
XP (SP2)
512m PC3200 ram
Nvidea FX5500 (256m)
Creative Soundlab 16 audio
pagefile set at 500-800 MB

 

[zurichuk]

I would suggest increasing your pagefile limits, my page file, set between 1.5Gb and 3Gb was using a whole Gig just now with a CIV large map running. 6-700Mb was CIV..

 

[Zhahz]

I'll have to remind myself when I'm playing tonight for the umpteenth day in a row that the game is "unplayable."

Sorry if the game isn't working for you but there could be a multitude of reasons for it and since the game does work for a great deal of people it just might be your PC, OS, or software setup.

Good luck

 

[tinribs]

Considering that when I play it the game sits at around 500 MB memory usage in task manager I would suggest that (despite the games "recommended minimum specs") you need to up your memory by at least another 512 MB. Many many games nowadays benefit from having 1 GB RAM installed and it's ultra cheap at the moment - so if you really want to play the game (and any others that come out in the near future) get that RAM upgraded - it's worth it, honest!

Tinribs

 

[njoel]

Yeah I hear that, it really does suck when you buy a nice game you've been waiting for only to be plagued with constant crashes, perhaps you could elaborate? What exactly is happenning? Are you getting any error msgs? Is there a pattern to the crash? Does it always happen when you do something in the game?

I know for myself the game runs fine unless I ALT-TAB out of it. Then everytime I return I can see the tiles of the game but nothing else, no HUD displays then the game just crashes to the desktop

 

[zurichuk]

he probably can survive on 512Mb Ram, an upgrade would be preferable, but I think he's running out of ram and swap space combined, 800Mb user defined max is not enough for CIV and WinXP

 

[Atlantean]

"I'll have to remind myself when I'm playing tonight for the umpteenth day in a row that the game is "unplayable." - Zhahz

Great reply.

Sorry the game isn't working for you DudeZ, a patch is supposed to be here soon so don't take it back yet! You'll be missing out on a great game.

 

[CivDudeZ]

njoel, the game will play beautifully until a majority of the map and other civs are exposed and then without warning the PC will lock up requiring a hard reboot. I will try to increase pagefile again and look ito getting a 1 gig stick of ram but I have seen a lot of posts from people with 1 gig of ram or more who are experiencing the exact same problems I am. I run a clean machine and XP runs fine stripped to 64 meg of processes. No background apps of any kind.

 

[smarpoe]

Hang in there, CivDudeZ. Patch is on its way.

I had the same problem as you. Couldn't play the game for 2 wks, but I took the time to read some of the threads in this forum and now it works for me. There are quite a few very resourceful and intelligent people on this forum and if you take a little time to read some of the fixes that have been found, it may help you. I do understand your frustration and you're not alone. You may want to take some time and make sure your system is up to par. Update your drivers, defrag your pc, etc. and read what tinribs and zurichuk have mentioned in this thread. Good luck!!

 

[CivDudeZ]

Smarpoe, I defragged my storage drive where the game is stored and my OS drive to ensure the pagefile wasn't defragged and have the very latest Nvidea driver. I know what I'm talking about when I say my PC is not the issue. Thanks for caring though, LOL. Many don't because for some reason they have been blessed by Sid.

 

[warpstorm]

Seriously, increase your pagefile. It is set a bit small for this game. I've had it use more than the 800 already just for Civ4.

 

[warpstorm]

I know for myself the game runs fine unless I ALT-TAB out of it. Then everytime I return I can see the tiles of the game but nothing else, no HUD displays then the game just crashes to the desktop

If you plan on Alt-Tabbing consider switching to windowed mode.

 

[Stuie]

Owner Built
P4 3GHz HT
XP (SP2)
512m PC3200 ram
Nvidea FX5500 (256m)
Creative Soundlab 16 audio
pagefile set at 500-800 MB

I have to agree with the others....

First, you built a nice rig but short-changed yourself on the RAM. Bump it up to a Gig if you have the money.

Second - set the page file to 1024/1024 (unless you upgrade the RAM - then double that).

 

[rbstansbury]

I understand your frustration, but to say it is not your computer may not be the answer. I have played over 20 games now, large maps, small maps etc and have yet to have a single freeze or crash. I do agree that in the late game stage things tend to slow down, I have been in the habit of saving and restarting after 3 hrs or so of play, then things speed back up and run great (classic sign of a memory leak).

 

[xguild]

I'll have to remind myself when I'm playing tonight for the umpteenth day in a row that the game is "unplayable."

Sorry if the game isn't working for you but there could be a multitude of reasons for it and since the game does work for a great deal of people it just might be your PC, OS, or software setup.

Good luck

This is a very interesting reply, I think it sums up the answer that most people who have no problems with the game have given to the people that are. I have to challenge it however, for a couple of reasons that seem obvious to me, but seem to be evading some of the "I have no problems" people.

First and foremost is the fact that there isn't a handfull of people that are having problems, but a very large amount of people. Easily 90% of the posts on this forum are related to people having technical issues or reporting bugs with the game. I tried counting the post and after 200 consecutive "I'm having problem posts" I stopped counting. This fanboy push to try to prove to everyone that the game is great as it is, or that we are just imaginng the problems or worse that they are some how the fault of the people reporting them is well unusual to say the least. It's blatenly obvious the game in it's current state is unacceptable even for today's weak industry standard. The game has a tremendous amount of bugs and people who are reporting technical problems are reporting identical issues all over this forum proving without a doubt that it isn't a configuration problem but a coding problem with the game.

It's also obvious to me that the large majority of the reviews are oddly similiar and fail to mention the outpoor of fans on this forum in particular that are having severe technical problems trying to get the game to run. Especially since there doesn't seem to be any corolation to PC hardware at all. The assumption here is that only people with slow and outdated PC's are having technical issues when the fact is that it's the exact opposite. It's actually people who have fast and updated PC's that are reporting issues. I picked 15 posts at random of people who reported technical issues and every single person that reported a problem met the Recomended specs for this game. With that being the case and so many reviews out there, how is it that not a single one of them reported any technical problems? You would think at least one of these reviewers would have something, I mean there are literly hundreds of people reporting random crashes to desktop.

My point here is that perhaps saying that this game is unplayable in all is inaccurate, but it's far from respectable. The technical problems allow should disqualify this game from editors choice awards or game of the year awards which it is already being considered for. This game is in bad shape and needs a lot of patching, just look at the list of items that need to be patched, the list is long and pathetic.

 

[Smidlee]

Smarpoe, I defragged my storage drive where the game is stored and my OS drive to ensure the pagefile wasn't defragged and have the very latest Nvidea driver. I know what I'm talking about when I say my PC is not the issue. Thanks for caring though, LOL. Many don't because for some reason they have been blessed by Sid.

I had a fx 5500 card (128 instead of 256) and had problems with the latest drivers. I went back use a 62.xx driver to get games running with this card. The lastest isn't always the best.

 

[beaver.llama]

it seems to me the recommended specs are wrong, they should make the recommended ram at 768megs or 1 gig because i have a gig of ram and have not experienced any of the problems of other users. and to XGUILD i would have to say the reason that the reviewers had none of these problems is because they probably all have state of the art computers, with far more than 512 mb of ram.

 

[gunnergoz]

I posted this in another thread but will repost here as it sums up my beliefs about the supposed "unplayability" of the game:
First of all -- a number of posters in these forums have older machines and report no problems with the game.
Second of all -- I think that the fact that most reviewers report few personal encounters with problems says that, for the bulk of the buying public, there have been few problems noted. Thousands of copies of this game must be out there by now and the great majority of people are likely satisfied or else the returns and bad press would have reached the mainstream media by now.
Third -- the people who frequent game forums like this one are the most rabid, most devoted, most picky and most vocal of all purchasers...and not all of us have reported problems here.
Fourth -- forums are a furor magnet. Even if there are only a minority of problems, the vocal and motivated individuals who have them will tend to find out about these forums and will ventilate.
Fifth -- THERE IS NO WAY TO PRE-TEST A SOFTWARE PRODUCT WITH EACH OF THE THOUSANDS OF POSSIBLE PC CONFIGURATIONS THAT ARE OUT THERE. Only a public release will put a product in front of a statistically significant number of trial cases so as to bring out all possible eventualities. Even (and perhaps especially) Microsoft, with its billions of $$$ in the bank, cannot sit on a product forever to beta test it to 100% reliability.
Sooo -- take a deep breath and chill. There is no great conspiracy of game reviewers in cabal with 2K and Firaxis to deceive the public about the game's imperfections. We are seeing a normal phenomenon. The game will be patched. This time next year, all these folks will have moved on to other issues and the "Great Civ 4 Scandal" will be a dim memory.

 

[pris]

no worries .. just learn as much about the units and stuff now...then when they patch it...its go time