what's the highest difficulty level you've won convincingly at

[Ming]

Not the wrong solution at all... they obviously did a crappy job of testing the patch.
The barrage problem and others were obvious from day one... The fixes from the community were almost immediate. Sure, there were some other problems that came up much later... but the inititial ones should have been handled right away. It's like they recalled the tires on a car, and then replaced them with flats.

And it is almost impossible to legitimize an unofficial patch. Too many different communities and opinions. I've received multiple PM"s from people claiming that "this" is the unofficial "MP" patch, and they were all different.

They took our money and pretty much ran with it... I can understand the economic reasons for finally walking away from the game, and providing the "last" patch... but damn it... they should have taken their time and got it right. The fact the problems were noticed so quickly just shows they didn't really pay much attention to it. And what does that say to your fan base...............

[rah]

I agree that it's silly to believe that they will keep putting out tons of patches but in this case that number was pretty damn small. One more would have been really satisfying and wouldn't have cost them much in terms of effort. The folks at CFC tried to jam a standardized unauthorized patch for the MP community, but there seemed to be a lot of resentment to it.

Our games are open to all, and I hate wasting valuable playing time making sure everyone has the same version.
SO we use the OFFICIAL last patch because there is no way for any confusion. But as a result we still have some game breaking bugs.

[joncnunn]

Actually, what's more annoying over at CFC is all the restrictions on their SP games of the month so they don't even load if your files aren't configured exactly the way they want them. (Even months after deadlines for submitting to their Hall of Fame have passed.)

By contrast, I really like RBs policy on their adventures & epic's where you can load any game you want; and your just on the honor system not to submit it if your using an unapproved mod.

[Ming]

And that's yet another problem of not having a "final official patch" that actually works... sigh.

Just once I'd like to see a game company that actually gives a damn about it's customers.

[self biased]

try playing a games workshop game, ming.

i'm still hit or miss at noble.

[Blaupanzer]

They'll care about us when they want to sell Civ V! However, there is no profit in continually issuing patches for a game without much in the way of future sales. We may feel neglected because the bottom line squeezes out common decency in terms of bug fixes, but we'll still buy the next round. Anyone into the game enough to know which official patch is current and its shortfalls will buy the revised product when issued in a couple of years.

[Krill]

try playing a games workshop game, ming.

i'm still hit or miss at noble.

Much higher profit margins due to different markets. Not comparable. And I suck at warhammer 40K, but then again, I did stop playing that to focus on Civ...

[Ming]

They'll care about us when they want to sell Civ V! However, there is no profit in continually issuing patches for a game without much in the way of future sales. We may feel neglected because the bottom line squeezes out common decency in terms of bug fixes, but we'll still buy the next round. Anyone into the game enough to know which official patch is current and its shortfalls will buy the revised product when issued in a couple of years.

But it has had an impact on sales... Many people didn't come back for their fair share of Civ IV after they had experienced Civ III. Providing support for your product to the customers is how you build loyalty. I'm not talking about releasing an endless string of patches... just making sure the last official patch at least was play tested. It's obvious that the work was terrible and that nobody really gave a damn. If they don't give a damn, why should we give a damn about future releases from them since we know what they think of us.

[Ming]

And what really annoys me is when I see the "Helpful Hint" when the game is loading warning you to send some units along with colateral damage units because they can't kill units or take cities on their own... and nobody bothered to reprogram the AI to follow that helpful hint when they made that change. Talk about crappy work...

[Krill]

But it has had an impact on sales... Many people didn't come back for their fair share of Civ IV after they had experienced Civ III. Providing support for your product to the customers is how you build loyalty. I'm not talking about releasing an endless string of patches... just making sure the last official patch at least was play tested. It's obvious that the work was terrible and that nobody really gave a damn. If they don't give a damn, why should we give a damn about future releases from them since we know what they think of us.

Wikipedia states CIV is in the top 20 of the highest selling PC games...

[rah]

Maybe it would have made top 10

Reputation counts for something. I remember the old NES days. There was one company that I would buy almost any game they put out because the were all well designed and fun. Koei (don't remember the spelling)

[Legend]

But if you listen to those guys at CFC, EMP is easy to beat. I guess we all suck here.

A good gauge is the CFC Game Of The Month competition. We have BTS & CIV games monthly, and warlords games two-monthly, over a variety of different levels.

In the last deity game, 6 out of 54 entries won. In the last Immortal game 37 out of 63 won, and in the last emperor game, 29 out of 46 won.

Personally, I used to be comfortable on emperor, and would win about half the time on immortal. I've started playing recently after a gap of about a year, and am getting my arse handed to me in my latest immortal game.

Aeson is one of the best CIV players I've seen... he would routinely win on deity.

[Legend]

Actually, what's more annoying over at CFC is all the restrictions on their SP games of the month so they don't even load if your files aren't configured exactly the way they want them. (Even months after deadlines for submitting to their Hall of Fame have passed.)

Its not that restrictive - no more restrictive than MP, actually. You just have to have the HOF mod loaded, and you have to have your XML files in their original, unaltered state.

When I got involved in the Civ3 GOTM administration, it was originally played under the 'honor' system. I then discovered the Civ3 'load counter', that counted how many times a save file had been loaded, and it was clear that the honor system simply wasn't working - people were replaying 100s (and in some cases, 1000s) of turns to get a better result. Probably about 1/3 of the people were cheating.

In Civ4, we found the same. The HOF mod is an attempt to lock-down what people are doing, and create a system that is fair.

[Supr49er]

That reminds me of golf tournaments. When the rules are enforced, suddenly "good" players have their worst games ever, and they can't understand why.

[joncnunn]

Why not at the very least release an unlocked version of the GOTM after the deadline for submital have passed?

Anyway, it's much more complex than that for those who already installed say the unoffical patch or the better AI patch in the root Civ IV BTS directory. And have renamed original copies of the Dll's with a different extension in the same directories.
I don't know of a fool proof way to get those saves to work that doesn't involve uninstalling BTS entirely and then reinstalling it. Way too much work since I wouldn't be submitting any files anyway. (It normally takes me approx 3 months of real time to finish a game. [36 to 48 hours of actual playing time but spread out a lot])

Its not that restrictive - no more restrictive than MP, actually. You just have to have the HOF mod loaded, and you have to have your XML files in their original, unaltered state.

When I got involved in the Civ3 GOTM administration, it was originally played under the 'honor' system. I then discovered the Civ3 'load counter', that counted how many times a save file had been loaded, and it was clear that the honor system simply wasn't working - people were replaying 100s (and in some cases, 1000s) of turns to get a better result. Probably about 1/3 of the people were cheating.

In Civ4, we found the same. The HOF mod is an attempt to lock-down what people are doing, and create a system that is fair.