General Info Beyond the Sword is the second expansion for Civilization IV, and will be released this July. The expansion focuses on builder options and the second half of the game (post-Gunpowder), although there are also military additions, such as new units. Content includes 12 scenarios, 10 new civs and 16 new leaders. Random events, corporations and revamped espionage are among the epic game features. Civilizations and Leaders 4 of 10 new civilizations have been revealed: Babylon - led by Hammurabi (ca. 1810 BC - ca. 1750 BC), first king of the Babylonian Empire, creator of Hammurabi's Code of Laws in ca. 1760 BC., which is usually considered the first example of written, basic, unchangeable law. Portugal - no further info available. Netherlands - no further info available. Native Americans - led by Sitting Bull (1831 - 1890), a Lakota chief, leader of the Sioux tribes during the Battle of Little Bighorn, later exiled to Canada. 2 new leaders for existing civilizations have been revealed: ...

Official Civ4 Patch 1.52 Readme

README
Last updated 22 - December - 2005
v152
v1.52 is a major upgrade to Civ IV and includes numerous optimizations for memory usage that should help performance on all machines but are tailored to especially improve performance on machines at or near the minimum specification.

Major changes include:
-Shared low-level graphics buffers
-Removed many unused fonts and reduced interface memory usgae
-Paged out units which are not visible
-Reduced terrain data size and overhead
-Reduced route data size
-Created a set of low-res movies for machines without dynamic texture support (this is a separate download)

These changes not only reduced the amount of system memory required, but lowered video memory usage extensively. Also, the rate at which the game consumes memory in the late-game has decreased, which is extremely important.
In addition, a new config file (ini) option called 'MemorySaver' has been added for further memory reduction, at the cost of alt-tabbing support. If you set MemorySaver=1 in the config file, you can lower your system memory usage by 70% of video memory. So if you have a 128MB video card, you can save an additional ~90MB of system memory. MemorySaver defaults to off, and is not officially recommended since it doesn't handle alt-tabbing and other cases of graphics device loss at this time. However, we recognize that some users may want to experiment with it.
Finally, the use of unofficial patches is not recommended and is largely redundant with the memory fixes in this patch. Unofficial patches may slow performance, cause graphical problems or conflict with Firaxis code resulting in crashes or other problems. It also makes it more difficult for us to respond to error reports and debug issues reported by users running unauthorized patches.

Suggestions for optimal performance:
Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary.
Go to www.windowsupdate.com and apply updates Update graphics and sound drivers Close other background applications Turn graphics to low and use low-resolution textures in the options screen Turn off Antialiasing in your display properties Disable virus protection -Mustafa Thamer Civ IV Lead Programmer Changes: - Tech cost rebalancing - Improved city attack AI - Moved MaxAutosaves to ini file - Slower Great People name generation - Hide health bars during combat - Increased late-game tech costs - Waypoints now invisible when city screen is up - AI more willing to trade cities for peace - AI stays at war longer - Cottages no longer grow durring anarchy - Combat info now shows odds of success - WBS's now contain unit damage - Score from land doesn't count until you own land for 20 turns - Better invasion AI - Slavery: No Upkeep - Emancipation: Low Upkeep - Tweaked AI civic values - Filled in missing diplo entries for Frederick - Praetorians: 40->45 hammers - Jaguars: 40->35 hammers - AI turn optimizations - Interface game messages are now flushed at end of turn - Environmentalism moved to Medicine - Increased industrial era tech costs - Environmentalism is medium upkeep - Free Speech is low upkeep - Forests give 0.5 health - Firepower in combat now based on max strength - Lobby sorting improvements - Clearing the table in the MP diplomacy screen resets the "They accept/They do not accept" text - Dawn of man screen closes with ESCAPE just like all the other interface screens - The hall of fame now shows only games that have been played with the currently-loaded mod - When trying to build an item that it not allowed in a city, you will get a production popup asking for a build instead of leaving production empty - Wonder Movies and other popups may appear in PBEM/Hotseat - Incremented save version to 102 - Simplified city billboard placement. This should fix the weird billboard offsets and scaling. Additions: - Lobby chat and buddy lists from staging rooms - Combat odds now shown in combat turn log - ALT-S now allows you to place signs - Added "Leave Forest" option for automated workers - Added Marathon game speed (longer than Epic) - Added NoTechSplash ini setting - More communication about autopatch failures - Domestic advisor remembers which cities you had selected last time screen was up. - Added "no cheating" game option for single-player - In addition to tradeable techs, techs that are not allowed to be traded to you are also shown, provided that you can research them yourself at the moment - Added event and replay messages when a human founds a city. This got broken when we added city renaming - Support for Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - When you zoom to a city from the domestic advisor, yo...

Click on the images to start downloading the videos. Official trailer Official Civ4 Trailer (with Martin Sheen on the voiceover!) Format: 640x360 WMV Size: 13 MB (zipped) ALTERNATIVE : Quicktime format (18MB) CivAnon trailer Can a PC game be too addictive? (Funny) Format: 480x360 MPEG Duration: 2:57m Size: 32 MB (zipped)...

Things You Didn’t Know about Sid Meier’s Civilization IV 1. Most Accessible Civilization Game Ever The team at Firaxis has added a lot of new gameplay elements to Civilization IV, but one of the most subtle additions is in its interface, which for the first time in the series follows many standard strategy game conventions. Most players will just start playing and get right into the game without ever realizing it, but in Civilization IV you can actually left click on a unit, and then right click on the tile you’d like that unit to go to (or attack, as the case may be). That’s something that RTS games have been doing for years, but Civilization has never actually done before, due to its board game roots. Other interface additions include more changes to make it in-line with RTS titles (the mini-map is in the lower right hand corner, other info on the left, etc.) and the ability to see the odds of any battle (left click on a unit, then right click and hold on the unit you wish to attack), so there’s no longer any guesswork involved. Also new are recommendations for units and technologies to research. When you’re given the option of researching a new technology, you will now see one or two recommendations showing multiple ways to play the game. You’re also given recommendations for creating new units in cities. It may tell you that a Warrior is the best option for a military route, or you could build a Settler for expansion. These can of course be turned off, if you know exactly how you’d like to play the game. 2. Unprecedented Detail Just because Civilization is more accessible than it’s ever been doesn’t mean the game’s been dumbed down. On the contrary, for people who are crazy about stats and figures, there’s a ton of that to be found in Civilization IV. There are lots of new advisor screens, where you can see where all of your units are on a global map, or look at raw statistics like the average life expectancy of your people (versus the world average), your gross national product or approval rating. But you can also completely customize how your government works, so if you want a theocracy with a free market economy, caste system and universal suffrage, you can do just that. 3. Awesome Multiplayer Civilization IV is the first game in the series that was designed from day one to support multiplayer. The result is that Civilization IV is the best multiplayer Civ game ever made, with new multiplayer options like simultaneous turns (adding a more RTS feel to the game), a turn timer (to force those slowpokes to hurry up with their turns), and turn limits, where the points leader at the end of a set number of turns is declared the winner. Worried that someone might drop out halfway through the game? Just turn on Takeover A.I, and if that person leaves, the game continues, with the A.I. replacing the player. And if that player decides to come back, he can take control again at any time. The Firaxis dev team and testers have been playing Civ IV multiplayer games for over two years now…and it just keeps getting better. 4. Super Powerful World Editor The earlier games in the Civ series had a world editor, but with Civilization IV it’s gotten a whole lot better. The built-in world editor lets you fire it up at any time and change the map while you’re still playing it (naturally, this is flagged as cheating by the game, so you can’t do it in multiplayer). The new bitmap converter lets you import BMP files and turn those into Civ maps, letting you download a topographical map (or a picture of your favorite celebrity) and have the game extract sea levels, mountain ranges and other information straight from it. 5. More Music, Audio In Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, every different civilization has units that speak its native language. That may not sound very difficult for the French, English and German civs, but it was definitely a challenge finding someone to record Nahuatl for the Aztec civilization or Quechua for the Incas! Also, Jeff Briggs, Firaxis Founder, President and CEO, composed, arranged and lead the sound team to fill Civilization IV with more music than ever before - including an original orchestral score accompanied by era-specific music from the masters, that changes as your civilization ages and becomes more advanced. 6. Unlimited Modability Civilization was one of the first major games to be user-extensible, and Civilization IV takes this to extremes. In addition to the built-in world editor, the game is built with the open source Python scripting language, allowing users to easily modify most features. For more hardcore modders, the SDK will be released in early 2006, and will give players the ability to change virtually everything about the game, from the way the AI behaves to the position of the camera. 7. Really Awesome Multiplayer There are so many multiplayer possibilities with Civiliz...