I have to say it

[SpencerH]

Where is MarkG?

[alva]

Out for the weekend.

[SpencerH]

Well my version wont be arriving till the 7th or 8th but after looking at the disaster with ATI cards I may just send it back.

[Grandpa Troll]

Originally posted by SpencerH
Well my version wont be arriving till the 7th or 8th but after looking at the disaster with ATI cards I may just send it back.

SpencerH

This is what i am running

not many problems at all..minimal..at worse case

none associated with graphics card

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Oerdin
Also Markos, nothing against you or this site since I'm a fan of both but the fact remains that if you folks don't keep Firaxis happy then you aren't likely to be on the list for beta testing, or get pre-release copies of the game, or get online chats with the developers, or several other things. Maybe those things don't influence you but they do create a potential for a conflict of interests and without them could Aployton still make the claim to being "one of the premier Civilization sites"?

Clearly you do have a vested interest in not pissing off Firaxis and that does mean you are dependent upon their good will to at least some extent.

I severely doubt that Mark was on the A list at Firaxis after the Civ3 experience. Still, he was invited to CIV. I don't think Firaxis are looking for toadies.

And yes, Apolyton could still be a 'premier' civ site based on the activity of the civers on Apolyton. Despite the crap that was posted on this site about Civ3 et al, and the attacks on the developers, some of them personal, there were smaller areas, sheltered from the gale, that had a lot of influence on people at Firaxis for Civ3 and CIV.

Mark's (and Dan's) vested interest is to have a great site that draws strategy gamers who are attracted to civ (TBS) even if it is not a Firaxis project, or haven't you noticed that yet? It would hardly serve their interests to subvert their own reputations simply to make Firaxis, or any other company, happy.

[notyoueither]

Originally posted by Verenti
Sir, don't take my words as an attack on your honour, but more my inheirant distrust for Corperations. I have no doubt that you may be commited as a fan of the franciase, but the reasons why you needed to get permission to publish do not supercede the fact that you indeed needed permission.

Again, Don't take my words as an attack against you or Apolyton. I don't/wouldn't blame you for the fallacies of companies or their products.

and If I didn't like it here, I wouldn't have wasted so much bloody time talking in the forums.

Mark and Solver are privy to confidential information about the tests and testing process for CIV. They signed a document swearing them to non-disclosure, as did I, and parts of that document are rather intimidating to any Philly lawyer.

Of course anything they published prerelease had to go through Firaxis for approval, if only to protect the financial interests of the writers/publishers (Solver, Mark/ Mark, Dan).

Those things published did not require Mark or Solver to say 'great game, buy it.'

There is a very large difference between prudence and payola.

[MarkG]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Despite the crap that was posted on this site about Civ3 et al, and the attacks on the developers, some of them personal, there were smaller areas, sheltered from the gale, that had a lot of influence on people at Firaxis for Civ3 and CIV.

and i hope that some people dont tell us that we didnt allow freedom of expression on civ3

[Martinus]

I have ATI Radeon 9550 and while I had the renderer problem when trying to run it, the programme posted by solver few days ago fixed it and haven't experienced any problem ever since.

The game is great and, having started on Noble level, damn hard (I got my ass handed to me by Isabella, after she invaded me with macemen, chariots and archers).

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Grandpa Troll


SpencerH

This is what i am running

not many problems at all..minimal..at worse case

none associated with graphics card

I'm glad you've got it up and running. I think its unlikely that it's just the graphics card thats the problem but that's how it seems to fall out.

If I open the package to test the install they may not take it back. If I send it back it'll cost me money. If the installation fails (I have an ATI 9800) I may either waste hours trying to get the game to work or worse yet waste hours and screw up my pc so that I have to do even more work to get back to square one.

OTOH I want to play the game!

What bothers me about this is that this obviously didnt occur for the beta testers. So while it may be 'wild-speculation' at this point, I wonder what role 'copy protection' is having in all this.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by notyoueither

there were smaller areas, sheltered from the gale, that had a lot of influence on people at Firaxis for Civ3 and CIV.

I'd also point out that 'the gale' influenced the patches for CIV3 and seems to have had an effect on CIV4.

[SpencerH]

So it installed with no problems. I didnt update the ATI drivers to those that have come into prominence on the help threads and even so it runs like a charm. I did install and (do) play from an image I made from the disks and I dont know if that makes a difference for the stability issues.

My package was very professional - no french tech tree - everything looks very sharp and worth the delay for the pre-order from amazon. The only small glitch was some rubber cement type glue that got onto one CD while trying to pull it from the very tight cardboard protection. Luckily I was able to clean the CD without damaging it.

I'm about halfway through my first game and it is obviously a big step forward for the series. Congrats Soren et al.