Does this game work out off the box

[Raion]

When one hits the diplomacy screen (meeting another civ) the game will bog down. Go out to Desktop (Alt-Tab) and then return after a minute or two and the game will play okay again!

Plus maybe some other things?? Otherwise, the movies will have the sound cut in and out, taking more processing power, so a better computer (than what I have) will play the game better. Yes Windows 2K takes less memory than XP, but all the drivers for XP can be used in Windows 2K. I had XP when I bought the computer (and it is mainly still copied mostly and sitting on a logical drive partition because it does take more memory, thus the requirements for that OS), so I went out and bought Windows 2K Professional, because mainly, I can change a video card when I want to, without having to contact Microsoft, plus other hardware configurations! And at the time Microsoft was only giving 3 months or so to do anything!

Registering an OS fine, but telling me that they want to know what is in my computer, not so good, especially when it may be 9 months before I buy anything new, like a video card or modem or something else.

And yes, Windows 2K takes less memory to run, instead of like XP, although XP should be better and is, it is a memory -- hog! (Plus the previous!)

[weezer]

Working. I love this game.

AMD 2800+
ATI 9800 Pro 128MB
1024 MB

[khumak]

I get crash to desktop about once every 6 hours or so and other than that I haven't run into any serious problems. My 2 main complaints are that if you let the game run for a LONG time without exiting and restarting it starts getting pretty slow and you can't automate your workers or they will cut down EVERY TREE ON THE PLANET

[BleckLord]

I think that a significant number of people in the Help section have never come over here to vote.

I've updated drivers. Reinstalled Civ 4 multiple times. Civ 4 still crashes randomly to the desktop.

[Skanky Burns]

Works fine.

[mikelazenby]

Works ok on an Emachines Sempron 3000+ 512 mb and Geforce MX4 - said I didn't meet minimum specs on install (not true) and some of the cinematics are choppy (not all though ??). Looks like it will be highly entertaining for many hours.

[evizaer]

The game was not playable out of the box for me.

Without significant game and computer tweaking, the game ran unplayably slow on my otherwise above sys reqs machine (P4 3GhZ, 1gig RAM, nVidia geForce FX Go5700 128MB).

[Shogun Gunner]

those seem like pretty decent specs. Did you do the driver update thing? Do you have a slowdown for other applications or just this?

Might be a good opportunity to some routine maintenance.

1. Scan for spyware with two different anti-spyware software programs
2. Run an exhaustive virus scan
3. Defrag hard drive with error checking on
4. Run a RAM memory chip tester program to test your RAM
5. other things I can't think of right now....

[evizaer]

Thanks for your suggestions Shogun Gunner. I routinely do most of those things (aside from defragging... i reformatted this computer about a month ago and i have over half the harddisk free, so i doubt fragmentation is the issue). I've performed a few registry fixes to turn off little memory using subroutines in Windows that i don't need to run, i've made a neat little shortcut that diverts processing time from idle processes to foreground ones, and i've updated ALL of my drivers to the most recent ones possible. I keep close tabs on viruses and malware through having enterprise McAfee (fully updated) on 24/7 and scanning when the system is idle; I have Microsoft Antispyware update and run every night.

I haven't tried to update my BIOS, though... that's probably one of the only things i haven't tried.

Pirates! ran awesome on this computer. Call of Duty 2 runs well on medium graphics settings at my monitor's native resolution (1440x900). Age of Empires 3 runs well on my machine when it's on 1280x800 with some graphical bells and whistles turned off.

[Digitalfiend]

Ran perfectly, right out of the box:

P4-3GHz/1GB/SB Audigy 2/ATI 9800Pro
Windows XP SP2

Running the game at 1280x960 full detail, runs great.

[Shogun Gunner]

Well, you obviously know what you are doing with your computer. If you had a spare video card of similiar quality (perhaps buy one from a store that you can return to) and see if you system performs any differently.

It always seems that the videocard/driver has become the biggest problem spot for Windows.

Does Pirates! still run well? That's the same basic engine as cIV I've read. That would be confusing why one works okay and the other doesn't.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

[evizaer]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
Well, you obviously know what you are doing with your computer. If you had a spare video card of similiar quality (perhaps buy one from a store that you can return to) and see if you system performs any differently.

Well... considering tha this computer is a laptop, that's really not an option if i want to keep my service/warranty. I should be building a desktop this summer that will run this game amazingly well, so i'm not extremely concerned.

Does Pirates! still run well? That's the same basic engine as cIV I've read. That would be confusing why one works okay and the other doesn't.

I haven't recently tested pirates... i have no real reason to. Maybe if i'm bored this weekend i'll install it again.

Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

It's not a problem. Thanks again for your suggestions .

Hopefully the patch will clear up the issues i'm having.

[Eroberer]

It hasn't crashed yet for me in the 6 hours or so that I could stand playing it. My sys specs are too low to really keep it an enjoyable experience, but I wanted to mention that a 4.5 year old laptop has the capability to at least start the game up.

Sys specs:
1Ghz PIII (Coppermine)
256MB PC-100 RAM
NVidia GeForce2 Go 440 32 MB RAM (has hardware T&L, DX7 compatible...it's old)

Everything looks pretty good, even at the lowest graphical settings, but it just goes by on the screen very slowly. I'm getting a new computer for Christmas. =P

Tiberius, the most likely culprit for your slow speed is memory amount. If you haven't tried turning down the game performance details, the first place you would go for more speed is memory. However, 1.6GHz is rather slow these days, too. The graphics card is almost certainly good enough.

[098]

Mine didn't work. Had to stuff around downloading this, deleting this, installing that, rebooting this until it worked. But then the game is still fill of bugs.

I'm happy the game is working now but I still think this game should not have been released in the condition it was in. Clearly someone at either Firaxis or 2K Games needs to front up and say we stuffed up and sorry for the stress we may have caused.

[Ken aka Batman]

Took over the world with no problems.....


Then I had some fun with the map editor....lol


Didn't know the ENTIRE world would be grassland.......lmfao