Does this game work out off the box

[asleepathewheel]

runs great, never crashed.

[Swissy]

I updated all my drivers, defragged and set my pagefile to twice my RAM and it worked fine right off.

[MasterDave]

I have seen some weird AI diplomacy behavior (they are sometimes willing to give too many concessions to end a war) and a few graphics artifacts that usually go away if I scroll the screen away from them. Sometimes the minimap gets some lines running accross it, but if I save and reload the game its fixed.

I suspect that it may be a hardware issue of my graphics card starting to die, however, because I have recently had similar artifacts when playing Rome Total War (has a similar 3D animated map to Civ 4) which were not there a couple months before when I first got RomeTW. Also, my wife has the same exact VGA card and motherboard as me (both GEFORCE 6800's, on Asus MB's with Intel's 865 chipset MB's) and her Civ 4 does not have any of the glitches I have seen.

The bottom line though, is that these problems are all very minor, and I would say that this game works out of the box better than 90% of the other games I have bought for the PC. I have not tested the multiplayer game yet.

[MasterDave]

Re: Does this game work out off the box

Originally posted by Mannamagnus
MasterDave posted the following:



First of: this game seems to be the best civ installment ever, but it does crash every ten minutes or so.

So the question is: Does this game work out off the box for you?

Also, I will say that on Saturday I managed to play for about five hours or so with none of those graphics glitches at all, and none of the graphics problems cause the game to crash.

If your game is crashing every ten minutes, you might want to make sure you have a recent version of DierctX installed. I tried updating the drivers on my VGA card and that seemed to reduce the frequency of my artifacts, but they still pop up now and then.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by Solver


By the same logic, you could want new software to work on a Voodoo2 card. If you buy hardware that does not have many capabilities, then it's your problem when you can't run that software.

By your logic, the game should be released for Linux only, since that's a more capable operating system.

I mean, game designers should just ignore the masses that happen to have a certain type of configuration, right? They can get on the L33t bus or get out of the way...

[Dis]

yes, and I'm still using my original graphics card drivers. I still haven't bothered to upgrade my video card drivers after doing a reformat of my hard drive.

But I'm still only in the beginning of the medieval era. If that means anything. Perhaps later eras might introduce some weird bugs.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
By your logic, the game should be released for Linux only, since that's a more capable operating system.

I mean, game designers should just ignore the masses that happen to have a certain type of configuration, right? They can get on the L33t bus or get out of the way...

Linux is more capable, but it's not nearly standard, and is certainly a minority. T&L, however, is a feature that has been standard for video cards for a very, very long time. GeForce 2 MX cards were released in 2001 with T&L support. That's four years ago, when you wouldn't see CPUs fast enough to run Civ4.

GeForce 4 is now considered a weak card. GeForce 2 is a practically obsolete card. Yet they have T&L. It's not a high-end feature. Now, pixel shaders are present only on relatively new cards. I do not get, though, why Intel has to release their integrated cards without T&L support in all honesty.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
I mean, game designers should just ignore the masses that happen to have a certain type of configuration, right? They can get on the L33t bus or get out of the way...

Why do people that buy $300 computers expect to play 2005 games? I mean, you have to realize there's a difference in quality and ability, right? You don't buy a focus and then expect the hp of a ferrari, do you?

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel


Why do people that buy $300 computers expect to play 2005 games? I mean, you have to realize there's a difference in quality and ability, right? You don't buy a focus and then expect the hp of a ferrari, do you?

The problem is, we're not talking about a $300 computer... we're talking about a new ThinkPad T42.

Some people here seem convinced that the only ones having trouble are those with vintage '97 Packard Bells or something.

[Nero Would]

I read about the ATI graphics card problems before I got the game and was ready with the instruction for upgrading the drivers, forcing the DirectX install, etc. As it turned out, the game ran OK without any of that (Sapphire Radeon 9600 Atlantis with the driver provided by Windows Update - not the latest ATI driver).

[Sarxis]

Game is working almost spotless (sans a few quircks) for me. But I am running Geforce6200, 1gig ram, 2.0 ghz cpu (AMD).

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble


The problem is, we're not talking about a $300 computer... we're talking about a new ThinkPad T42.

Some people here seem convinced that the only ones having trouble are those with vintage '97 Packard Bells or something.

Wait, so the masses now have thinkpads?



The fact is, the vast majority of users with graphics issues are those at the low end of the spectrum with either outdated machines or budget models, not people with decent machines that happen to have a minor conflict.

[Beta]

Yes - with the ATI 5.10 Catalyst upgrades and directX that came with the game .... (glad I read all the stuff here first)

Runs beautifully.

[TorreyH]

Mostly. I have had a few crashes, including one spectacular one that rebooted the PC. After a crash the desktop video is corrupted, so I suspect some kind of driver conflict. Radeon 9600XT with the latest Omega drivers.

Its playable, though. Just have to remember to save fairly often.

As far as integrated graphics go, its fine for a business machine. Gamers need a dedicated graphics card, up to date with DirectX standards.

[Shogun Gunner]

Tonight I had Firefox and Outlook open and minimized while playing. No problems