Does this game work out off the box

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Shogun Gunner
Works perfectly.

No crashes, no slowdowns.

I haven't tried multiplayer yet.

[Tiberius]

Runs fine, it is stable and I had no crashes.

I have performance issues, but I wasn't expecting anything else with my ~2-3 years old configuration (Pentium4 1,6 GHz, 512 DDRAM, GeForce3Ti with 128 RAM).

Is there any application out there that could check where am I on the limit? What would help me more: more RAM, a better proc or a better graphic card?

[WolfEyes]

Win2K is a business OS, its not designed in the way XP is to run applications such as games, you'll probably create more problems than you solve.

I run Win2k as my only OS and do lots of gaming on it, never have a problem, in fact I see the lower memory requirement for most games under Win2k (as compared to the requirements for XP) as a very nice perk.

[Martinus]

Not sure how I should answer. When I got the game the Radeon fix was already available, so it took me 5 seconds to realise I need it (the game wouldn't run), 5 minutes to install and then haven't had any problems ever since.

Now, if I got the game on the release day and would have to wait 2 days for the fix to appear, I would probably be more aggravated.

[Caltone]

Ran fine for me on my desktop and laptop

Desktop:
AMD 2500+XP
ATI X800Pro
2gb Ram

Laptop:
Pentium M 2ghz
Nvidia FX Go5200
2gb Ram

Performance was smooth as silk on the desktop and a tad sluggish on the laptop but so far no problems on either.

[martin76]

About the T+L:

IMHO there should be an option to turn it of in the game. There must be many civ-fans out there that dont give s**t about the graphics, and just want to play the game. After all civ is much more about the "game-mechanics" than fps and stuff.

Maybe Firaxis can release a patch that lets me play without T+L in black-and-white? It would probably still get a 10/10 from me

[Adagio]

Does the game run out of the box for me? Yep, I've only had very few graphical glitches

[trueorg]

Mine does not. I experience slow down that gets worse the longer I run the game.

My Specs are:
AMD Athlon XP 3000+ ~ 2.1 GHz
NVidia GeForceFX 5700 (256MB)
512 RAM

[Shogun Gunner]

that's very similiar to my setup - except that I have 1.5 gig of RAM. How many games have you run and are you doing large maps?

It seems that having more RAM cures many problems.

[Raion]

It runs okay for me, but my computer may be slugish on a standard map. It will run quicker, if I (like I have been doing) run the graphics by 'single unit' checkbox, and if necessary, turn off animations and something else. Otherwise right now I am running the game with 'single units' and animation, but on a standard map, it may involve waiting a microsecond before attempting to make a move. Sometimes the unit will not take the move order, but it will eventually.

I could use a better graphic card, but still I think the game is demanding in the graphics and I had to spend my money on other things rather than a newer computer. I have not been in late game either, so I rather expect the game to slow down.

The movies are 'full screen' so those take more processing power rather than like Pirates! which are wide-screen based movie-like *.bik files so the sound cuts in and out (on all of them).

I am still deciding if what some other players say is a memory leak as it is thought of, and that is when you meet a diplomatic person in the game.

Civ IV I guess demands more than Pirates! but Pirates! is only a year-old this month, so I am wondering about things like the movie changes in Civ IV and all of that. I still think that the *.bik files would be okay in about the 16:9 format or whatever it is -- like a widescreen movie -- instead of like they are in - 4:3 mode that looks like some TV I have around this place, and box-like!

Although I rather have a better computer, that is not going to be possible in the near future.

So, the graphics are more demanding and I can use 'single units' and turn off animation and other things to keep the game lively, if that is what I want, but since it is hard to actually know yet what to do in the game, thinking about it may be more useful now, instead of wondering why the game is not moving through moves at a million FPS!

FX5200 Geforce 128mB of memory PCI 2.0 slot card!
Windows 2K Professional (which uses less memory than XP)
512 mB of memory
Sound Blaster whatever Live! card.

And I may end up liking 'small' or 'tiny' maps anyway, but the Orion Constellation does come up twice during the opening main menu song, once as night and once usually during when the sun is moving in and out of view.
In fact it is the same sequence of stars all the time, and only about a third of the screen, but then programming the entire sequence of stars during a 24 hour period would almost be impossible and probably would not run on any computer except a supercomputer!

Otherwise players will have to wait for their 'quantum' supercomputer to play the game!



XP needs more memory because it is a memory hog, and I figure that the slowest thing on my computer is the OS, and more memory justs appears to make Windows seem like a faster OS system than what it really is!

But if necessary, I have windows 98 on my computer also, so I can go back to ms-dos Civ which no one will mention anymore as being the real first Civ. Maybe it has something to do with all the barbarians surrounding your first city, and not being able to even get out of the city first without a great battle against the barbarians in the game! I can't remember now if that was fixed or not, then Windows started to appear and Civ 1 was born, and that is usually placed as the first Civ, but that game was also weird in ways, so I go with Civ II which I still have on my computer under Windows 98SE, and Civ III I verily played as some of it to me seemed like an abomination after Civ II, so I think Civ IV is much better, but the end result is that I just need a better computer, but that ain't gonna happen anytime soon!

So the end result is that Civ IV plays allright, but I have no idea why the game wants the player to always make Cottages all the time, and farming goes away until Civil Service is teched and I am still learning the game.

I know what cottages do but do I need suburan Civ??
Maybe later, I guess!

Moses did pop-up on my screen though, and it was like having a 'Vision' and he was 'poof' there in all that luminousy!

I thought for a moment I was back watching the movie the 'Ten Commandments' with Charleston Heston for a moment there and the firey bush up on the mountain when the Ten Commandments were inscribed on the stone tablets! Then I thought about the scene down below the mountain whereas they were all partying and worshipping the idols and that God was going to punish them.

Then I thought about the present world and decided that the game of Civ IV is my little Civilization and all was well again!

I could go on and on, and probably bore a lot of people into commiting suicide rather than play the game of Civ IV, but at the same time I always think that somehow if the game was delivered over to the Middle East, and then Translated into Arabic they get so mad, they blow theirselves up along with the box of Civ IV and that be the end of them also!

A one-time purchase only!

[emalherbe]

No issues running the game (except for the wonder movie sound choppy) on a HP NX8220 laptop with ATI Mobility X600

[Mannamagnus]

After trying everything ever suggested I finally got it to work.

Here you can read how.

[Standup]

Nope. Can't even get into the game. Crashes on the "init engine" at the start.

Spec..

P4 3.4 Ghz
1Gb Ram
X600 Pro with 256 MB
Audigy 2 LS

Guess its the T+L issue.

[conmcb25]

Originally posted by 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.

Same here on my X300 ATI laptop version

[Stoopid Monkeys]

I had ATI video card issues and the game crashed to desktop twice on the first day. Strangley it hasn't crashed since then I haven't changed any settings. The whole ATI conflict was a bummer. I wound up having to the whole unpacking thing even after deleting and reinstalling the drivers, before I eventually got it work. (Took about 1 hour to get it completly installed and running) Kind of odd becuase I can run Half-Life 2 with no problems so I dont see why it couldnt hadle CIV.

P IV 3.2 Mghz
1 gig RAM
Windows XP Pro
ATI XT800

I love the game though!!!