The patch will come the next week

[Kiltdown]

configuration based bugs

When software works on some PCs and not others it's generally due to unusual PC configurations or unusual UI usage.

Both are very hard to detect pre-release, because pre-release you don't have 100k testers, only hundreds.

The only bugs I've had are trivial, the re-drawing speed slider on playback, the intiial drawing error of sci/gold/etc ratios on the city screen, the amazing zipping units.

From the sound of other's pain, it would have been nice to have fewer bugs.

Inexcusable bugs, imo, are the ones that a very large percentage of players experience.

[TheArsenal]

Play on a huge map up until modern times and swap maps. That is where the problem is, the game works wonderfully well on standard sized maps and below... but at least for me personally... those are boring. So I went with huge, game works great, hundreds of units dancing across the screen... then comes the slowdown, the memory clogs and the crashes. I see a lot of people posting on the stability of the programming, and then I see that they are also ignoring half the posts referring to when it happens. Huge maps are a killer.

The only real problem I ‘ve had has been this exactly. I play on nothing but Huge maps. My game will not crash when trading maps, but will hang for quite awhile. It will occasionally stall in other places, maybe once every two or three hours. For the most part, it plays through without problems even while other applications are running.

[zapperio]

Originally posted by Effraides
Huge maps are a killer.

And its not half the systems here... its got to be a programming flaw. The game will fill up a whole gig stick in a minute and then crash... reboot, the game runs great for 10 minutes, omg, gig stick filled up again , slow, slow... crash. Over and over. If the System is rebooted, everything is great again for 10 turns. It isnt my system and standard maps are too small. And playing half life 2 maxed out settings wise, it boggles my mind why this is filling up my memory so bad.

And as an extra bonus, if you shut the game down before it crashes... its like your system is coming down off of some bad trip... you have to give it a few minutes for the memory to empty and adjust. Or the computer runs like a hog.

...and that´s exactly the kind of thing you´d expect to see with a faulty ram stick. come to think of it, all those reports of similiar setups having wildly different performances, hangups and blue screens could be attributed to bad memory.

Also, overclocking will affect your memory and at best make it unreliable. whether it´s overclocking the RAM, the cpu or the video card.

[Arbarbonif]

Originally posted by Brutus66
I have hundreds of users to support in a large industrial setting, which includes workers on the factory floor, secretaries, and executives.
I have learned three things:
1) More often than not, the problem I am fixing was caused, either knowingly or unwittingly, by the user.
2) The description of the problem provided by the help desk on the trouble ticket and what’s really wrong are completely different
3) Users lie.

Heh, the infamous PEBKAC problem. I did tech support in college....

Problem
Exists
Between
Keyboard
And
Chair

[ledhed]

Whens this patch comming out ...WTF .

[Bhruic]

Originally posted by Brutus66
For example, some folks have howled publicly that they had an ATI 9800, but later admitted it was a laptop system that did not support T&L (the gamebox says, under minimum requirements, you need a video card supporting T&L).

Uh, the mobile 9800 fully supports T&L.

Bh

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by ledhed
Whens this patch comming out ...WTF .

Because the team needs to sit in the TimeOut Corner and think about what they've done wrong!

I hope it comes out soon enough, anyone hear anything please post it!

[SKIPICUS]

Yes!!! Anyone hears light up the boards

[Effraides]

Then if its bad RAM, from what i gather on these boards 3/4 of all Ram sold throughout the world is flawed. Sounds like more of a copout to me. No other game or program does this to my Ram. I could buy a new Gig stick, but taking the comments made in this thread into account I can assume that it will do no good. Because the oods that my Ram is flawed is enormous.

I buy high end Ram to avoid problems like this... wouldn't I see some sign of it elsewhere, anywhere? With other high end games? With MAYA? Maya definately requires more resources than Civ 4 and no probs there. I could buy a new system but from what your saying... its a crap-shoot.

[Gray_Lensman]

So far, aside from the bug reports in this forum, I've yet to read about anything really new in Civ IV, that convinces me that it is worth my time to purchase it, and I really enjoyed Civ I and II. Civ III seemed to always be an incomplete product, no pun intended, and the only thing this version seems to have is some prettied up graphics and maybe a slightly better diplomacy model. I'm gonna keep on scanning these forums for more info, but I'm not even close to being convinced there is really anything worthwhile here other than "Wow, a new Civ game... Everyone go buy it..., blah, blah...

[SKIPICUS]

I understand how everyone feels and its rough. But I took Civ 4 off the self and installed it again but didn't run it. I am just being ready for the patch that should "should" come out today, thurs., or fri.
I know! I'm probably too overly anxious. But hoping.

[ledhed]

Well you can limit some of the option in the mean time ..like limit pop ups and turn off the advisor..akso you can go into the configuration file and eliminate the wonder movies. It helps a good bit. I wish I could find a way to freeze the diplomacy screen and eliminate the discovery window .

[tezster]

Users who experience problems with the game will in general be about 10 to 20 times more vocal than people who aren't experiencing any (or very little) problems - and I would say even that figure is a conservative estimate.

I don't doubt there are many people experiencing problems with running Civ 4, but in the overall scheme of things, I would be very surprised if this number was any higher than very low single digits in terms of the percent of people whose gaming experience is severely crippled.

I've logged roughly 45-50 hours of gameplay so far. This doesn't count the times when I've stepped away from the computer (using a great deal of willpower ), while leaving the game running for 3-4 hours, then come back and pick up right where I left off without suffering any graphical glitches, CTDs or anything to otherwise detract from my gameplay experience.

Anyway, I don't want to flog a dead horse too much. Just wanted to express my belief that most people are happily playing their CIV without running into problems.

[SKIPICUS]

I'm seriously glad for those who can play it but I'm more seriously sad for those of us who can't.

[thewoozle]

Keep in mind, that they may very well be PLANNING to have a patch done this week, then take a few extra days to debug and finish it.. then test it.. then betatest it.. and it may be two more weeks before we get it. Usually, the developer has all sorts of tweaks and patches and bugfixes going, but the publisher sits on and limits what they can release.

Hopefully not in this case.