Unless your very competent Computer person hold off Buying Civ 4

[ETF]

Well I thought I was pretty good with computers obviously not. It seems we are back to the days of configuring Dos 4
I have 4 P4 machines all with different video cards. Have the latest drivers for sound, video and latest XP. I only was able to get two to run CIV 4 and after the patch that dropped to one machine out of 4!!
The one that does run crashes often and crawls to unplayable speeds in later games.
My suggestion unless you can spend hours tweaking your modern P4 machine forget this purchase!

Very frustrated

[Garwoofoo]

You're unlucky.

Civ 4 ran pretty well out of the box for me - better when I reverted to slightly older video card drivers as recommended on these forums. The patch improved things all round. Nowadays it's pretty good, with only wonder movies still playing up.

This is on a fairly bog-standard 2.6 P4, Nvidia FX 5900, 1GB RAM and onboard sound. All drivers etc up to date.

Some people are having problems, I agree, but lots are also playing just fine.

[ETF]

Well guess just have to wait for the next patch I guess

[adb280z]

I've never been so frustrated by a computer application in my life, except back in college when I forgot to save a paper and MS word performed an illegal operation and deleted it. Civ IV has been a disaster for me.

[Raion]

Start with the "Help" command of your computer, and also read about your computer.

Simply put the game can not do any of that, and while you need to know something about your computer and how it will play a game and really what is needed -- it has be said countless times before.

A computer is stupid, the person behind the computer is not supposed to be!

I think some people have more crap on their computer conflicting with everything, and think the computer should be magic or something - -a computer is not magic -- just a stupid piece and a very stupid piece of technology!

[Raion]

Use 16-bit color depth. The only problem I have had is it running slow -- so I do not know but I do know that my computer's video card is below recommended specs and using 16-bit color depth speeds it up!