Patch v152 out

[Silver14]

They definatly fixed the gifting city exploit per Speed Bumps list. In my current game the only city that Tokugawa will accept from me is the one that founded Judaism.

They may have fixed it a little too well as he won't even consider Shanghai - a city that has the Pyrimids and Parthenon. Not that I would give them my cities but one would think a city with wonders - especially two of them - would be worth while for the AI.

I also wonder if AI's will accept their own cities back. Although it rarely comes up sometimes when I 'liberate' a city that was taken by a 3rd AI I gift it back to the original AI owner if we are allied and I don't want it instead of razing it.

[Blake]

The criteria for accepting a city SEEMS to be locality moreso than the city itself. If it i'll be part of their empire then it'll be accepted, if it's an island in foreign culture then no.

[TheSarge]

I'm not sure which I like more: The new patch or the new, santa-hat emoticons.
Especialy the "" one

[Willem]

Woo hoo! Just got the game yesterday and there's another patch already! Talk about timing!

Looking over the readme, it looks like a pretty hefty one too. I'm glad to hear about the system optimizations, I was having a few problems trying to run Huge maps, specifically with the grid. There was a hefty lag turning it on and off, and sometimes my video card crapped right out. Hopefully this will fix it.

Thanks to all those at Firaxis for such timely patches.

[chuckdelicious]

added Marathon game speed (longer than Epic)


Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Willem]

Originally posted by chuckdelicious
added Marathon game speed (longer than Epic)


Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Yeah, I like that one too. I just tried it out and it seems to run about as fast as Civ 3 did. My first tech took about 30 turns to research.

And my problems with Huge maps are now solved, the grid is working just fine. Only a slight delay and so far no crashes. The unit animations are running much smoother as well.

[Demon Rob]

patch does look good so far, though my 5 and 7 yo daughters have dominated play so far so I havent fully checked (they are play acting civ at the moment - one is hatshetiput and the other is issy).
can't find the santa hat option yet, it has to be in a submenu somewhere.....

[Demon Rob]

forgot to mention - one undocumented fix is windowed on a multi-monitor system works lots better. Before it used to make the window slightly bigger than the main monitor (ignoring any size options) and running VERY slow until I hit the maximise button. Maybe a side affect of all the options being reset, or maybe a fix, but I'm happy.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Speed Bump
v1.52 is a major upgrade to Civ IV and includes numerous optimizations for memory usage that should help performance on all machines but are tailored to especially improve performance on machines at or near the minimum specification.

Major changes include:

-Shared low-level graphics buffers

-Removed many unused fonts and reduced interface memory usgae

-Paged out units which are not visible

-Reduced terrain data size and overhead

-Reduced route data size

-Created a set of low-res movies for machines without dynamic texture support (this is a separate download)

These changes not only reduced the amount of system memory required, but lowered video memory usage extensively. Also, the rate at which the game consumes memory in the late-game has decreased, which is extremely important.

In addition, a new config file (ini) option called 'MemorySaver' has been added for further memory reduction, at the cost of alt-tabbing support. If you set MemorySaver=1 in the config file, you can lower your system memory usage by 70% of video memory. So if you have a 128MB video card, you can save an additional ~90MB of system memory. MemorySaver defaults to off, and is not officially recommended since it doesn't handle alt-tabbing and other cases of graphics device loss at this time. However, we recognize that some users may want to experiment with it.

Finally, the use of unofficial patches is not recommended and is largely redundant with the memory fixes in this patch. Unofficial patches may slow performance, cause graphical problems or conflict with Firaxis code resulting in crashes or other problems. It also makes it more difficult for us to respond to error reports and debug issues reported by users running unauthorized patches.

Suggestions for optimal performance:

Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary.
Go to www.windowsupdate.com and apply updates
Update graphics and sound drivers
Close other background applications
Turn graphics to low and use low-resolution textures in the options screen
Turn off Antialiasing in your display properties
Disable virus protection

-Mustafa Thamer

Civ IV Lead Programmer

Great!

But I must say that the use of unofficial patches has been a necessity for some users ´cause you botched the game big time first time around. Harkonnen shouldn´t have to do your job so quit your whining

And it seems like you´ve bitten off more than you can chew with the graphics. Did you do any testing whatsoever prior to release of Civ IV 1.00?? You should have a pretty good idea at what systems people are running and therefore adjust the sys req accordingly. Or at the very least make sure it works flawlessly with the sys req printed on the box. Your suggestions for optimal performance above is just stupid.

[Zoid]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Trip now works for Firaxis?

Yes, and he has been for some time AFAIK. You´re not paying attention UR

[Demon Rob]

Originally posted by Dr Zoidberg

Great!

But I must say that the use of unofficial patches has been a necessity for some users ´cause you botched the game big time first time around. Harkonnen shouldn´t have to do your job so quit your whining
.....
Your suggestions for optimal performance above is just stupid.

yeah I thought that was a bit in bad taste by Firaxis. The message really should have said, "thanks harko for your efforts, we apprecieate your skill and what you did for the community. We have now solved it but are thankful for you enabling people to run our less than optimal first effort".

Their recommendation of 'turn virus software off' should probably be reconsidered too.

Harko - we still love you!

[Zoid]

Obviously Jeff and Sid have more tact. At the Firaxis website they say (in an open letter to the fans)

[The game] has been flying off the shelves and has received loads of great reviews. We want to thank our fans for your unwavering support, and particularly for your tremendous feedback that helped get us through some initial technical issue right after the release of the game. Our team worked tirelessly to fix the problems quickly and post a patch to help those folks experiencing difficulties in running the game. Civ fans are truly extraordinary!

While they don´t mention individual efforts it´s still pretty clear that they appreciate all the hard work that a lot of fans have put into fixing their flawed game. Now this could be just good PR, but at least they don´t berate the fans for trying to get a functioning game.

[Soren Johnson]

Sorry, that came off sounding differently than what we intended. Actually, we're very impressed by the work that Harkonen has done and are glad that it's been able to help people over the last few weeks. The point we were making is that people who are patching to v1.52 might want to be sure that they are using all of the default files when they first try the game out again to see how performance/stability has changed. Certainly, a great deal of the code-base has changed, so there is always the chance that user-made mods might function differently...

[Zoid]

Glad we see it the same way, Soren And it is a really great game you guys have put together. Even if there was a few bugs and assorted strangeness in the initial release. Keep up the good work!

[Thoth]

That's an impressive looking patch, though 45 megs is going to take awhile to download on my dialup connection.

Thanks to the Firaxis team.