I have a confession to make

[Willem]

I never actually finished a game of Civ 3. There were so many thing that I didn't like about it that I would stop and mod it so I would like it. I never even reached the modern era, I always lost interest about the time I got Tanks, and would go back to my modding.

But I just finished my first game of Civ 4 today, on Marathon no less, and I enjoyed pretty much every minute of it. I didn't win, I came in a close second, but I had fun seeing it to the end. To me, that says alot about the game, it's almost everything I could wish for in from Civilization. By the time we see an expansion or two, this is going to be an awesome game!

And aside for a few things, I see no need to mod it. The only things that come to mind right now, are adding 1 food to Horse and Ivory, and making Railroad a bit more expensive. Other than that, I'm happy with the way it plays.

Nice job Firaxis.

[Medic911]

i assume then, that you can make it past the middle ages without a total system failure every time (no, not exaggerating, every time.)

[Willem]

It took some tinkering with various things but I managed it. A couple of things you might want to try:

First, lower your graphic detail, not just in your game but on your video card as well. There are some setting for 3D graphics that you can adjust. Originally everything for me was on High Quality but I turned my Texture to Quality and the Mipmap to Performance. It reduced the image quality of the game, but it was still acceptable IMO.

And one thing I think made a big difference for me was turning off the ambient sounds. Having those running are going to take up a chunk of system resources and they really aren't all that important.

Before I did these things, and a couple of other changes as well, I started having problems with my graphics screwing up when I went to any screen around the time of the pre-industrial era. The terrain would go black and there was a horrible lag. I'd have to save and reboot the game. But that didn't happen at all with my last game, it worked fine right through. Sometimes it got a bit sluggish and unit moves were a bit jerky, but if I rebooted, everything was fine for quite awhile.

[Enigma_Nova]

Make a thread about it, post your system specs (A dump from dxdiag usually works), download the patch, turn your graphic settings down, and be prepared to be trolled after I take a look at your thread.

[Bkeela]

I think I only completed one game of Civ 3. By the time that pollution sprang up everywhere, I just lost interest.

Civ IV on the other hand I cannot stop playing. Hopelessly addicted.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Enigma_Nova
Make a thread about it, post your system specs (A dump from dxdiag usually works), download the patch, turn your graphic settings down, and be prepared to be trolled after I take a look at your thread.

Congratulations! You have just made my ignore list (though this post was a relatively minor contribution).

[Enigma_Nova]

/me dies of irony