Do you play Civ3 on a laptop?

[G'Kar]

Thanks for the responses, it's good to know that the keyboard and touchpad are that programmable. Now I just have to hope for some nice after Christmas sales on laptops.

[Dis]

Originally posted by vee4473
and one last thing..sorry for the multuiple posts.

my dell inspiron is finicky when it comes to ound and video on some games.

for smac, i still can't get the sound to work, and for some games the video craps out.

maybe it's because it was an old graphics and sound chip, but i have found that on board audio and video in laptops don't behave that well all of the time for games.

maybe that's fixed for today's newer models.

I'm sure you know this, but SMAC is one of those weird games to get the sound working for many systems.

Even on my PC I had to go in the ini file to get my sound working correctly.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally posted by vee4473
ah, yes...as warpstorm says..i forgot to mention that on my dell laptop, you can toggle the keyboard so that a group of letters on the right (in a somewhat square keypad like formation) can be used as a keypad. see picture

The only trouble is that the keys are a bit skewed so that takes a little getting used to and if you want to use say the "i" button for irrigation hotkey, then you have to constantly toggle on and off this function.


maybe i'm just lazy?

Exactly how my dell is. Yes it's a pain to hit numlock everytime you wanna mine or irrigate but you get used to it.

[Shogun Gunner]

numeric keypad is a must. If I played on a laptop, I would buy a USB external numeric keypad....okay, no i wouldn't but I would think about buying a numeric keypad

[steven8r]

I use an older model Compaq, P3 500MHz. It seems to work just fine. For awhile I used the 'toggle' for the Num Lock. Since then, I did purchase a numeric keypad and that works great! (I also use an external mouse instead of the 'eraser' mouse)

[Cookie Monster]

Yeah an external mouse, especially the new optical ones, is a must.

[Mickeyj]

I play on a wide screen laptop and have a few problems that I’ve come to live with.

Firstly the native resolution 1920x1200 is too small to see units clearly. I therefore have to reduce the resolution every time I fire up C3C, which is a pain. The laptop screens are only crystal clear at their original resolutions, which is why I don't use the reduced resolution all the time.

Secondly the game was initially stretched to the wide screen making it seem as you were playing on an oblique plain, interesting, but the advisor screens became almost unmanageable. I corrected this by changing the keepres setting in the .ini file, which worked well. The advisors are now on a 1024X768 resolution within the wide screen and when on the main screen I get a larger map area to monitor.

If you do go for a laptop I recommend you go for the biggest screen available with a reasonable resolution that doesn’t have you squinting at the screen.
I’ve never used the num-pad and never felt the need to BUT I would recommend getting a USB optical mouse (NO DEBATE).

There’s nothing better than firing up a game of civ while lazing on the couch with your laptop on your lap, watching a game of cricket (or whatever sport) in the background, sucking back a few ice cold beers.

[Zevico]

There’s nothing better than firing up a game of civ while lazing on the couch with your laptop on your lap, watching a game of cricket (or whatever sport) in the background, sucking back a few ice cold beers.

No, only cricket can be boring enough to do that.

[Mickeyj]

Originally posted by Zevico

No, only cricket can be boring enough to do that.

I'll pretend I didn't hear that

But seriously the laptops great you don't have to be stuck at your desk and you have the advantage of being able to play on long train journey's etc.

[Inverse Icarus]

IBM Thinkpad T30.

no problems at all.

[Cerbykins]

Old second-hand Compaq Armada 1700. Under-spec, and a bit juddery - but still works. Besides, if it ticks me off enough, I can run it off the main machine, and use VNC to remotely access it. Civ in bed beats breakfast in bed anytime

Besides, actually having the picture from corner-to corner is SOOOO IMPRESSIVE
I may be shallow, but it bothers me not

[kettyo]

I have no problems at all. (i use 2 different notebooks)
Just make sure to get a good external mouse.
Maybe you could also get an USB numeric keypad but it's not that important for Civ3 (The 'go to' mechanism of civ3 is really great) though it's thankful when you often calculate with your notebook.

[G'Kar]

Okay, one more question: does anyone have experience playing Civ3 with "integrated" graphics on a laptop or desktop?

There's a Toshiba laptop I like but the only problem is it has Intel graphics with 32MB of the "shared" memory. I don't know how graphically demanding Civ3 is vis a vis other games.

[Kuciwalker]

Re: Do you play Civ3 on a laptop?

no

[damianj]

P3 800mhz 500 -odd ram, runs great!