Disappointment!!!

[John-SJ]

I stopped playing Civ 3 shortly after its release due to a number of bugs and the fact that it was painfully SLOW after the ancient times.

I recently picked it up again, decided to try the latest patch level and see if the game was any better, and it was, for awhile at least.

In the game I'm playing I am at around the year 1700 on a standard map. My PIII 750, 256Mb Ram and GeForce2 GTS were handling the game just fine, I hadn't even turned off any animations and the game was plenty responsive, even when wars were raging and a lot of pieces were being moved about.

Then the Aztecs attacked me and I find myself right in the middle of a large battle with a lot of territory changing hands. At this point I experienced a strong sense of Deja Vu because the frikkin' game crashed on me, I though I was playing SMAC all over again, I never did get that game to play through without crashing, and it looks as if this game has enough SMAC in its ancestry to have inherited that fatal flaw.

Is this the experience of others as well?

A bit more about my computer, I have DirectX 9 and all of the latest video and audio drivers (SB Live!).

Is there anything else I should know to make this game behave, or should I just put it back on the shelf and go back to Europa Universalis?

John-SJ

[alva]

In more then a year, civ has crashed on me once or twice, that's it, no more.
This doesn't help you of course, but it does say, that the problem may lie somewhere else.

Some people do seem to have more problems then others...

[Willem]

I'd have to agree with Alva. Aside from complications I've encountered due to modifying the game, it's been very stable. I probably have less crashes than with most of the games I play.

[Master Zen]

When I first played Civ3 I was using WinME and the game crashed frequently. Using WinXP the game has never crashed. Maybe that's the reason.

As for the slowness, I feel your pain. I have a P3-500 with 256 RAM and the game runs extremely slow beginning in the late medieval /early industrial periods. I posted this on a previous thread and some people said that getting more RAM helped. I for one am planning to get me 512 MB of RAM soon.

[Master Zen]

I forgot to mention that I too was VERY disappointed the first time I played Civ3 since it was in some respects inferior to Civ2 and the editor was terrible. It was only until v1.29f came out that I found the game playable. Though I haven't played PTW yet it appears to solve most of my other gripes I have with the game. In all, v1.29f makes the game, IMHO, very enjoyable and finally a worthy sequel to Civ2, THE GREATEST GAME OF ALL TIME.

[John-SJ]

I am running on WinXP Pro, my swap file is under Windows control and is currently at 383MB if that helps at all.

I appreciate the encouragement that many people find the game stable, I'll keep trying to solve the problem as I want to be able to play this game for awhile.

John-SJ

edit: spelling only

[stuntman19]

I have WinXP Home and no crashes so far, but set my swap file to 1024MB since I figure late game or larger maps has got to be atleast 700-800MB swap file range easily. I have double your RAM and over double your processor though so that prolly helps. Not sure if XP Pro has any compatibility probs with the latest patch also, but XP Pro prolly wasn't designed for gaming performance in mind so might check into that also.

[Pyrodrew]

Isn't Direct X9 still a beta version? I've heard people having problems with it in Multiplayer & seen others have problems with it in other games.

[Bonaparte]

I must be lucky Civ3PTW 1.29 works great for me. I have an AMD 1.2GB Processor with 128MB RAM, and I am playing against 25 AI civs, with 100 extra units, on a 360x360 map and have to wait no more a minute between turns even with wars waging, plus I am in the Modern Age. The game has never crashed on me and is very stable on my system. There are so many things going on in a computer who knows why some games work good and others don't. I had a problem with Nascar 4 for a while untill I downgraded my graphics card, now that game works and I cannot see any difference in my graphics ... so who knows ... sometimes bigger better systems just mean having bigger problems. By the way the card that I replaced was a GeForce4 graphics card.

[aahz_capone]

civ crashed on me all the time before 1.29. but I can't remember having that many problems with SMAC.

And about the comment of civ3 haveing too much SMAC blood in it's veins, no way. Not enough if anything to go by the diplomacy or the depth. But thats more gamplay than software...

[alva]

Isn't Direct X9 still a beta version?

not anymore.

but set my swap file to 1024MB since

I even work without one.

[Alex]

Do you have any software active in the background while you play Civ3? Sometimes these programs affect the stability of the game overall.

Also check your videocard drivers, and make sure they are fully compatible with DirectX 9.

Civ3 is very stable to me, I think it crashed on me just once, a long time ago.

[Jethro83]

I have a Pentium II 350mhz computer with an ATI Rage Pro 8mb graphics card, 320mb RAM and DirectX 8 and its never crashed on me.

I also have an AMD Athlon 1.8Ghz with 256MB RAM a GeForce4 64MB graphics card, and DirectX 9 and it works just fine as well.

So on both of my computers, Civ 3 has NEVER crashed.

[Nym]

AFAIR Civ 3 only crashed 3 or 4 times for one year, and only when closing it (quite strange ). I have Win XP Pro with Athlon 1800+ and 512 MB RAM.

[bongo]

I've had only a small number of crashes when playing civ3. Since I've had alot of crashes when NOT playing civ I suspect that my computer is a bit unstable. It's a P3@450MHz, 256MB RAM running winME. I'm going to install XP very soon. That'll sort it out