Windows 2000

[Jimmy Liu]

Help, I can't seem to run ctp on Windows 2000. It just sends me crashing back to the desktop. I got a Pentium mmx 200mhz, 112 megs ram. That meets the requirements on the box.

[lago]

My understanding is that Windows 2000 is the upgrade to Windows NT -- aimed at business users, not home use. I never tried CtP on NT; does it even run on that?

They're supposed to have Windows Millenium or something out later this year, for home use. Till then it's W95 or W98, I guess.

[MidKnight Lament]

I believe it did run on NT, because in the patch they changed the way the save game files were named, so that they didn't have spaces in them. I could be wrong though.

Of course, that doesn't mean it'll neccessarily run on Win2000.

- MKL

[Tilemacho]

Hi I have played Cctp both in NT and W2000 without any problems. (in the university that was )

[Yazeran]

I had the same problem about Win2000. I emailded Activision, who replied that they does not support win2k for the above mentioned reason, that it is not considered a gaming platform.

[ajbera]

I'm intending on upgrading my OS to Win 2k for a variety of reasons, and am concerned about these reports of problems with CtP. According to the Win2k/Nt Compatible website, CtP runs under both operating systems. If anyone can add to the reports listed here about getting the game to work (or failure to do so) I'd appreciate it, especially since I may have to switch to Win2k soon to accomodate my upcoming slew of system upgrades.

[pchang65]

All I know is that CTP runs fine on Win NT 4.0 Workstation. I have not tried it on Win 2000.

[Big Dave]

Windows 2000 Professional (what I am assuming you are running, equivlant to NT Workstation) requires either 128 or 256 megs of RAM. Microsoft has changed the "official" requirements (look here) but I would go with the original requirements, or more. Remember that Windows 2000, like all Windows, is happier with more RAM.

Big Dave

[Blade Runner]

I have win2000 (k2-400, 128MB RAM) and my CTP run just fine.

Blade

[Pintello]

Hi All,

I have been doing some work on running CTP in a Windows 2000 environment. The following are some observations that I have made about this. I will start this out by saying that I am running a AMD 233 K6 with 64 mb of ram and I am using a Matrox Millenium II pci Video Card with 4mb of video ram. I have also setup CTP to use the full capabilities of the hardware. Also, my standard game setup is as follows. I use a gigantic map that I have modified to be a random generated map of 90X180 squares instead of the standard 70X140 in the game. I play with 13 civs including Barbarians. I have set the time slice a factor of 10 higher than the stardard setting in CTP to give my slower computer time to make decision. This does not appreciatively slow down the game, but the computer sure plays smarter. I run with the full Med Mod that includes everything Wes and company have put into it, including the Trade Goods Mod that Nordicus did. All of these modifications work fine on my slower computer without much noticeable slowdown on my admitidly obsolete computer. Even very late in the game there is no more than a minute or so delay while I am waiting for the AIs to complete their moves. Now here are my observations.

1) CTP will not work in W2K if it is not installed from scratch into W2K. If you have a W98 or W95 system that you upgraded to W2K, CTP will not work. I recommend uninstalling CTP before upgrading to W2K and then reinstalling it.
2) The units start out by moving very slowly, sometimes even several seconds between the time you give the order and the time the unit executes it, but do not dispair. As the game prgresses the situation improves. By the time you are 30-50 turns into the game, the units are moving as soon as you give them the orders. Also, once the game gets going pretty good, it seems to work more quickly than under W98. Dialogue Boxes, city management screen, etc... appear to come up much more quickly without the long delay that I had gotten used to under W98. The reason for this kind of thing I think may have to do with how W2K manages memory. It always keeps some reserves of memory available when you are first using a program so that it can dedicate the additional memory to any other programs that you may want to open up while you are running the current program. This feature facilitates multitasking in W2K. However, if you have only one program open and use it continueously without going to another program, overtime the computer dedicates more memory resources to it until all memory resources are being used for that progam. I believe that this is what happens when the game started speeding up. There should be someway to tell W2K to allocate all memory resources to CTP from the start. When I figure it out, I will let y'all know so that anyone who is interested can set it up like that from the beginning.
3) Once the game gets going well, it runs noticable faster under W2K than it did under W98 or W95. I beleive this is do to W2K's superior memory management capablities.
4) The game runs more stablely under W2K than it did under W98. I conclude this because while I was Beta Testing some of Wes's mods before beta version 4, things that made CTP crash under W98 only caused CTP to drop out without shutting it down. All I had to do was click on CTP from the Task Bar in W2K and the game would come right back up. Enough such drops and it finally did crashed, but it took 3 or 4 under W2K instead of only the 1 it took under W98.
5) Power management does not appear to affect the game at all under W2K. In the past, if power management came on while CTP was up on a W98 System, it would crash the computer. I think this has to do with the fact that W2K finally got power management right, unlike previous versions of Windows.

I would also like to take this time to clarify something about the memory requirements for W2K. W2K server definitely does require 128-256 mb of RAM to run properly, but that is not the case for W2K Professional which I am using. W2K Professional is optimized for 64mb of RAM. It will run with as little as 32mb, but not very well. You still get preformance boost as you use more RAM, but it is a diminishing returns kind of thing till you hit 256mb of RAM. At the 256mb RAM point, W2K Professional actually starts slowing down. I think this a result of how W2K Professional was optimized for 64mb of RAM.
All of this of course does not apply to W2K Server in any of its incarnations.

Regards,
Timothy Pintello

[This message has been edited by Pintello (edited May 17, 2000).]