AOM3 Is Out

[Dale]

Interesting discussion, I can't even remember what drew me here (took a while to read this thread, feed the baby, and put him to sleep as well).

But you wanna know what I think? No? Stiff ****, you're getting it......

Oh, and before I start, if anyone makes a comment about the fact I have ties to Firaxis blow it out of your ass. They don't pay me, I do it for the genre!

Point 1: The CTP vs Civ debate
I am a civer. I always was, and I always will be. I didn't play much CTP1, but got drawn to CTP2 mostly by Locutus. Also, Civ2 was really old by then and Civ3 was just ****. I enjoyed CTP2 for what it added to the genre. There were some really good ideas, but there were some really crap ones too. The point of "bigger is better" in CTP is soooooooooo true. Also the point of "the only way to win big is to conquer big". Hence why my first attempt to improve CTP2 was my diplomod (as diplomacy in CTP2 was CRAP!). I also made the Apolyton mods for CTP2 as well (three versions from memory as better stuff came out). But I was disallusioned by the fact that war won in CTP2. So I made the World at War mod to capitalise on that. It's fun in it's own right, but true to the old "bigger is better" and "the only way to win big is to conquer big". Thus is reality, the design of that mod is pretty poor as it doesn't add anything to the game, just uses it's only main strategy. And that's where CTP2 fails. To win big, you MUST warmonger. Not true in Civ4.

But I digress. The main point I wanted to bring up about this debate is that when I was heavy into CTP2 (4 years ago) the CTP2 community was very one-sided. There were a couple of folks who were both sided, but for the most part if you played CTP2 you were VERY anti-civ (and I am guilty of that a bit too). But now that I am outside of that I can see it plain as day. That's the CTP2 communitys most major failing in keeping the strength of 4 years ago. They pushed anyone away who enjoyed civ. Now there's a lot of negativity towards CTP2 from the civers because of those old debates, and thus the CTP2 community fails.

Point 2: PC performance CTP2 vs Civ4
What the hell are you people on about???????? You cannot compare the hardware required to play a game released 6 years ago, with a game not even 1 year old yet. That is ridiculous!!!!! CTP2 can run on a pentium 90 with 32 meg of RAM on Win98 (I know, I did it). Big deal! Name any game released in the last two years that can do that? What is the performance of Pools of Radiance compared to Oblivion on a Pentium 4 1.2 with 512 RAM???? Pointless arguement.

Point 3: CTP2 combat vs Civ4 combat
Okay, I will admit that vanilla Civ4 combat is crap. But I am changing that. http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=151787

Point 4: Saying Civ4 is crap
All of the folks above who say Civ4 is crap have played what, 4 games on settler? Pffft! You play CTP2/AOM with the latest patch on hardest level, with raging barbs, etc etc. I want to see some reports from you guys playing Civ4 with patch 1.61 on hardest level, raging barbs, etc etc. Then tell me your SOD's steam roller the rest. And BTW, from your comments I get the impression that you didn't "really" play Civ4 for what it is. Just some of the comments don't sound right for how a Civ4 game progresses. I'm not calling you liars, just that you're saying "odd" things with how the game goes.

Point 5: AOM vs Civ4
While Stan has done a fantastic job with AOM, I would not class it as a professional releasable game. The ideas are great, but the implementations of those ideas are not. For example: most of the barb spawnings are on the human's borders. This is to limit the human. Those sorts of ideas. Instead of limiting a human, the design should've been to promote the AI. This is where Civ4 far outshines AOM. What you guys call "Civ4 AI cheats" are in fact these elements coming into play. Except on the highest two levels the AI has no cheats in Civ4 (if you don't believe me, check the Civ4 SDK. It's the AI code right there). And even those AI cheats are only helpers in the right direction, not actual "give it double production" type cheats. Patch 1.61 elevates the AI into a whole new realm. The AI will co-ordinate it's attack on you. If you have a strong area and a weak area, the AI actually does prode your strong area to distract you while pounding your weak area. Tell when a CTP2 AI has EVER done that! Tell me also when a CTP2 AI has EVER performed a successful naval invasion where you **** your pants. The Civ4 AI does it with a breeze. So while AOM is a great game, the design (my guess is due to being limited by the original game engine) fails to elevate it to the level of a fantastic game.

But these are MY opinions. I suppose they make me stupid too.

Dale

[angrybowen]

From the AOM forum this morning by Sarxis.

Man, I forgot how much fun this game is! I hadn't been playing too regularly up until recently because in my last game of AoMII, Attilla had done me much harm; I had all but given up on that game, and CIV in general for that matter.

But because I didn't want to just quit, I finally fought through to the inevitable defeat. After that, I did a fresh install of CTP2 for AoMIII, and now I am having a blast!

A question... stan, smithldoo, and angrybowen...why did you get civ4?

Well in this regard I am lucky. Stan lent me his Civ 4 and saved me the money. In debt to stan. I tried it because I felt it was appropriate to give it a try before I went over the top with my criticism. I tried to approach it with "an open mind" as you and Hex suggested. I now have neither civ 4 or the laptop I borrowed to play it.

Point 2: PC performance CTP2 vs Civ4

by Dale.

You got that wrong Dale. Most people pointed out that they could play any major strategy game that came out last year without a problem, apart from civ 4. That was my MAIN gripe and a lot of others. I could do a grand campaign in RTW no problems, while Civ would not even load ON THE SAME COMPUTER. Hex himself said he would not pay to upgrade a computer to play one game.

4 games on settler?

by Dale.

4 games on 3rd highest difficulty level. I don't know why but IAS was the easiest and quickest way to victory in the 2 games where I went that way. The more aggressive I was, the less the ai troubled me. Far too easy. It was more of a mindless grind to vistory than the vanilla ctp2 ai as far as I could see. The only decision was whetehr to stomp everything on the map closkwise or anti clockwise.

And BTW, from your comments I get the impression that you didn't "really" play Civ4 for what it is.

by Dale.

Well mate, I simply did what I needed to break the game ASAP. IAS. Maybe you can tell us what civ 4 "is".

most of the barb spawnings are on the human's borders. This is to limit the human.

by Dale.

Wrong, the main spawn is distributed evenly over the land area of the map. As the human is better at war, he cleans up the barbs pretty well if properly prepared. In virtually every game now for me, the barbs cause more damage to the ai than the human. In civ 4 I was clearly the target of the main barb activity in every game. My scout units showed there were always more barbs heading for me than my 2 neighbours, during the barb spawn period (starting 800BC I think). In AOM, the wastelands gradually develop into a Barb haven. If you are near that, you have to take care of it, if not, then watch as the barbs chew up some one else. I have seen even Attila who does spawn on the human border, go off and attack some one else because I happened to have good defences in that area. That has happened more than once.

Instead of limiting a human, the design should've been to promote the AI.

by Dale.

We had this debate before. There are a number of big advantages for the human in AOM as well as checkers. Eventually if you play the game right, those advantages outweigh the checkers and your empire actually progresses further and faster. if not, then you will be held back. There is a system of interlocking features built round wonder units, surrender of ai, but mainly the disaster/bonus code that force the human to plan and manage or stagnate. In AOM III the AI is getting close to human responses IMHO if you don't subscribe to the theory that an AI should do what I want because I think it should. Once you get to a number 1 ranking, the AI is very difficult to deal with, not necessarily at war all the time, but a diplomacy victory is very hard unless you really dominate all the ai. In civ 4, my last game on IAS, I had 3 SOD's on the move all the time and the AI just sat and watched except for the occassional suicide run past my stacks.

In AOM III, by 500 AD, I am doing exactly as it was in history for the main empires, like the franks and the Byzantines. Defending my borders while performing limited and carefully targetted expansion. In Civ 4 I at this time I was un full IAS without a care in the world. It was too easy to just expand exponentially till I got the target of 60% of the map.

Tell me also when a CTP2 AI has EVER performed a successful naval invasion where you **** your pants.

by Dale.

I agree, this is one area where all ctp2 mods fail. Stan did have a code in AOM II but my experience was it never quiet got going. He admitted later it worked in test situations but once a game fully developed, it seemed to be unable to cope. It has been dropped from AOM III.

Listen Dale, the main big difference in AOM is that yes you have to be big to win, but being just big will not get you the win. There are 10-12 ways of getting points and 3 diffeent victory options. Science, Diplomacy and points. You will never conquer the whole world on a reasonable map size with a reasonable number of units.

If you build cities only, you need 150 of size 50+ (nearly impossible and will take forever). You have to do everything to get a win and because it takes a while, you have to do something that is not in Civ (any version) and was never achieved my any empire in history. Work hard to MAINTAIN that empire for an extended period.

In Civ keeping what i conquered was so easy to keep (and un realistic from a historical point of view), it pretty well pushed me into SOD's using IAS. No wrap round for the maps meant I had to defend from one direction only after a while while my SOD's marched on, and even that proved unecessary as the AI did not interfere in 2 games of IAS.

[Dale]

Originally posted by angrybowen
You got that wrong Dale. Most people pointed out that they could play any major strategy game that came out last year without a problem, apart from civ 4. That was my MAIN gripe and a lot of others. I could do a grand campaign in RTW no problems, while Civ would not even load ON THE SAME COMPUTER. Hex himself said he would not pay to upgrade a computer to play one game.

CTP2 was unplayable by a lot of people when it first came out till they either upgraded or waited for the patch.

4 games on 3rd highest difficulty level. I don't know why but IAS was the easiest and quickest way to victory in the 2 games where I went that way. The more aggressive I was, the less the ai troubled me. Far too easy. It was more of a mindless grind to vistory than the vanilla ctp2 ai as far as I could see. The only decision was whetehr to stomp everything on the map closkwise or anti clockwise.

Like I said, try hardest level, raging barbs and 1.61 patch. You do realise in everything but the highest two levels you are only pitted against one militaristic AI. Beginners can win at your level.

Well mate, I simply did what I needed to break the game ASAP. IAS. Maybe you can tell us what civ 4 "is".

See above.

Wrong, the main spawn is distributed evenly over the land area of the map. As the human is better at war, he cleans up the barbs pretty well if properly prepared. In virtually every game now for me, the barbs cause more damage to the ai than the human. In civ 4 I was clearly the target of the main barb activity in every game. My scout units showed there were always more barbs heading for me than my 2 neighbours, during the barb spawn period (starting 800BC I think). In AOM, the wastelands gradually develop into a Barb haven. If you are near that, you have to take care of it, if not, then watch as the barbs chew up some one else. I have seen even Attila who does spawn on the human border, go off and attack some one else because I happened to have good defences in that area. That has happened more than once.

You obviously haven't played Civ4 too much (by your own admission) or you'd know your comment about barbs only targetting the human to be false. The AI knows how to avoid barbs spawning near them, something you'd learn quickly how to do and use.

We had this debate before. There are a number of big advantages for the human in AOM as well as checkers. Eventually if you play the game right, those advantages outweigh the checkers and your empire actually progresses further and faster. if not, then you will be held back. There is a system of interlocking features built round wonder units, surrender of ai, but mainly the disaster/bonus code that force the human to plan and manage or stagnate. In AOM III the AI is getting close to human responses IMHO if you don't subscribe to the theory that an AI should do what I want because I think it should. Once you get to a number 1 ranking, the AI is very difficult to deal with, not necessarily at war all the time, but a diplomacy victory is very hard unless you really dominate all the ai. In civ 4, my last game on IAS, I had 3 SOD's on the move all the time and the AI just sat and watched except for the occassional suicide run past my stacks.

Are the advantages and checks there for the AI as well? No? Then they are limitations on the human. As I said before, human limitations are not the best design. Try using your SOD's against a high level Civ4 AI. You'll be creamed off the map. IAS does not work at the highest two levels of Civ4.

In AOM III, by 500 AD, I am doing exactly as it was in history for the main empires, like the franks and the Byzantines. Defending my borders while performing limited and carefully targetted expansion. In Civ 4 I at this time I was un full IAS without a care in the world. It was too easy to just expand exponentially till I got the target of 60% of the map.

As I've said before about AOM (and you've said it here). AOM directs you down history's path. You get the feeling of being limited to one course of action. Civ4 has the freedom to write your own history, your own course of action. No one can deny that this method is less epic because of that. Sid Meier once wrote, "if there's only one right choice, it's not strategy". This is the feeling AOM gives while playing it, and hence why I don't play it anymore.

I agree, this is one area where all ctp2 mods fail. Stan did have a code in AOM II but my experience was it never quiet got going. He admitted later it worked in test situations but once a game fully developed, it seemed to be unable to cope. It has been dropped from AOM III.

Truely it's a shame the CTP2 AI could not handle this concept. It would've been a major card to play if it could.

Listen Dale, the main big difference in AOM is that yes you have to be big to win, but being just big will not get you the win. There are 10-12 ways of getting points and 3 diffeent victory options. Science, Diplomacy and points. You will never conquer the whole world on a reasonable map size with a reasonable number of units.

Exactly, you MUST be big to win. My point exactly. In Civ4 you can win with 4-6 cities.

If you build cities only, you need 150 of size 50+ (nearly impossible and will take forever). You have to do everything to get a win and because it takes a while, you have to do something that is not in Civ (any version) and was never achieved my any empire in history. Work hard to MAINTAIN that empire for an extended period.

In Civ4 you can specialise your cities to take advantage of combined building bonuses and resources. In CTP2 you just blindly build everything available. With great people it also adds to the city specialisation in Civ4. This adds to the strategy as you decide what sort of city you build. A science city, a production city, etc etc.

In Civ keeping what i conquered was so easy to keep (and un realistic from a historical point of view), it pretty well pushed me into SOD's using IAS. No wrap round for the maps meant I had to defend from one direction only after a while while my SOD's marched on, and even that proved unecessary as the AI did not interfere in 2 games of IAS.

Play at the highest level, latest patch and then say the same thing.

Basically, you have agreed with everything I said. I see no new arguement here except the same old hashed comments from 4-5 years ago. It's a pity CTP2 has not advanced much in the last few years (except AOM). I hope the source code project can revitalise a classic, but I'm doubtfull as more people move to Civ4.

Dale

[Protra3211]

Dale : Been a fan of your work and gald to see you post again in CtP2 forums,
As you know when the code was released to CtP2 there were many good ideas flooding the forums on what could be implemented into the CtP2 engine.
But it was Stan who without the code updates pushed the CtP2 engine to its limits.
But its a fact CtP2 is on its way out as not many copies are left anymore. Not many games have the longevity of Civ2 or Europa Universalis 2 which is still being modded and patched can you believe it.
What do you think abot a CtP2 mod using the Civ4 engine? Your stacking mod for Civ4 is a start .Could bring together many elements of both games and keep in a way the CtP series alive .

[Dale]

Protra:

Thanks mate, appreciated.

As for a CTP2 mod, I've already implemented CTP2's stacked combat, and developed it further into Civ4 in my combat mod (see my sig). As for other concepts? I doubt they'd add anything to the game.

What concepts do you think would work in Civ4?

Dale

[Generaldoktor]

Kind of sad how this is turning out. People who've known each other a long time cutting each other up. Multiple insults for hard-working game designers products, (I know, I'm guilty too.) I intend to continue playing both Civ4 and AOM, but I'm playing AOM III now. Hope to contribute to some "strategy" threads in a positive way, soon. Peace.

[stankarp]

I agree, this is one area where all ctp2 mods fail. Stan did have a code in AOM II but my experience was it never quiet got going. He admitted later it worked in test situations but once a game fully developed, it seemed to be unable to cope. It has been dropped from AOM III.

Unfortunately, the invasion code worked in test situations. I created games with 8 opponents on a 2nd largest map (= to the original CTP2 gigantic map), played it to turn 100 then tested the code. It worked at this point including follow up waves for ai invasions.

But when it got into a full scale game with 11 ai on gigantic map, the code just stopped executing properly, most likely partly blocked frenzy and probably contributed to an increase in instability in AOM II.

Since I dropped it, AOM III has been much more stable.

[stankarp]

CTP2 was unplayable by a lot of people when it first came out till they either upgraded or waited for the patch.

By Dale.

I am curious. I got CTP2 when it came out, had a standard P3, no special graphics card or anything. The game loaded and played fine, EXCEPT that there was a save game bug which stopped it saving properly after about 1000 AD from memory. Think it loaded from autosave OK though. After the patch there was no problem IIRC in so far as the game played and finished OK (i.e., I never analysed whether every PW point was correct or not etc).

I played on line for points in gameleague and most games were OK if they were not too big.

[angrybowen]

Dale, your challenge re Civ 4 is pointless.

I currently have no computer that will run it nor the game. Taking Hex's comment from the AOM forum, no one game is worth upgrading a computer for.

FYI.
1) I have a reasonably new P4, 2.8 gig processor, 1.5 gig ram, 80 gig HD. According to the people who supplied the computer, all specs EQUAL OR EXCEED the recommended specs for Civ 4. I checked with EB and an independant game trader and they said they could not help and said I had to (like everyone else who had trouble and came to them) ring the suppliers 1800 pay as you talk help line and be charged to tell me that my computer is at fault.
2) I bought and played last year RTW, AOE III, BF 1942. The computer also plays without trouble COW, Warcraft etc,etc,etc. All on biggest games and max difficulty. I did not rush in and buy civ 4 because i read about the tech difficulties that people had.
3) I borrowed Civ 4 from Stan and could not get it to start up in any way, shape or form. I borrowed a lap top for 4 weeks and managed to play the better part of 4 games. Perofrmance was unbelievable poor, crashes, slow and so on and so on. The SAME as reported by many, many people in the civ 4 forums. Smithldoo's analogy that playing civ 4 was like dragging a dead sloth through quicksand was perfect for my experience. I am not the only person who has stated publicly that the system specs for civ 4 are obviously understated. I abandoned Civ 4 after 4 basically completed games because it was the most frustrating/boring and annoying experience of my gaming life because of the performance.
4) I got ctp2 the month it came out and put it on my STANDARD issue P3 and it loaded and played fine except for the save game problem some one else referred to. The same computer played AOE, AOE (Kings) and many other games fine.

I am sick of you guys who can play civ 4 implying that in some way it's my fault that civ 4 won't play on my computer. If my computer is good enough to play any other game of the same period, then it should be good enough to play civ 4. Particularly as my professional advice is that it equals or exceeds the recommended specs for Civ 4.

FYI, I have not tried to (as put by one sarcastic ****hole civ player at the civ 4 forum), put a LP in a CD player and expected it to run. I put a cd in a cd player that plays every other cd I have bought and only one CD won't play, the civ 4 one.

[BureauBert]

Gentlemen,

First of all I want to state clearly that I don't "hate" Civ3 or Civ4, I just have my personal preferences like anyone else. It makes sense to discuss different game concepts, but IMHO it' doesn't make much sense to blame each other for liking this or that concept.

That said, I have to admit that I like playing a strategy game on a large scale: A *real* gigantic map with a variety of reasonably sized nations helps a lot in making me feel like there is a world worth being explored / conquered / dominated / whatever . I also like "big" empires with many well defended cities that cannot be easily conquered, and I like waging war with lots of armies, transports of all sorts, bombers etc ... In that sense I prefer "epic" strategy games. But I also prefer not having to put too much effort into micromanagement for my cities and armies and I can't think of a better way to achieve this than CTP2's basic concepts of "mayors" for cities and stacked armies/stacked combat (btw I always liked the way you can easily switch mayors on and off in CTP2). Moving many armies doesn't annoy me as long as they are stacked, I can give them targets and they keep moving toward their targets as long as there's a path, and specially as long as I don't need to care for each unit during each combat. I also prefer a game that is focused on a strategic perspective in the way the world is displayed on the screen.

I tried Civ3 some years ago and abandoned it mainly because the maps were too small, there was no stacked combat, no public works -- and no real moddability.

I bought Civ4 immediately upon release (in Vienna, Europe) because some estimated members of the CTP2 community had posted promising pre-/reviews and I noticed they were somehow involved in beta-testing / scenario development / development of modding features. However I am unable to run the game on my pc (with and without 1.61 patch) in any reasonable way on any reasonably sized map without any unreasonable lags / crashes / oddities and reasonably I won't buy any piece of additional hardware or spend some hours / days fine-tuning some hidden settings of my operating system etc. just for being able to play a game on a pc that otherwise works perfectly with all kinds of software (and usually I prefer sticking with rule no. 1: never change a running system). Of course I could have waited some weeks, read the "bug reports" and "technical suppport" threads over at the other forums, and after that I could have resisted buying the game -- doing it the other way round was indeed a little bit unsmart, but it doesen't hurt me too much since I have always been an untalented consumer and by the time you get used to it .
Just to make it clear: If a 1.7x patch would make the game run on my pc or I would eventually buy a new one (possibly in some years) I would be totally willing to give Civ4 a new try -- maybe I could then even play it on bigger maps and maybe I could then enjoy it's modding capabilites (including Dale's stacked combat mod). In this case I would certainly take a closer look at python, xml etc. and possibly even put my never-ending modding efforts into Civ4 instead of CTP2. If 3-d graphics wouldn't hurt performance too much I would possibly even get used to the way the world is displayed .
In the meantime I felicitate everyone who is able to play and mod and thus enjoy Civ4!

CTP2 used to be far from perfect "out of the box", we all know that, but it's modding capabilities are still amazing to me (working with them requires some kind of sporty attitude though ). Fortunately it being an old game it's system requirements are moderate, which not only means that it can be played at all on any ordinary "office" pc. It also means that having a better, faster pc with more ram noticeably improves game performance. That's technical progress as I like it . The Apolyton Edition adds some valuable modding features and I am still confident it's final version will perform even much better than the original version. And I am also confident that CTP2 will still be available on cd in the next years.

As for AoM: I think it's really an impressive game and it's amazing what Stankarp was able to achieve using the original game engine with it's modding features. Anyway I am glad there obviously are a lot of people who enjoy AoM and got somehow addicted to it . It doesn't really meet my personal taste because of it's "scenario like" features like dynasty / kings, barb spawn / attila's horde, dark ages and diverse catastrophic events I need to deal with in the early game. But that's merely a matter of personal taste and I do acknowledge that all these features have a game balancing function within the concept of AoM -- why should I blame anyone for liking this concept or even Stankarp for having put a lot of effort in designing this concept? Likewise, I don't blame anyone for enjoying Civ4, though I do blame Firaxis a little bit because me being an untalented consumer contributed to their profit and I know they know what they are doing (we also knew that Activision knew what they were doing, didn't we?).

[Dale]

To those complaining about the game not running on their PC:

If you have to "close 10 things in the background to get it to run" you have too much **** running in your system tray. You don't need it! Believe me, I'm an IT guru and all that crap you "have to install" is just by fear marketting. Most of its useless.

Of all the people I've helped getting the game to run on their PC, all of them but one turned out to be crap running in the background. Not hardware. The one was due to them having a geforce 2 which doesn't support T & L. No modern 3D game will run on that.

I've had Civ4 running on a P3 800 with 256 meg RAM. Trust me, it's not hardware stopping you, its crap you've loaded. If you can get your PC to Melbourne, I'll prove it!

Also, don't bother going to Backyard Bob's Discount PC store or EB. They know as much as dirt about how to configure/load a PC properly in my experience.

As for crashes and poor performance, nearly no one has those issues (and 99% of the original people having problems are now happily running Civ4) with the latest patch.

But essentially this is none of my problem. If you folks are too blinkered to even bother trying Civ4 with the latest patches, and making sure no crap is running on your PC, it's your problem. Just don't drag Firaxis's name through the mud. It's not their fault. The game they produced runs well on most <2 year old PC's. It even runs well on a lot of PC's that don't meet spec.

This arguement has become like the 5 year old child 20 minutes after the arguement finishes going "oh and what about this........?" This is what I'm talking about when I said the CTP2 community is so anti-civ now that no one wants to help you, because all we get is negativity. Go have a cry in your soup.

Dale

[Dale]

I've just re-read the last page worth of comments. All I can see is the same old story I've been seeing here and (especially) at the AOM website I've been seeing since november last year.

A number of civers either trying to help, or defending their game against negative comments being faced with the same sob story that a couple of people couldn't get civ4 to run on their PC for whatever reason before the patchs and won't even bother exploring civ4's features. It truelly is pathetic.

No one has even tried to address any of the major points raised by the civers, only to rehash the same things over and over by now redundant issues (due to the patches).

I'm sorry guys, but if you won't help us by trying our suggestions, then all help will be withdrawn and you folks can happily go about your CTP2 playing. Personally, while CTP2 is a classic, and I have many fond memories of the game, I've moved on. AOM is not for me as I've pointed out above. I prefer to choose my history rather than be directed through history. I also don't enjoy the mass-epic feel for the same reasons Hex put forward.

Civ4 is a worthy successor to both the civ and CTP lines. I'm glad I've been their to add my small piece of influence to the game. I'm also glad I've been their to help out a lot of folks and then enjoying reading their reactions and comments once into the game. But that's me.

Dale

[angrybowen]

Thanks Dale, you again carefully avoid the technical issue.

Firstly BF 1942 is a MODERN 3d first person shooter game. Secondly the issue is that Civ 4 is the ONLY, repeat ONLY and I say again so you get it through your head, ONLY game I cannot get to play. I have fps, rts (AOE clones ) coming out my ears, 3d car racing game, photo shop, and 100 + applications. Only ONE, repeat ONE, repeat ONE does not play, CIV 4. I ran only what XP loads in the background, never even dared try running music in the background, because of the performance. IIRC hex described this issue as one of the biggest mistakes in game history or something to that effect. BureauBert also seems to have an issue.

I repeat FYI so it is clear, I went through quiet a bit to play civ 4 so I could at least give some informed comment. Obviously, far more effort that Hex did with AOM. I persevered to the point of blood pressure rising irritation and frustration to at least complete enough games to make an overall assessment. But I did not base my criticism on performance only, I based it on completing games as well.

A question Dale, are you one of the alledged "civ 4 beta testers" who beat AOM and moved on (Hex)? I would love to know your winning score and time as a matter of interest. I saw your "Dale's first game" thread at the AOM forum and noted it was 8 opponents on the gigantic map (Stan's recommended setting for beginners) and that you stopped posting before you had even met an AI. Be honest, did you complete that or any game of AOM??? Vel played one AOM up to a certain point then claimed the game crashed and would not continue fairly early on (something that never happened with me in AOM I ever). That was also only 8 opponents IIRC on the gigantic map.

[Generaldoktor]

I'm still playing Civ4 and exploring its features, but that doesn't mean I won't continue to take a swipe at the arrogant presumption by the designers that everyone would update PC's or software components just to play their monster. I looked at my background programs and I use them; for multi-media, for exhaustive web-surfing without fear of viruses, worms or spyware; to unload junk out of the system after programs like Civ4 load it up or jam it up; to keep in touch with Dell, Microsoft, Norton so I know when system-killer stuff is coming out new; and yeah, I sometimes like to watch new gossip video about Lindsey Lohan and know when that's available, because she looks and talks like my ex-girlfriend, who was half my age. I'm not apologizing; and every other program, including games I'm interested in, runs fine, even with this cr-p. Oh, and that definitely includes AOM/CTP. Oh and I'm definitely not seeking system tuners out of Australia. I'm in Florida, friends and I'd be a little surprised if they even export to the "allies" the same PC's we have here.

[Dale]

angrybowmen:

I believe that my post two above yours adequetly covers "getting the game to run". Try the latest patches, and if it still doesn't work, tell me what's running in the background (print out the processes tab from task manager), let me know your hardware (send me your DXDiag output) and I'll help. Until then, don't bother mentioning hardware problems again.

Yes, I was one of those alledged "civ 4 beta testers" who beat AOM and moved on. Sorry, don't have the save or score anymore as I didn't load CTP2 on this new computer. But I did win by conquest, and let me say, that's where I knew it wasn't for me as after conquering city 40 it was all the same.

Generadoktor:

But here's the thing, you DONT need to upgrade hardware. As for upgrading software components you should be upgrading them as a matter of course. Windows update, virus scanner, etc. Oh, and while you're at it, upgrade your DirectX and hardware drivers. Everyone should do this!

You, my friend, seem to be the target of the "fear marketting". Of all the virus, worm or spyware programs out there "that you MUST load", I run Norton internet suite, and windows defender. That's it.

BTW, we do get the same PC's that you get, with a different power supply as our voltage is higher. But all PC's come from Singapore, and when an order comes in they slap the correct power supply in it and bang the appropriate sticker on it, and ship it. IBM, Dell, HP, Compaq all come from Singapore.

Dale