Civ 4 is being released tomorrow

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-04 07:56pm

I thought they went all python/xml? Well whatever, Civ is known for that, big long games really hurt the system, and I have to start dipping into virtal memory even before things get out of hand (with a 4200rpm HD too). To answer the question, ya, Civ isn't the best coded game on the planet, same problem existed in civ3. However, despite my P-M 1.6ghz, 512 pc2100 ram, 4200rpm hd and radeon 9000 @64mb, I live with the awful late game lag and have a great time, so uh, live with it?

As an aside, the Geforce 4's have a large range, for instance an MX series (which, by the by, is like a four year old low/mid range card) could be giving you problems.

Checklist for Ali_g:
Drivers - Sound and Video, are they 100% up to date?
HD Space - Do you have spare space for the machine to dip into virtual memory, with 512 you definatly are going to be doing so.
Hardware T&L support - Look, I don't know which gf4 you've got, but 64 mb cards really aren't made anymore, so it's entirely possible that it doesn't support Hardware T&L, that may cause game problems. Some folks with integrated cards w/o *hardware* T&L support can play the game, but without terrain (the CPU, as I understand it, does a minimal amount of it, or something so they can still play the game).

http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support.htm - Check here too.

As an aside to everyone. Despite having an "old ATI card" I didn't run into the dreaded bug. Try using http://www.omegadrivers.net/ custom drivers, I'm using cat 5.7 equiv (haven't check if 5.10a works on my lappy, but 5.8,9 kill my refresh rates).

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2005-11-04 07:57pm

InnocentBystander wrote:Because it's a system that works relatively well, and has for over a decade? *shrug*

Hah! No.

Civ 2 was the last one with a real combat system, they actually added stuff to prevent absurdities like that happening, but it got deleted in Civ 3 and 4.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-04 08:15pm

Absurd stuff happens.

Look, let's say you've got some longbow men, level 5 elite, these guys are absolutely the best in the business, they're level 3 city garrison on top of a level of basic training, and first strike. They've been preparing to get attacked for 5 turns in the cultural capital of their empire.
Thats:
75% from garrison, 10% from Combat I, 100% from the city and 25% from being fortified for 5+ turns.
They've got a defensive score of 12, 14 if the city is on a hill. That's a fair fight with Napoleon era Riflemen, GREEN at that. Against WW2 era infantry, they're heavily outclassed, but these are still guys with flak vests, they're not heavily armored, chances are very high they'll win, but they should get bloodied up a bit, and that's not unreasonable, give the circumstances. What about armor? Green armor would be double strength, so unless a bunch of archers manage to catch a tank at unaware from above (say using a building) while the hatch is open, get inside, and maybe do some damage before being taken out by the other tanks (pretty unlikely, but hey, crazy stuff happens, these archers are pretty elite), it shouldn't take any damage. So this is pretty reasonable too don't you think?

Is it unreasonable that specialist top quality units can equal green units three generations above them? I don't think so...
Of course I sorta got a kick out of coming up with reasons why that pikemen just took out my mech inf. in civ3

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2005-11-04 10:10pm

I have stopped playing this game until the patch comes out or I just upgrade my computer. I want to play on a huge map but it slows down despite the fact that I have an Athlon XP 2400, 1GB of PC2100 RAM, plenty of hard drive space, Radeon 9200 SE.

I shouldn't have any slow downs since I barely exceed even the recommended requirements.

I am wondering what the hell was going through 2K to send this game out unfinished and why didn't Atari publish this game?

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-04 10:17pm

It's not unfinished, it just lacks some polish on the back end. To my knowledge, civ is a very popular series so getting it out before the end of the quarter might have been important. Financial troubles could be a driving force too, it's hard to say.

I suspect that if you play smaller maps the problem is not nearly as bad. I'm also willing to bet that if you play it on multiplayer, and nix the AI things will see a pretty big improvement as well.

Enigma · Post by **Enigma** » 2005-11-04 10:27pm

InnocentBystander wrote:It's not unfinished, it just lacks some polish on the back end. To my knowledge, civ is a very popular series so getting it out before the end of the quarter might have been important. Financial troubles could be a driving force too, it's hard to say.

I suspect that if you play smaller maps the problem is not nearly as bad. I'm also willing to bet that if you play it on multiplayer, and nix the AI things will see a pretty big improvement as well.

Yeah but I do not want to play smaller maps. I play on a grand scale. I should not be having trouble playing at a huge scale if I exceed their recommended level.

Why is 2K and not Atari publishing this game?

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-11-04 11:07pm

Enigma wrote:I have stopped playing this game until the patch comes out or I just upgrade my computer. I want to play on a huge map but it slows down despite the fact that I have an Athlon XP 2400, 1GB of PC2100 RAM, plenty of hard drive space, Radeon 9200 SE.

Hah, I have an Athlon XP 1800, 1GB of RAM and an R8500LE. "Reccomended" does not neccessarily mean that you'll be able to max out the game. Still, it'd be nice if the game was faster.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-05 10:10am

phongn wrote:Hah, I have an Athlon XP 1800, 1GB of RAM and an R8500LE. "Reccomended" does not neccessarily mean that you'll be able to max out the game. Still, it'd be nice if the game was faster.

How does it run on that machine? I'm wondering if maybe I should upgrade to a gig of ram and play it on my AthXP 1600 with a 9600pro. My P-M laptop, despite the slower ram and HD and GPU usually wins through with the quite superior processor, but if memory is the issue... hrm.

KHL · Post by **KHL** » 2005-11-05 10:42am

InnocentBystander wrote:Absurd stuff happens.

Look, let's say you've got some longbow men, level 5 elite, these guys are absolutely the best in the business, they're level 3 city garrison on top of a level of basic training, and first strike. They've been preparing to get attacked for 5 turns in the cultural capital of their empire.
Thats:
75% from garrison, 10% from Combat I, 100% from the city and 25% from being fortified for 5+ turns.
They've got a defensive score of 12, 14 if the city is on a hill. That's a fair fight with Napoleon era Riflemen, GREEN at that. Against WW2 era infantry, they're heavily outclassed, but these are still guys with flak vests, they're not heavily armored, chances are very high they'll win, but they should get bloodied up a bit, and that's not unreasonable, give the circumstances. What about armor? Green armor would be double strength, so unless a bunch of archers manage to catch a tank at unaware from above (say using a building) while the hatch is open, get inside, and maybe do some damage before being taken out by the other tanks (pretty unlikely, but hey, crazy stuff happens, these archers are pretty elite), it shouldn't take any damage. So this is pretty reasonable too don't you think?

Is it unreasonable that specialist top quality units can equal green units three generations above them? I don't think so...
Of course I sorta got a kick out of coming up with reasons why that pikemen just took out my mech inf. in civ3

Yeah people look at it as a Battleship getting sunk by a galley and think that the galley won by shear firepower. However, they ignore the possibility that it was in fact the battleship that destroyed itself through some means, such as maybe a misfired shell etc.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-11-05 11:09am

InnocentBystander wrote:How does it run on that machine? I'm wondering if maybe I should upgrade to a gig of ram and play it on my AthXP 1600 with a 9600pro. My P-M laptop, despite the slower ram and HD and GPU usually wins through with the quite superior processor, but if memory is the issue... hrm.

It runs decently. Not incredibly fast in the endgame, but it does run decently

You will want as much RAM as you can, though.

Dahak · Post by **Dahak** » 2005-11-05 11:54am

The only BAD thing to do is seemingly hit F5, the military advisor. Doing this brings my Athlon 64 3400+ with 1 GB RAM to its knees for several dreadful seconds. Everything else runs smoothly for some obscure reason...

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2005-11-05 01:01pm

OK basically I am fucked. I randomly got the game to actually start, but I have only a black terrain which is totally unplayable. Apparently this is a hardware fault - my laptop cannot have its geforce 4 440mx upgraded and so I will probably never be able to play this game!

Civ is not about fancy graphics so it's about addictive gameplay. I feel so pissed off that I need a new system to run it. My parents are talking of buying a new PC for their home but this does me no good being at uni.

At least I only paid £18 for this paperweight.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-11-05 01:40pm

ALI_G wrote:OK basically I am fucked. I randomly got the game to actually start, but I have only a black terrain which is totally unplayable. Apparently this is a hardware fault - my laptop cannot have its geforce 4 440mx upgraded and so I will probably never be able to play this game!

The box said that you needed hardware T&L! Why did you buy it?

Ubiquitous · Post by **Ubiquitous** » 2005-11-05 01:46pm

phongn wrote:
ALI_G wrote:OK basically I am fucked. I randomly got the game to actually start, but I have only a black terrain which is totally unplayable. Apparently this is a hardware fault - my laptop cannot have its geforce 4 440mx upgraded and so I will probably never be able to play this game!
The box said that you needed hardware T&L! Why did you buy it?

Well I read the Help forum over at Apalyton and it says there that my card does support it [as I assumed and backed up by the Nvidia specs for the card] but no one with a geforce 4 mx series card can play the game without the black terrain problem.

I guess the publishers decided to cash in on a few thousand more sales by saying we can play it with a black background ... shame it totally ruins the game.

GeForce 4 MX users are going wild over at the forums. In an act of shere arrogance, not one Fraxis employee has posted at the forums since the game was released - not even to acknowledge that there is a problem, never mind that it is being worked on.

So basically, I have the hardware [albeit not the best, but hey its above the minimum spec] and they lied. They lied that I could play this game so they could get my money. They lied to thousands of other fans like me who bought the game on the day of release before they could be warned about this showstopping issue.

A patch is apparently due in one weeks time. Maybe our problem will be addressed? Not that Fraxis have bothered to tell us... arrogant fucks.

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-05 07:28pm

Chances are a patch will come along to address this issue. It's fairly safe to say that they know of the problem (if you honestly feel they don't, write 2k an email). It's a problem, and I can't see it not being fixed, honestly.
However for the time being, you are kinda boned... it sucks, your options include getting a new computer and waiting.

Dahak wrote:The only BAD thing to do is seemingly hit F5, the military advisor. Doing this brings my Athlon 64 3400+ with 1 GB RAM to its knees for several dreadful seconds. Everything else runs smoothly for some obscure reason...

Oh ya, I avoid the military advisor like the plauge, I'm not even sure what he does at this point.

phongn · Post by **phongn** » 2005-11-05 08:33pm

Civ4 runs fairly well on my AXP 1.53GHz, 1GB, R8500LE machine but endgame turns can take a little while. I observed total memory usage of around 1.1-1.2GB but I didn't notice any swapping.

Unfortunately, both Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar have it out for me, it seems. Once city with one artillery regiment, three infantry regiments and a WW1-era machine gun contingent held off a determined assault by numerous enemy cavalry formations. Afterwards the enemy decided not to take the city by force and begun breaking up, but foolishly split up and were caught by my infantry. Several armored brigades and mechanized infantry brigades were also being formed at this point but were some time off.

My capital, which I had thought secure in the rear, was suddenly attacked by war elephants of all things(!). My shocked infantry regiment was overwhelmed, their weapons unable to take down the elephants quickly enough and the capital was captured

At sea, a pair of destroyer squadrons had forced their way into the Med and proceeded to sink the entire Roman navy and undertake commerce raiding. In addition, my sole battleship patrolled around the coast to ensure that the SLOCs were clear.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-11-05 08:52pm

The AI is bloody evil in this, especially on a crowded continental map. The French and Spaniards both ganged up on my beautiful American utopia and proceeded to steamroll through all my defensess with a series of amphibious landings and vast hordes of tanks and gunship. So, I responded by lobbing a ton of nukes at their cities, to no avail. I was defeated a few turns later.

Keep in mind this was on Noble, and I had a pretty kickass military.

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-11-05 09:59pm

Well, my copy arrived today. So far I've played most of a game on a tiny map without it going wrong.

Unfortunately, I've descovered an incomprehensible bug. For some reason, I can only choose random as my civ. If I try to click on any of the civs, it crashes. Anyone have any idea what's going on there?

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-06 01:27am

Any sort of error messages? My only suggestion would be a reinstall.

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-11-06 07:42am

Nothing inthe error message line. It just doesn't display the civ you click on, frezes and that's it. Can't even ctrl-alt-del after that.

Prozac the Robert · Post by **Prozac the Robert** » 2005-11-06 01:19pm

Hmm, now it works. I don't think I've changed anything except running it in a window, but I doubt that's the explanation.

Anyway, with that out of the way, the game seems to run fine with it set on moderately low graphics. Specs: Dell Latitude laptop with Pentium M 1.3Ghz, 512 Ram, Radeon mobility 9000 graphics card*.

*Haven't run into the dreaded ATI incompatability.

Gameplay wise, it seems interesting enough. Random thoughts below:

Theres a sort of rock-paper-scisors thing going on between different types of units, spearmen get a bonus against cav, cav have a bonus against artilery, artillery do colateral damage to stacks etc.

There's also a nifty feature which tells you the combat odds before you attack, including things like promotion, terain bonuses and promotions. Speaking of which, you can promote units when they win battles. Promotions include +10% in combat, +25% agains specific things, medic, woodsman and some others.

Diplomacy is better as well. You can see a breakdown of why they like/dislike you. It will include things like whether you helped them out in the past, which is cool.

The religion thing plays a big part. If you have a different religion to another nation then your relations will get worse, if you get them to convert to yours then relations will improve. If that get's annoying, you could switch to religious tolerance, which means that you don't have an official religion, but you do get happiness bonuses for all the religions in your cities. I think you get a science bonus for that as well.

One thing that annoys me is that an awful lot of things you took for granted in civ 3 now require tchnology to do. These include trading tech gold and maps and building roads and mines. Hurrying production requires you to have the right civics (kind of like governments, but more in the alpha centauri mode. You have 4 categories and can choose one choice for each one).

Pint0 Xtreme · Post by **Pint0 Xtreme** » 2005-11-06 03:17pm

While I can understand absurdities happen in history such as the 101st repelling the Germans in the Ardennes forest. But the possibility of a spearman killing a tank? You'd think the initial volley of the tank would send the spearmen running in fear for their lives.

Captain tycho · Post by **Captain tycho** » 2005-11-06 03:21pm

Pint0 Xtreme wrote:While I can understand absurdities happen in history such as the 101st repelling the Germans in the Ardennes forest. But the possibility of a spearman killing a tank? You'd think the initial volley of the tank would send the spearmen running in fear for their lives.

Indeed, this part still really bugs me, even though I think the combat system is vastly improved over the old ones (mostly the special abilities units have, like first strike, and the odds indicator.)

InnocentBystander · Post by **InnocentBystander** » 2005-11-06 05:34pm

Prozac the Robert wrote:Hmm, now it works. I don't think I've changed anything except running it in a window, but I doubt that's the explanation.

Anyway, with that out of the way, the game seems to run fine with it set on moderately low graphics. Specs: Dell Latitude laptop with Pentium M 1.3Ghz, 512 Ram, Radeon mobility 9000 graphics card*.

*Haven't run into the dreaded ATI incompatability.

I'm running the same card, except the hardware is overclocked to 9200 levels. Little advice for ya, grab the Omega Catalyst driver, unless by some mircale dell is supporting that card well into it's old age (compaq/HP sure as hell isn't), you should see a major improvement in performance in games, plus support for some more fancy stuff.

You can find them here.
Just a word of caution! My laptop can't use the 5.8 or 5.9 (haven't tried 5.10a) catalyst equiv. drivers, so I use 5.7, which is a HUGE improvement over 4.whatever that compaq provides. When upgrading make sure to have the catalyst uninstaller (on the driver download page on ATI's website, just go through the motions of downloading a driver, any driver, there'll be a link somewhere) and your old drivers on hand incase you run into a problem. If one of these drivers messes up the refresh rate (crazy screen) reboot into safe mode and remove the driver and just try another one.

Rightous Fist Of Heaven · Post by **Rightous Fist Of Heaven** » 2005-11-06 07:56pm

Have been playing it quite a bit and so far I really like what they have done with the combat system. So, I choose Americans, pretty much solely because they get Navy Seals. Some extremely rapid teching gives me a significant lead once I reach modern era and I start hoarding territory. The English are first on my list as they are next to my territory and Elizabeth starts to annoy me.

They have Infantry and some other early to mid Industrial era stuff, I roll in with Modern Armor, Navy Seals and Mech. Infantry. First target is Coventry, population at 20 and has 8 defending units. Initial air assaults with Jet Fighters reduce the defending units to scrap while my arty pounds the city's defense bonus to hell. Seals go in, its a short fight. The Seals kill every Infantry unit and Redcoat the English throw against them with impunity and the city falls under my flag without casualties. Later on in the war I lose a single Seal unit after it has been attacked by 2 knight units, 2 redcoats, 1 infantry and finally it dies to a marine unit.

Combined Arms friggin rock and modern units really have an edge over older units.

Overall, the only complaints I have are the inflexibility of the diplomacy and some graphical and operational issues. Also, the lack of more modern units is a bit disappointing. I liked my Aegis cruisers and nuclear subs in Civ 3.