I'm having some issues...need some help.

Soon, soon, my precious... soon it will be mine...

I wouldn't get too excited yet. It's one hell of a buggy game. I keep crashing to desktop without warning all the friggin' time. It's really annoying.

Apparently there are fan written patches that help, but so far the only "official" firaxis patch doesn't fix the issues I (and MANY others) are having.

Grrr...I love the game, but crashing every 30 minutes or so is very, very frustrating.

Where the Christmas rush is concerned, the marketers always beat out the programmers in the release date vs. remaining bugs battle.... I'm sure it'll all be ironed out soon.

I expect to be getting it for Christmas.

They've released two patches already and the dang thing still continues to "CTD".

I have been playing it since it came out with no issues. Even without the patches, the game was running fine.

I read somewhere that it is unstable on the latest GeForce graphics cards. I use an old Geforce 5200 and it works great.

Before the patches it was nearly unplayable. Soooooo freakin' slow, and would often just freeze up.

Since getting the game, I've upgraded to 1GB of Kingston HyperX RAM, and got a new video card (Radeon 9600Pro, with 256Mb of memory) I've got far more than the recommended specs for the game.

With all that, upgraded RAM, upgraded vidya card, and the latest patch, still crap.

Wasn't it your machine that did so well in the avoid the blocks by moving the little dot around game because of your slow computer Spiff? Is this a different machine you are playing Civ from?

What are the specs for the game?

That's very funny. That block game was impossibly difficult. Maybe Spiff needs a new computer for Christmas.

I just found the specs. It looks like at least at Raedon 7500 card is needed and mine is a 7200. I'll likely need a new video card if I am going to play. Any recomendations for a good card that won't break the bank?

Here's a good place to look at:

http://www.tomshardware.com/graphics/index.html

Hope this helps.

The crappy PIII that I use is my PC here at work.

I just bought this, and am quite happy with it. It's not the latest and greatest, but it's quite fast, and has 256Mb of memory for under $80!

I'm looking at this one, but it is not in stock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102619

x800 with 256MB for $170. Any other suggestions on a place to get it for a good price that might have it in stock. I'd prefer to have it by Monday, so I can try out the game.

Link

This one is slightly more expensive, but just made it back into stock, so I ordered it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102608

Radeon x800 GTO AGP 256MB

That should keep me going until it is time for a new PC in a couple of years with PCI-X

I doubt that you're getting a PCI-X pc... and you certainly wouldn't want to run video off of that bus. Thank the industry for more confusing language-what you're looking at is PCI Extreme (PCIe).

Anyway, i'll stick with my 6800 Ultra for the time being.

I'm seeing it referred to as PCI Express everywhere...my X was short for that.

Either way, it will be a couple of years until I get a new system with that bus, at which time I will likely get a monitor that handles a DVI connection as well, since they are becoming more common too. I didn't realize how much I've been falling behind with all this stuff. I don't pay as much attention to the desktop side of things as I used to.

There's another standard called PCI-X, which is double the speed of standard PCI (theoretically), but PCIe can be much faster than that. Sorry, just being my usual pedantic self.

I did in fact get the game for Christmas. It has been working fine on my old unsupported video card on low settings for graphics without any crashes. There is a new patch that just came out on 12/23, so that might help Spiff. The new card should be arriving soon, so I'll get to compare low to high modes

I played my first full game last night. I was trying to do it without much in the way of military. I was doing great until there were about 50 turns left and the computers army came in and destroyed me. So much for not having military build up. I assume that is SOP for the computer if it is losing towards the end.

Durn. I got WoW instead of Civ4. You guys will probably never see me again, as I am sucked into what is possibly the most addictive game ever. According to what I've read, at least.

I know that I would love WoW, but I refuse to buy it because I also know that I would become hopelessly addicted. I'd have to be able to quit work and have a wife that didn't mind seeing me for weeks at a time if I started playing that. I was addicted enough to MUD's for a while during college, this just seems like the next step up from that....more complex and with graphics. I'd be doomed.

Mwahahaha. Give in to the dark side Ken. You know you play too much WoW when you tell your spouse/SO "Not tonight honey, we are going on an Molten Core run."

If you have not yet, create one character of each gender and race and make them /dance and tell jokes /silly. The gnomes are just perverse.

I'm going back to work work work now.

-jr

Roger is a WoW nut. I rarely see him any more.

I really enjoyed the game, but I don't game enough to make paying a monthly fee sensible.

btw...that new patch 1.52 fixed my bugs.

Good to know. So how do you like the game now?

I loved it before, it was just frustrating for it to keep crashing!

It really is the best Civ yet. I'm currently deep into a large map world with six other Civs. I'm far and away in the lead, but can't seem to win that darn diplomatic victory!

BTW...barbarians are a major beeatch in Civ4. They make life extremely difficult early on.

Great. I never managed to win on anything higher than Chieftan in Civ III (or survive, for that matter)... Guess I'm in for it.

yeah...Civ4 is quite a bit more difficult than Civ3 was.

Relationships with your neighbors is another very significant change. It really matters now.

I used to always play as a total peacenick, rarely built any troops. You can't do that now. Barbarians don't just pillage your cities - they take them!

The option of turning barbarians off is still available (thank god!) I'd recommend playing a few games with the barbarians off first. Get used to the game first. It's really tough to figure out all the new stuff when you're battling barbarians constantly.

You can't just make them sedentary any more?

Oh, the neighbor thing mattered in Civ 3 a bit; after I start breaking alliances to invade places, no one trades with me nicely any more. Imagine that...

It's a HUGE part of Civ4.

Other nations don't seem to just invade you willy nilly anymore though. That's a nice improvement. At least now you know why.

With every major Civ release they add so much more depth to the game. I'm already wondering what Civ5 could be like!

You guys might just convince me to neglect my wife and kids and go buy this game....

Please stop it now.

I've only made it through one full game, but I did get invaded for no reason other then I probably looked weak to the computer since I hadn't built up an army and I was in the lead with 50 turns to go.

I have 100 turns to go in my current game. There were 5 civs, but two of them were at war so I helped one of them out (and got two cities on a new continent out of the deal), so now there are 4 of us left. I am in the lead, but am not sure how it will play out. I won't have a chance to play any more until Monday. My new video card did arrive however, so I got it plugged in and briefly loaded up the game to try it with the high video settings. It is not as much a difference as I thought it would be, but it is probably one of those things were if I play on high for a while and then go back to low I will really notice.

I should be getting my copy tommorow. I usually play the game as a Republic, but I am toying with the idea of a Communist gov't now with really high taxes. Has anyone tried this yet? How would that affect cultural achievement?

Wow, Republic? I've found those to be totally useless. I hold Monarchy until i can get Democracy, then swap between that and Communism depending on whether I'm at peace or at war.

Notably, I spend most of my time as a Communist...

I found that the citizens always revolt when I go Democracy, so I usually go no further than Republic. I find that my civs stay wealthier and advance faster under Republics than any other government. Of course, I usually try to avoid wars (I always build the Great Wall wonder so other civs stop demanding tribute) which makes Republic a great fit because it is hard to declare war. When I get that nukin' feeling, though. I usally revert back to Monarchy.

It seems like the last one on each list is the best in Civ4. They revolt regardless now when you change, but it only lasts for a turn (at least so far).

That was the way it was in Civ3 if you were a religious society. I always play (ed?) as Japan.

Samurai kick butt. I wonder if they still hold what seems like an unfair advantage in Civ4, too.

I remember having my democracies go back into anarchy after six straight turns of civil unrest in all the Civ versions I have played. The more freedom you give, the more the citizens whine That's why I usually stop at Republic.

I thought I'd bring this one back since I am in the middle of a game and waiting to get done work to go home and play some more

How's everyone doing with it? I am playing at Prince level currently. I'm the French this time and have Montezuma on one side and one of the Chinese guys on the other. They take turns attacking me, but fortunately my army has been better so far. However, I do have one problem that seems to reoccur quite often for me. Whether it is from being attacked and taking over cities, or just overexpansion early, my maintenence costs get way high and my tech development has to go down to 30% or so to keep from running out of money. I'd really be stuck without the bonuses from taking over cities. I did just get the courthouse tech and am starting to build them everywhere, which should help, but I usually seem to him this early-mid game lull where I can't keep my tech spending high because of a lack of gold. Anyone else find this and a good solution for it. In this case, all I can think of is to raze cities instead of occupy them, but I hate to waste a good city like that, unless it is just in a bad spot.

Huge armies are REALLY expensive. I typically play like the peacenik I am. I'm very nice to everyone and just build cities early on as fast as possible. Then I let my culture take over neighboring cities. If I win, it's usually a diplomatic victory through the U.N.

I played the heck out of that game when it first came out... talking, get home from work, play Civ4, go to bed, repeat.

I had several friends that played it too so we starting playing it in multiplayer and let me just say how awesome that was. Vs each other was fun but actually had more fun when we did a human vs AI setup. Total blast.

Basically I canceled my EQ2 subscription for Civ4 and burned myself out on that so I'm trying WoW now.

Roger has dragged me into WoW as well.

Welcome to the addiction.

MMO's have a bad tendancy to do that... I played lil over 4 years in EQlive (EverQuest) then moved on to EQ2 for a year. Mix in other "MMO's" like Planetside, EVE Online, SWG.

Now I'm a lil excited for Vanguard.

I've stayed away from the MMO's. As much as I would love to play WoW, I know I would get so hooked that it would comsume my every free moment, and even some free moments that I didn't really have would get stolen by it.