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Veteran Civ Players

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Sad to say I've not had a life since I started playing "Civilization" in the original DOS version on a 486 processor(it played better in the Mac7). Civ(1) merely consumed 4-6 hours per game. Civ II cost twice that and Civ three could run 40 hours plus (not counting the time spent saving, not getting suitable results and reloading. The game racks my mind, gives me nightmares and makes me wake in the night to replay a situation. It's addicting especially if you play while self-medicating.

Civ IV reminds me of the problems when CivII was released a year prior to its platform, Win95. Civ has always been a video hog and CivII would spend 30 minutes rewriting your video drivers every time it launched (a problem that disappeared under 95). I've experienced the crashes and seen written the justifiable exasperation of loading the game. On the horn busting the chops of Nvidia, 2kand others I found it isn't hardware it's the software. Regardless of the sophistication of the video if its driver doesn't date to 2005 the game will only run so long. Typically it willgo black in "Wonder" movies. Not even Nvidea had newer drivers for its GeForce platform so the only solution was a new video card with new drivers which was cheaper to buy with a new computer....which I got. The game nolonger crashes but the software still has some problems. Changing platform I found some curious changes in turn sequence I can't explain nor deride.

Unlike earlier versions this guy has a command que that's problematic. It wouldn't be if the program wasn't so clunky. Earlier versions waited only on your input. Here we wait for the game to catch up. Later in the game as units and cities accumulate and populate memory it gets slower and slower and slower! Considering a saved game runs about 300k there seems no excuse. I had thought it was a conspiracy as both Civ II and III had AI cheats but I've won games and I can't imagine any game writer putting in deliberate aggravations as we see here. The game is slow and inexplicably goes inert while your frustrated command entries are remembered and inappropriately applied when the game comes back....except for the turn ending 'ENTER'.

Zoom is another frustration. Hot key entries of previous versions don't seem to exist. There's a 'world view' button in the display but the scroll wheel is the principal control. No view seems to give the proper info without a tweek from the scroll wheel and the game resets the the zoom level with each 'camera' move. We have a global view (new but of marginal value) and a unit level suitable for animations for some reason cant 45 degrees. Actually playing the game requires intermediate ranges that are not easy to access given the delayed response. Moreover the unit animations, the Wonder videos, in fact all the graphic 'wonder' of CivIV like earlier versions if seen once are seen enough and seriously slow play. Unlike earlier versions there's no way to shut them off or 'space' through them. The 4 minute intro video on game load is a case in point.

I still can't find what I'm looking for in the city screens but that could be my fault.

I've downloaded the 11/27 patch and haven't noticed any difference.

All the downsides that come to me have been mentioned so I'l move onto the new and the different.

In CivIII the later part of the game consumed the player's time with city management and pollution control. Here we've returned to a simpler where all those CivIII introductions are gone. There's no pollution squares (except for nuked squares) and cities nolonger go 'unrest' (which CivIII had a bad habit of not reporting) and tossing your government into collapse. In short, CivIV eliminates all the disagreable elements CivIII brought forward.

Not as powerful as CivII, Spies have made a comeback and are useful. The diplomacy functions are greatly improved. Workers/engineers are restored to their 2move (though put on orders they always park themselves in the capital). The implacable corruption function of CivIII can be ameliorated by 'civ' status and city buildings or 'national' wonders. Air units have a bite lost in CivIII. Still, a Spearman(6) kills an attacking tank(26)....go figure.

CivIV introduces 'civ' status, religion, unit promotions and the broadened tech' tree all giving wider range to game play. Many are marginal but add variety. The game plays quicker (clunky program to be corrected), there's less distraction but I haven't learned how to turn off the all-too-easy space race.

CivII was won by the first player to get Howitzers. CivIII required constant saving to overcome poor battle outcomes and the arbitrary city revolt. Here the fascination is learning. The odds of winning seem lower but the achievement feels that much greater...especially as I've yet to figure how some of it works.

Don't play on HUGE setting

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 10
Date: November 24, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I normally play CIV games on the largest setting but on my 3 yr old P4 2.4 gig machine with 512Meg RAM and 128MB ATI card, it was basically unplayable on the HUGE setting. It took 5 minutes to load and at the later turns it slowed to less than a crawl, but it never crashed. Of course, after I exited I had to reboot my machine due to memory leakage. However, when I changed to LARGE from HUGE it ran much better. Still a little slow at later turns but not so much that it was unplayable.

Since my machine was 3 years old, I bought a new one just for Civ 4 - P4 3.4 gig with 4gig of RAM and 256MB ATI card. At first I was delighted since the HUGE setting ran fine with no memory leakage issues. However, as I got to the later turns it started to noticeably slow down. Once you develop all your squares and each one is running an animation it gets tough for even a new machine with maxed memory to run. I have to agree with a previous poster who said that strategy games should not have to have so much animation. There are a lot of things to love about the new Civ 4, but they put too much emphasis on the "look" rather than the playability.

Unplayable due to bugs

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 28 / 45
Date: October 30, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have two very different PC setups, one a commercial build (Gateway) and the other a more high-end custom-built gaming/video rendering PC. I can't run the game at all on the high-end machine, and it crashes constantly on the other.

I was very excited when the package arrived yesterday, but it's already shelved until the first patch. It had better be big...

Edit: After tinkering heavily with my video and caching settings, I've been able to play several rounds between crashes. The graphics are an improvement over Civ3, and I'm rebooting the system and firing it up again after a crash (that old *one more turn* syndrome is creeping back). The variety of units, resources, and buildings adds a lot to the familiarities of the game from previous Civ games. I'm hoping I'll soon be able to run the game without crashes, because what I have been able to see when it runs looks great.

One odd problem I'm having is that I'm sometimes having to click my start icon three or four times before it actually begins to run. I've never encountered that before.

I'm upgrading my rating, but still not as high as it would be if the game ran without errors.

Disappointing Game Play

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 17
Date: November 13, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I love Civilization. I've been playing the game since it's first release. I was hoping, however, that the slowness of the engine would be resolved. It hasn't. Molassas in January in the Artic would run faster.

In addition, there were issues with my video card. I have a GeForce FX 5700 and experienced the video issues described with ATI cards. I would think that QA at the developers would have resolved these issues before release. Indeed, I have to restart my computer after playing the game. This seems excessive.

I cannot recommend this game until these issues are addressed.

A ton of fun... when you can play it.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 26 / 41
Date: October 31, 2005
Author: Amazon User

The game itself is a lot of fun; I think the rest of the reviews have covered that very well.

I'm running it on a two-year-old Presario with a new, midrange GeForce video card and 1.5 GB of memory. The game's a little sluggish even on the "low" graphics setting, especially when scrolling around the map. This is a little bit annoying, but doesn't affect gameplay that much.

Unfortunately, the game crashes CONSTANTLY after the world starts filling up with cities. The crashes are pretty bad--dumped back to Windows, which chugs and chugs for several minutes as it tries to clean up Civ's mess. On my machine, I'm lucky if I can play three turns in a row after 1850 or so without having to restart the game.

A couple of minor irritations with my copy of the presell edition:
The two CDs are labeled DISC 1 - INSTALL and DISC 2 - PLAY, but you actually have to have the INSTALL disc in, not the PLAY disc, when you start the game.
Also, the giant, often very useful technology-tree chart that came with my (English-language) edition of the game is printed entirely in French.

Awsome game, frustrating bugs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 15 / 19
Date: December 08, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I've yet to finish a game, haivng many of the technical issues described above. My system is well above the recommended level and yet I get crashes, usually toward the end of the game.

Tweaking my system (big swap file etc.) has improved the situation a bit, but this game does not like to be played for extended periods of time and the longer a game goes on (even if you save and restart) the worse the situation gets. If you go past the time victory point the game becomes unplayable.

Don't buy as an X-mas gift, you'll likey disapoint the recipient.

Civ 4 - A Complete Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 37
Date: November 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game is one absolute, unmitigated catastrophe. It's a total mess and a waste of $50. Don't believe the other reviews--they're probably written by the developers. I have been a huge Civ fan since 1992, and trust me, if you're a true blue Civ fan--or even if you're not--this game will disappoint you. Why? Where do I begin...

First, the game was, without a doubt, not ready for publication. It's completely riddled with bugs, typos, missing graphics, and broken help file links. Let's put it this way--the game comes with two CDs, and they're mislabeled! One says "Install" the other says "Play" but they're reversed! The play CD is the install CD and vice versa. Don't believe it? Firaxis has admitted it. So right when you take the game out of the box things start off bad.

Then there's the issue of getting the game to play. Probably half the people who've purchased it can't get it to play. Civ forums have literally thousands of posts from people looking for help. Firaxis support is nonexistant. They've stopped answering the phones and answering email. I have three top-of-the-line computers, and the game will play on only one of them.

Then, if you get the game to play, you'll wish you hadn't. First, the game makers tried to wow their audience with a "rich, interactive" 3D world that ranks right up there with, oh, Warcraft 3. The graphics demand a high-end video card but are completely ho-hum. What's worse is the graphics make the game play "floaty". Remember how Pac Man in the Atari version of Pac Man kind of floated through the maze? That's what this game reminds me of. You don't have precise control of the game camera. Move your mouse slightly to the left, and the game starts to scroll to the left...slightly to the right, to the right. If you scroll your mouse up to click on the menus, the camera scrolls way to the top of the map all of a sudden so your looking on the polar cap!

What's more, if you've gotten your fill of Civ 3, this game will not do anything to renew the franchise for you. Same game. Same gameplay--except slower and harder to control. They threw in a couple new civs, a couple new techs, a couple new ways to govern, and that's it. Basically a mod to Civ 3 with crappy supposed-to-be-state-of-the-art-but-not graphics.

Oh did I mention the animals? You know in Warcraft 3 or Age of Empires how you have wandering animals? Now you have them in Civ. They serve absolutely no purpose but to kill your scouts that you've set the auto-explore. And of course, the scouts who are auto-exploring do nothing to avoid them. They just walk up on them and get killed. Hurray! Now I have to build another scout and waste another 8 turns! What a great way to speed up the game!

The interface is junk, too. Gone are the cool, clear, bright dialog boxes with your friendly advisors popping up to tell you you've discovered a new tech or that your treasury is running low. Now the game throws up a dark dialog box that covers up almost the entire screen with the name of the tech you discovered at the top, the stuff that tech opens up to you at bottom, and a bunch of wasted space in between. Oh! And Leonard Nimoy reads some totally irrelevant quote from the Bible or the Illiad that's somehow related to the tech you've discovered. DUMB!

Oh, and then they have these superfluous cut scenes of wonders getting built. You build a wonder, and the game interrupts the action to try to show you a cheesy little movie of the pyramids being built. Uh, hello? Cut scenes make sense in a game with a story, but not a turn based game!

Beyond the bugs, hangups, crashes, pointlessly bloated graphics, frustrating interface, broken links in the Civilopedia, opponent leaders who are nothing more than eyes and teeth (yes, you read that right--the leaders don't have faces on many systems--just eyes and teeth), mislabeled CDs, absent tech support, and slow, floaty gameplay, what you're left with isn't even a fun game. It's a bore. It's totally slow. In Civ3 I often deliberately turned off animations to get on with the action and strategy. In Civ4, the whole thing hinges on the stupid animations, and as a result, the game just drags.

In short, this game has a completely amateurish, unfinished feel to it. It's worthless. Nothing redeeming about it except, maybe, the manual. On a scale from 1 to 10, I'd give this game a 0. Don't buy it--trust me.

Abysmal

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 16 / 21
Date: November 07, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I pre-ordered this game like many other people. When I found it on my doorstep I was so excited to install and lpay the game! I got it installed after a couple minor glitches and started to play. I should mention, I have a fairly high end gaming machine. Even with graphics set to their lowest settings the graphics lag so bad I can hardly move the mouse. In addition, the game randomly crashes to desktop! There are massive memory leaks, after 15 minutes of trying to play, my page file was at over 2.4 Gigs and cimbing.

This game should not have been released as it is. Does the ability of the internet to be able to patch games give developers the license to release games that are incomplete and *UNPLAYABLE*?

I thank Firaxis and Take2 for the money I will save from not buying games in the future until they have been proven to work. No more pre-ordering from me.

A nice evolution.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 17 / 23
Date: October 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Well this is an evolution, not a revolution with regard to prior versions. Because it has such a different feel, I think it will take a while to get used to. Obviously the graphics are much nicer with more 3D rendering and sharper animations (fighters flying cover over cities and bomb explosions in particular have improved a lot).

The user interface is improved in a few key ways. There is a lot less mouse clicking required (for example, sending in a wave of bombers over a target has gotten very simple, though strangely it seems careful aiming is no longer required). Also, scrolling across the map and zooming in and out of the "Google Earth" looking world is effortless (roll your mouse wheel forward to zoom in, back to zoom out).

The game play itself is a mixed bag but overall better I think. Certainly the game moves much quicker (it took me about 2 hours to reach the end of my first turn-limited game, and this gave me enough time to develop all technologies including nuclear weapons). I think it may be too quick (though you can--as I always do--play on after victory until everyone else is wiped out). However, what I will never miss in Civ III was the chore of supervising workers. Thank Sid it's over! Just put your workers on auto-improve and forget it; they go ahead and build your roads and railroads, clean up messes, build cottages and barns, etc., all without your having to say "BOO". Another nice change is that trading has become more equitable; no longer do you have to provide silk, diamonds and cash for some incense. Frankly, there's a downside to this: you never grow to despise your enemies the way you used to.

Promoting units and allowing them to specialize is very nice. You can make a modern armor into a siege specialist or a more expert garrison unit, to name only two choices. Each upgrade gives the unit 20-25% more pop in that specialty. Or you can opt to spend promotions on just upgrading the unit's overall capability by 10% per promotion. It may sound too complex but it works well. Another very nice update is the helicopter gunship. It looks great and does a fairly nice job against enemy armor.

Now a few things make me less than thrilled. In last night's debut game, a pikeman killed my tank and a catapult killed my mechanized infantry. Granted both of my units were somewhat weakened already, but there just isn't any circumstance when that could really occur. I really want to see the rock hit the vehicle and bounce off. Maybe a little dent would be a nice touch.
Also, the vital game dialogue (eg., 'enemy spotted near Boston') is very hard to see and disappears too quickly. The added religion stuff is too complex and not interesting enough (convert other civs to your religion and they are more likely to be nice to you. this is done by building missionaries and sending them abroad as well as by some old-fashioned arm-twisting in trade negotiations ['convert to Taoism and I'll join your war']).

Overall, it's a good game and a worthy successor. I think we'll all get used to the new stuff and come to appreciate it more over time. In the end, I don't see too many people putting it away and dusting off their old copy of Civ III.

PS My copy has never locked up.

DO NOT BUY, UNTIL GAME IS FIXED

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 23
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have been playing civilization for years, I enjoy playing it, however CIV IV has so may problems...Firaxis and Sid Meier should be ashamed of collecting money for a game that does not work...PLEASE check the message boards of fans of the civilation series. I am so dissapointed in this game, knowing how much fun it could be... I am a hard-core gamer for years and play many other games with my premium cpu with a premium graphic card. This game does not work correctly and the developers know it...Myself and many hundreds of gamers have the same problems, (...)They made an update available, that does not address any of the problems that this game has...Truly dissapointing and sad, I only hope I can play this game one day the way I played civilization III. Also, the Tech Support for this game is non-existent. DO NOT BUY, UNTIL GAME IS FIXED... Check the message boards listed above to find out if it ever gets fixed, or if you can get your hard earned money back...DO NOT BUY

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