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Fun game....if it works

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 35
Date: November 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I like others was very excited to get this game. The problems were not welcome though. For starters the play and install discs are labled wrong. My english version of the game contains a tech tree in FRENCH. Those are small problems though. I can't start up the game. It only starts about 1/3 of the time, and once you get into the actual game and want to load a scenario you will have too restart. So needless too say ya can't play half of the scenarios since they need too restart (it just closes out or hangs).

In short this is another fine example of a company shipping a game before it is finished too get the most bang from the buck. On top of that their customer service is a COMPLETE joke. I have sent well over 10 emails all with no response (starting on the day it came out as that's when I bought it). Phone support is a joke as well, IF you can get ahold of someone (they put you on hold, if on hold for 5+ mins they hang up on you and you have too call back...at the bottom of the list) they just recite whatever is common knowledge (fix drivers etc). The manual refers too a tech-support section but there is none. Only a page with an email and phone number.

My advice....avoid this game till they patch it and even then I'd check around too see if it done anything. Who knows as long as they are taking too say there is a problem the game will prob be cheaper when the patch comes out.

If the game loads and plays it IS fun....but I rate games on getting them too work, not how fun it is the 1/3 chance I get too use it.

Great game but very unstable

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 11
Date: November 11, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Not going to go into specifics of the game cause I think that's pretty much covered but the game is great overall, when it doeesn't crash your system. I have installed the game on 2 of my desktops and my laptop and the game crashes on all three. All three of my computers are well equipped to handle the game with updated drivers so I don't why this should happen. Thank god for the auto-save feature.

If you enjoy sleep this game is not for you...

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: November 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

This game was all that i hoped for. I installed it and I didn't sleep over 5 hours for about 3 weeks straight. I came to work with bloodshot eyes and I started calling myself Genghis Mike. No joke. You feel so powerful and important when you play this game. It's creepy how good it feels to conquer the entire world. Nobody I work with plays video games, but i proceeded to tell them the next morning about how I crushed the Egyptians, or how I took out Ghandi. They would just nod, smile, and promptly leave the watercooler.

I had no problem running this game. I have a 3ghz P4 with a 3-year old graphics card and 512 Ram if that helps.

Some people are complaining about the option to automate the workers. You don't have to use automation, just don't click the automation button! It took me around 5-6 hours each time to finish a single player, regular game with automation in the last thre quarters. Personally, I liked the worker's being automated. Early in the game i micro and would 'clear forrests' with them, build cottages, etc. But later in the game when i have like over 20 cities and 30+ workers, i don't want to be spending time automating every single irrigation build, while big wars are being waged/prepared for. It would make each game take forever and would lose interest quickly! Also, it should be noted that there are two types of automations, "build improvements" and "build trade routes", so even when they're automated you have some control over what they're doing.

I have also read comments that the wonders aren't rewarding? It's weird to me that people are looking for rewards in computer animated sequences... I don't understand how a cinematic sequence could be rewarding these days. I remember, back when i was very young, and the good graphic/cinematic sequences in games were a 'reward' because you'd never seen graphics that good before. Those days are long gone though and i always just skip the sequences.

The multimedia reward in this is Leonard Nimoy's voiceover work. It's wonderful. In case you don't know, every time you discover a technology he reads a quote or snippet regarding that technology. Many of the quotes are very famous, wise, and proverbial and make the technology discoveries seem very important and connect the game to reality in a nice way. I even found myself quoting one of the quotes in real life one time. Beware, you may look like an uber-nerd if someone asks you where you got that insightful wisdom and you reply, 'civilization IV.'

I tried to get the multiplayer to work with a buddy and it didn't work. That sucked, but oh well. Maybe it's fixed in the patch, i don't have that yet.

The soundtrack is awesome also and seems to borrow music influences from a bunch of different cultures. I got the preorder copy which came with the soundtrack on a separate cd, and I actually play it in our cd player. My wife even liked one song!

In summary, this game is amazing. As far as I'm concerned all the new souped up graphics, sfx, and gameplay are just dressing on the undeniably pleasurable experience of being a world conqueror.

(for the record, my other two favorite games are halo2 and warcraft III)

High Expectations, worst experience ever.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 24
Date: December 05, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Ordered 2 games, both didn't work on 2 different brand new computers. Tried downloading the patch, then just gave up.
They should be ashamed to release this game.

DO NOT BUY THIS GAME!!!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: November 06, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Please, please, please do not buy this game! Firaxis has released a game that is only good on certain high end (T & L)video game cards. It has absolutely no intention of patching or reworking it for everyone else. Do not throw your good hard earned money away!!! Teach Firaxis a lesson for being so mercenary!

This goes to the back of the closet until it's patched

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 22
Date: November 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Well I was able to get the game to run at a reasonable clip. FYI I have a 3GHz P4 Dell with a NVidia FX5200 (PCI). By downgrading my NVidia drivers from 85 to 78.1, then installing "RIVATuner" and overclocking my card, I can get the game to run reasonably well from start to end (not to the finish of the game, since it didn't hold my interest long enough to play that long), with FPS never getting below 10 and frequently in the 15-20 range.

At those frame rates, the game is moderately fluid, although I would like to play it at 40FPS some day (after a patch?).

Having said that, I'm still dissappointed. The graphics are detailed, but to me it just clutters the screen and takes away from game play. I set my workers to auto because it's just too much of a hassle finding them all the time. I'm sure I'll get used to the clutter, but right now it is distracting.

The best feature of Civ3Conq is still there - cultural borders, and has been improved with the AI's newfound respect for them. Hardly a paradigm shift, and I also, like others here, would have preferred less effort on graphics and more effort on AI and diplomacy. I'm sure the 8,000 forms of governments and religions add alot to the game for those paying attention, but I guess I'm not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtlety.

Maybe its because I'm getting older, but when CIV1 came out, I averaged 3 hours of sleep per night for 6 months, ended a long term relationship with a live-in because of it, and almost lost my job. After playing CivIV for 4 hours, I started wondering if I should mow the lawn. At some point a game becomes more effort than it is worth - I would say that's the case here.

-------------------- old review follows -------------------------

The fact that this is unplayable in its present form shouldn't really have surprised me. I think back to Civ3,PTW,C3C and remember that, that series pretty much sucked until Rhye's mod pack came along (faster gameplay, better AI, etc..)

Let me say that Civ4 installed and played on all four of my computers, ranging from Athlon 1.2MHz up to both P4 3GHz and Athlon 3GHz machines. All machines had at least an nVidia FX5200 card with 128MB ram and 512M system RAM.

However, on all four machines, the FPS went from 12 - 23 FPS on the first turn, down to 1-2 FPS by the end of the 10th turn - this on standard to huge maps. In short, because of the lag the game is unplayable. Note that during the intro scenes the FPS is typically around 70FPS for my better systems.

I tried all of the patching (PakBuild), and tweaking (RIVAtuner, NVHardpageSE) and messing with the virtual memory settings and background apps and .ini files - none of which made a beans worth of difference.

SO, much like what happened with Civ3, I'll put this back in the closet until sometime next fall, at which time there will have been 2 or 3 patches, and Rhye will have issued a modpack that speeds up and improves the gameplay.

I won't be holding my breath for Civ V.

Yet another hardware victim

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 23 / 44
Date: November 04, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I wish I'd known BEFORE I bought this game that it wouldn't work with any Intel graphics cards. If you have an Intel 82852/82855 GM/GME graphics controller, you get the infamous floating eyeballs and black, unplayable map. Simply flushing $50 down the toilet is quicker and involves a lot less fruitless clicking and tweaking.

I've been playing Civ avidly since the first version, had been looking forward to a new Civ for months, and I'm very frustrated. Why on earth set the hardware requirements so high? I've never played any of the Civ series for graphics or sound; it was always the gameplay that kept me playing over and over. So now I can't enjoy that gameplay because of all the whiz-bang graphics nonsense that I don't care much about anyway.

I guess I'll break out Colonization yet again and enjoy its chunky pixels and delightful gameplay. Maybe the authors of this lemon should do the same.

Overall it's excellent

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 20
Date: October 29, 2005
Author: Amazon User

My pre-sell copy arrived yesterday, and I am now in my first real game. The tutorial was more helpful than most, but the manual is really pretty worthless--there is no index and the included information is minimal. Civilopedia does not appear to be as useful as in Civ3, but I really havn't tested it thoroughly yet. I have ordered the "Complete Strategy Guide" (which won't be here until Nov 21) and I hope it is more informative. The new techs are great, and add a lot more interest to the game. Religion definitely adds a new wrinkle, but I haven't gotten far enough yet to tell how valuable it will be. I ran into the "Can't find CD" problem when I tried to start it up, but the information on the support page solved the problem. I have had one crash--when the movie for Stonehenge started to play, but I was able to recover by loading the autosave. My only real complaint is the navigation. I find it a bit difficult to get around, and backing off for a larger view is tied to viewing angle so that when you have a wide enough view you are looking straight down on the action. Frankly, I wish they had provided "classic" mode that would give the same viewing options as Civ 3. That said, I am having a ball playing it, and I am very happy to have received it just before a weekend.

Deep game play but be sure your system measures up

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 20
Date: November 12, 2005
Author: Amazon User

For me, the game is great. After hearing various horror stories about incompatability issues, I worried about how it would be handled by my system -- particularly my Radeon 9600 video card. I had original drivers and was reluctant to upgrade just for Civ4. Somewhat to my surprise, the game installed and ran just fine. No stutter in videos; no slowdowns; no problems at all. My specs are identical to some others who have experienced problems, so I don't know what is happening. But don't believe any posters who say the game wasn't beta tested. It certainly was. There is a fix on the support site for some of the most common problems, but it requires some fairly sophisticated tinkering. A patch is in the works.

So this creates a real problem for the buyer: some of us say the game loads without bugs, and some encounter bugs, with virtually the same system. One thing for sure: install the DirectX9c from the Civ4 CD, even if you think you already have it installed. Apparently not all versions are the same. One person with identical specs to mine didn't install the included version and had significant problems. There is a website that will analyze your system and assess its capabilities for Civ4 (and other games), and that worked for me.

I certainly understand the frustration of those who so looked forward to this release but have been stymied by technical issues.

Now to the gameplay. For those who only wanted Civ 3.5, this won't make you happy. It's fundamentally different in several ways. There's not one mini-max strategy that will work in all situations. Each starting position is different, and there's many trade-offs to consider. To my mind that's the essence of great strategic gaming. Those who want a game with only one sure-win strategy will be disappointed.

The addition of religion has been commented on elsewhere. In my view it's well implemented and adds a very different dimension to the game. Adopting a state religion leads to certain benefits -- and, just like history, can lead to antagonism from competing religions. A strategy incorporating clever use of religion can be very successful -- as can one without use of religion at all. In my latest game, it was amusing for my camel-riding Buddhist Arabians to conquer Japan and start building its local religious temples -- Jewish synagogues -- to pacify the population.

The graphics suit my taste, but of course a lot of that is purely personal. I find the information I need fairly ready to hand -- perhaps even more and better information than in Civ3 -- but it's very different from Civ3, which I'm sure causes confusion to fans of the predecessor.

I take strong issue with those who claim that "this is the worst release ever" or the equivalent. Obviously there's people with problems loading the game. For those who have the Intel integrated board and no other video card, and for a huge number of laptop owners, their systems don't measure up, but that's been stated all along. Those who have systems that meet the stated requirements have a legitimate beef, but claiming that the release is "rushed" or not beta-tested just isn't valid. Yes, they mislabeled the "play" and "install" disk, but really that wasn't too hard to figure out.

To me, the issue is whether the game has that "just one more turn" compulsion. From where I'm sitting, it does, and it seems to have addressed many of the issues that made late games in Civ3 rather tedious. No more scurrying around cleaning pollution. No more corruption dysfunction. Pure expansionism is no longer a valid strategy -- or more precisely, it comes at quite a tradeoff that can kill your later development. Resource distribution seems more sensible now. Military units have individual strengths and weaknesses; combined arms is a must. Moreover, there's really more than one option for war; you might choose only to destroy an infrastructure without taking cities, as opposed to seeking conquest. Lots and lots of strategic choices -- exactly what you want from a strategic game.

Wow! I can't believe they are trying to sell this.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 20
Date: November 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have loved the Civ franchise since it came out, and I am sure this game is great for those few people that can play the game. Don't think that the problems you are hearing about are isolated events. There are many bugs in this game, and it is not guaranteed to work even if you have the recommended system requirements. I meet all the requirements, and I have downloaded the patch, and it is still unplayable. You are taking the risk of buying a $50 paperweight if you buy this game. I have never had a worse experience with a game. Don't waste your time and money on this product; it is most likely going to dissapoint. I for one am sending mine back to 2K games with a nice letter telling them how great a game company they are. Please don't think I am just one bitter owner of this game, there really is a lot of problems with this game. Read the forums, don't read the reviews by gaming websites.

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