I won’t by another Firaxis game until it seems like all the ‘updates’ are out. I bought Civ 3, what, 3 times? Civ 3, Civ 3 Play the World, Civ 3 Conquests. Then they came out with Civ 3 complete.
Fuckers.
I’ll wait for Civ 4 complete, thank you very much.
I think it’s unfair to call them fuckers for this. I think it’s just good business strategy. Hell, I had no intention to “Play the World” I just wanted access to the “new” Civs that came with it. If you want to wait for “complete” good on ya, but I don’t think this makes the business people fuckers. Especially since I got so much mileage out of each of the so-called upgrades.
On the other hand, for all this graphics card unplayability problems…yep, fuckers indeed.
Heh.
Just as a data point, it isn’t like they were just ignoring ATI all through development. Civ4 has worked fine on all sorts of ATI cards all year long. I’ve personally played it on both a 9800Pro and an X800XL, through all the ATI driver updates through mid-summer.
What happened right at release? Shrug.
I tend to suspect Little Plastic Ninja has it about right.
I’ll eventually ask someone I know over at Firaxis exactly what the issue was, but I don’t think today would be a very good day to bug him…
Now y’all have me wanting to rush out to the store and buy a copy so I can see if it works on my computer, and, if not, compare it to the last version I have loaded to see what changed…
Or would it be more fun to load up the latest ATI drivers and see if they break some of the older versions of Civ4 I still have around?
Ah, choices, choices :dubious:
Start with that. Then while you have the newest ATI drivers on, get a retail copy of the game and see if your retail game likes the new drivers. Then roll back through the drivers until you find the most recent set that will work.
I do notice that the newest ATI drivers are dated 10/12. Mean mean thing to do, in my opinion.
Looks like they may have a solution - see this thread here
I was so disappointed in CIV 3. I played this game line since it came out, probably over 2000 scenarios (no kidding). I even love colonization (cant get it to play on modern computers though 
and alpha centauri) Then, CIV 3 hit, I ran to the store, got it home and was all like, hey wtf… theres almost nothing new. Wheres the further technologies man, fucking future tech… again… get some fucking creativity man… sigh.
Has anyone actually played 4, is it any good? is it worth it?
I’ve played it, and I think it’s the best of the series so far. But then, I thought the same about Civ 3, so you might not want to listen to me.
(Nothing new in Civ 3? Seriously? I thought it was a huge step forward from the last version. The use of national borders alone revolutonized my entire play style, for example.)
I agree. Once they fixed the random seed on reload problem, I was delighted. I wasn’t crazy about not being able to incremently hurry Wonders (by disbanding units - I loved AC’s caravans going towards a Wonder), but I learned to live with it. With both 2 and 3, I’ve thought, “Geez, I can’t believe they did this,” but I’ve never gone back to play the old one.
I’ll have to schedule buying this for vacation.
The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have a lot of new stuff, it was that they didn’t implement everything right. The ntional borders were a good idea, but they still screwed it up with the AI basically doing nothing except annoying the player. The AI wasn’t there to challenge you; it was there to harass you.
Corruption was implented awfully, and fo no apparent reason, they never did put in sufficient ways to reduce it. I have no idea why. Apparently, Hawaii is the most corrupt city in America, because it’s farthest from Washington.
Combat sucketh. It’s just ridiculous. Having advanced technology is only of middling utility, since the AI can always drown you with raw numbers. The AI still gangs up on the player (like it did to me), often for no apparent reason (civ’s I never met sign treaties to waste me). And the cheating? Ye gods!
There was new stuff, but it was a halfway-decent implementation of it. Alpha Centauri was a good implentation of new stuff. Civ 2 was a great implementation of old stuff.
I agree. Civ 3 was a step forward but poorly designed and far from revolutionary. I loved Colonization by the way! My father has been playing that game every day since it came out… it’s been what, 10 years? And he always cheats too.
My copy isn’t here yet. It’s getting tremendous reviews and praise from people I know.
It’s drastically different than #3. You focus more on perfecting & individualizing a dozen cities rather than having 5 dozen city clones all over the place. Infinite City Sprawl is gone.
Combat has been overhauled so that 1) units gain xp and you can upgrade them in different ways according to your tastes and 2) Stack of Doom is gone. You have to pick how and when to use your troops.
Difficulty scales differently. AI on average difficulty, I’m told, has no bonuses and isn’t just constantly in your face. The tutorial and the learning curve are much kinder than in previoius Civs I’m told.
Great persons - like the great leaders of from #3 but you can tailor your cities to produce specific leaders you want. It’s not just a matter of luck.
The interface is completely new. 90% of the game is played right on the world map so you’re not constantly being dragged off to charts and menus.
Corruption is out. Religion is in and affects the way other civs relate to you.
Still no future tech essentially. It’s stone age to the present(-ish.) But there’s more to creativity than that after all.
I can’t say if anyone else would like but it sounds - on paper - like both a much better game and a much different game. Ask me again in a week.
For more detail, here’s a hands-on preview by Sulla, one of the best Civ3 players around. It’s a walkthrough of a random SP game that he put together with screenies & writing about how the new game plays. Really if you have even the slightest interest int he game, this is amust-read!
Well, the game actually runs now with the fixes suggested by Firaxis…although I still think it’s stupid that I had to:
…just to get it working.
Now, I actually get to play it.
Uninstall, by the way.
Sigh, no typing for me. 
Priceless 
Likely your power supply. You nend more juice or one of better quality.
FYI, this exact scenario happened to me, but I called back 45 minutes later and got a person.
Lucky fucker.
I went to BestBuy and CompUSA Tuesday night. They told me “No, no, hasn’t come out yet.”
I went to BestBuy and CompUSA last night. They told me “Oh, yeah, had it and sold out. Come back in two weeks.”
Goddamned motherfuckers.
Fuck’em then. Look, I prefer going to BestBuy/CompUSA/Etc for the instant gratification of getting what I want right now. But if they can’t provide that, go to Amazon.com …
Problem is, I’m broke- the $50 Amazon wants is not something I can shell out right now.
On the other hand, I’ve got a $50 CompUSA gift certificate from my last birthday and nearly $50 in Best Buy Bucks from eating at McDonald’s for the last month, so I can afford to get the game from them.
Update: another check of the BestBuy website revealed a location close to work that claimed to have it. I checked, and for once lucked out!
I now have a copy of the game ready and waiting for me to go home and install it, and a three-day-weekend to play it.
This will be the longest Friday afternoon ever.