Redstate

I havn't played Civ4 yet, but I know a few mindless Civ drones who can't get enough of it and havn't complained to me about any bugs, so some of the errors might be hardware-dependent.

One thing I have seen is that Civ III addicts I've known have all become Civ IV addicts now, there don't seem to be any "purist" holdouts.

Civ IV works great on my computer; 9700 Pro, 2.1gHz processor, and a gig of RAM. And it's most definately the best game yet for the series.

Download the newly released demo and see how it runs yourself.

Buggy as all hell.

Consider buying it 6 months from now ... unless your PC is identical to the ones it was written on, you are looking for problems.

Some of the comments on somethingawful.com may help you here ... this release is a poorly disguised Beta.

And on top of that, they changed the tempo of the game ... accellerating things so game sessions last about a quarter as long ... good for people with short attention spans, I guess. Folks I have talked to say it plays like Civ III with accelerated production turned on.

I'll probably buy a copy ... more than a few months after the patch comes out and is tested.

I think I remember reading they've done away with forms of government. Now, I never, as a matter of principle allow a communist revolution, I either stick with republic or sometimes install a democracy.

Surely, all Redstaters play as republicans.

I play as a Monarchy until there are no longer viable threats then switch to Democracy.

A true conservative then.

But I have a lot of friends who are playing it pretty heavily and none of them have complained about bugs or other technical problems. This here is, in fact, the first I've heard of such issues.

I think it all depends on what kind of system you have - I had absolutely no problem with the game at all, and it's quite fun. They've removed some of the micromanagement that dragged III down but still give you the option of playing the game at a very fine level. For instance, your cities no longer have civil unrest if they have unhappy workers - they simply become less productive.

They did get rid of the old system of governments, but they added a better system. For instance, you can implement production "civics", government "civics", etc, giving you much more control over the way your civ works.

I haven't noticed any problems or bugs, except with the multiplayer which is in desperate need of a patch. QA on games is generally pretty bad across the board these days, but I'd still say Civ IV isn't as buggy as some people have made it out to be.

similar to sims or ages of empires type games?  Is it more heavily a military strategy game or economic strategy game?

I like a mix of the two (like Rome Total War, C&C Generals, Stronghold, etc), but can't take a game that is to heavily economic.  The Sims and Sim City just wear out to fast to spend too much money on that sort of game.  

Civ is a lot like R:TW but with less emphasis on military activity. There is no tactical map for battles. Its possible to win the game without ever going to war.

Its nowhere near as fussy and micro-oriented as Sim City and has pretty much nothing at all in common with The Sims.

as soon as I can, and keep it throughout my initial conquests. I can deal with the discontent, and when I'm done warring I can switch to Democracy.

The bonuses of Democracy are too good to pass up... fast workers and low corruption.

Monarchy-to-Gunpowder type of guy. I bypass Republic and Democracy and get them by extorting them from other civs.

which is the best part for me. Especially towards the end, it can take up to 20 minutes to go through one turn.

On a side note about Stronghold:

 I once worked with the guy who did the introduction voice-over of the guy in the stockade. He used to walk around the shop and do that voice... the best part was the promo game he gave to us.

I posted over in the other thread but will revise and extend here.

This time the bad first: It really is a very buggy release. The patch is out; your copy of Civ4 has a button to auto-update.

It seems most of the problems are folks with laptops. I don't know why that is, but believe me when I say that I have spent A LOT of time on the civ fanatics forums reading of problems similar to mine.

The worst part for me is that most of the problems are graphics related, and this just isn't a title that NEEDS to push the bleeding edge of graphics technology. I don't really need Civ in 3D with texture mapping, highlighting and shading. The reasons for pushing the graphics envelope (on the part of the publisher) I think are pretty self evident so I'll leave off with that.

As for the good-- the gameplay is MUCH improved. Religion plays a huge role in the game now. Same for diplomacy. I have never NEVER won a game of Civ (1, 2, or 3) without building a huge military at least for defensive purposes (because the AI Civs will gang up on you and pick you apart). In Civ4, diplomacy is actually an option. You can make friends. Winning by culture is also possible.

Governments are MUCH improved. This is my favorite new improvement. Instead of picking a single government, now you can mix and match about six different kinds of "Civics." You can change your central government, your beaurocracy, your economy, forms of suffrage/representation, and of course religion (state religion, theocracy, etc.)

I've enjoyed playing as Napoleon, an Aggressive leader who gets +2 experience on all new military units; turning on Theocracy which gives +2 experience to all military units produced under my state religion; Vassalage which gives +2 experience to all military units; and so on. My military units come out very nearly "elite," right out of the gate.

And best of all, when you change each of the civics, it tells you in advance how much gold upkeep your new government will cost from turn to turn and exactly how many turns of anarchy it will cost you to implement the switch. It's really just great.

I'm getting long winded. Bottom line: The changes in gameplay are good. The bugs caused by the graphic changes are not. Wait a few days to see feedback on the patch and if all seems clear, go for it.

especially with dead end techs.

I still love Chivalry though... there's nothing like rolling through a bunch of spearmen and chariots with an army of knights. And usually cavalry aren't too far behind, too.

love chivalry. I just find it hard to justify the time spent to acquire it when I can be heading for gunpowder and cavalry (not to mention Leonardo's Workshop).

Lost a year plus of my life to Civ III, and HATED Civ IV

...city improvements early, you can build units that can be upgraded later (once LW makes the cost acceptable).  Nothing like 100+ cavalry units suddenly popping out of nowhere and giving you that 50% better force projection.

of the master

threadjack thread... ;-P

Anyone have an opinion on relatively low-cost ATX cases/PSU's?

I'm embarking on my first-ever system build, and the last piece is the case/PSU.  Having spent far more than I had budgeted on other components, I'm afraid the Lian-Li and $100+ PSU's are right out.  Thing is, I suspect the system will run somewhat hot, so I was hoping for dual 120mm fans and at least 450W of power.

Any thoughts/suggestions from the technically savvy among RS? :)

-TS

I looked at building myself a system two years ago, as I'd done years before on my old P200. I went to Directron (who, IME, tends to be on top of their game price-wise), added everything up, and sighed in resignation. I was more than slightly surprised to find out Dell could do better for $200 more.

My question is, where did you find parts cheaper than Dell's integrated system?

I usually buy a fairly cheap case and a decent PSU. Antec happens to be a good company for both, but you shouldn't need to spend more than $50-$100 for a decent case and PSU. This is also something that's best bought offline to save on shipping - if you have a local computer parts wholesaler, I'd see what they recommend.

I have had a PSU on my server explode before, so I can state from experience that skimping on power isn't the best thing to do.

If you're not concerned about fancy looks, a regular beige ATX case can be had for anywhere from $20-$50 and a good 400W+ PSU shouldn't run much more than $50 either.

Possibly the most powerful unit in the game when you factor in when you can get 'em.  Once I have them and a decent rail system neighboring civilizations stick around for precisely as long as I feel like having them.

I really hated the borders thing in Civ III at first, but that was until I started grokking how you could use fortifications to force chokepoints.  Not to mention the benefits of mild overextension of one's troops; push into enemy territory far enough and you can afford to lose a few captured cities in the pushback.  Cavalry's great for that, too - come out of nowhere, position yourself for the next turn, watch the AI succumb to temptation and attack when it should be setting up defensive trenches.

I loved pairing artillery with a couple infantry and crazy cavalry. I could just pour the cav out of the forts and cities with infantry as backers and artillery to pound the other guys first. Worked pretty well in Civ III, too. I definitely grok you on Railroads.

that, as someone with only a passing familiarity with this game, the one thing your diary did for me is to convince me to stay away!  (My personality tends toward the addictive, and I lose enough hours with the vices I already have ;) )

I would say IV is better than III, but there are some things I don't care for.

The biggest shortcoming of the game is still combat. The one unit vs one unit dice rolling is totally unrealistic and leaves a lot to be desired. You can't even decide which units to attack with which of your units. The defenders just rotate through and take turns defending. Combat is a major portion of the game and Civ has probably the worst combat of any game since Risk (the board game).

OTOH, They've done a good job reducing the micromanaging requirements.

I've decided I liked Age of Empires 3 better.

Bummer.  At work I finally stripped all the machines down that I have accumulated (drafting workstations).  Tossed the frames in the scrap metal bin.  Kept the PSUs and all the working parts.

We had a small local business do our last batch of drafting machines.  They did a very poor job.  But the good news is I have alot of spare parts now.  And I did get 1 solid CFD machine out of all the lagging and broken ones.

Anyway, I always like http://www.tigerdirect.com/ for computer components.  You can find some great deals on there.  I know alot of people that use it and have never heard complaints about getting bad parts.

sometimes has decent prices (particularly on refurbished equipment), but for most new components, I prefer Newegg or Mwave; both sources of many bargains.

Even so, it's hard to save money on a home-built machine.  Do it for the love instead.

Very cool case has room for 4 80mm and is designed for cooling.

Unfortunately, no power supply included:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=
1446793&sku=A107-1048

This case has a 450W PS and one 80MM fan included, but there is only room for one more.  Sure is cheap though ($39.99).  I'd check to see if you can get by with to 80MM fans.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=
720575&sku=D15-1010

This case has room for the 2 120MM fans, and comes with a PS, but only 400W.  Price is good though.  And I think it's a darn good looking case.  At that price ($34.99), you may be able to afford to pick up a power supply.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=
1178018&sku=TC3J-4000

The last workstation I got from Dell ran over $4500.  And I went with a cheaper video card to keep it under 5G.  A sweet machine, but I really think it could have been done cheaper buying the parts.  Labor not included, of course.

If you include labor, you are hands down correct.

As long as they sell components made by manufacturers (like powmax) who refuse to honor their warranties, then I refuse to buy from them.

From my experience, the reason you don't save money when you build your own computer is the frequency with which components fail, either while still under warranty or barely out of it.  I built a computer 18 months ago.  I have had 2 power supplies, 3 motherboards, 1 DSL card, 3 hard drives, 1 video card fail.  What makes failed components expensive even if the warranty is honored is that I have to pay to ship them back.  All but 2 of the power supplies came from Newegg.

I built my own because an off the shelf computer had to be reformatted every 3 months and I figured I could get better reliability by building my own.  What is especially disgusting is that I am still trying to acquire a computer as reliable and durable as my 386 which lasted 10 years.  Seems impossible.  Workmanship is increasingly poor and companies don't stand by their products.  HOw do we know? They expect the consumer to pay extra for a warranty.

I have heard many people complain about the very same things.  So far, I haven't heard the complaints about tiger that I have on other sites.  But that just may be luck of the draw.

about the Powermax (which, I believe, is a house brand) warranties.

But, since you mention it, I once purchased a refurbished machine for my daughter from TD, and, since it held only a 90 day warranty, I purchased an extended warranty. As it turns out, the motherboard failed and the insurance company offering the warranty through TD chose not to honor its responsibility to repair it.

But the closest thing to the system I am going to try to build is a custom XPS 400 that clocked in at $1,968 on Dell.com with:

3.2Ghz Intel 540,

Dual DVD burners,

GeForce 7800GTX,

1GB RAM,

250 GB HD,

20" LCD Monitor, and a couple of other things.

My final price tag should come in at around $1,400 including the case, assuming that I can find something.

I'm looking at:

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ (939) at 2.2Ghz

eVGA GeForce 7800GT

eVGA nForce4 SLI Mobo

1GB Corsair PC3200 DDR400 RAM

250 GB Maxtor Drive

Dual DVD-burners

20" LCD Monitor

and some assorted other stuff.  Best I can tell, the 2.2 AMD runs faster than the 3.2 Intel -- odd that, but it's what the online guides tell me.

I assume I'm in for some pain, but that was part of the point -- I don't want the computer to be a black box.  I want to understand a bit better exactly how it works.

As you can see, the missing pieces are the case and the PSU.  I don't think I should skimp on the PSU, so the 450+.  I'm not going SLI, even though I have the mobo for it, so I don't think I need 550+ just yet.  The case... well, I'm already over budget, so I need to save.  But the main point is that I would like adequate cooling -- hoping for 2x 120mm case fans at least, configured in a reasonable fashion to allow for airflow.

So... any thoughts anybody? :-)

-TS

PS: Threadjack complete!

=D

I don't know if I could put up with that much gamer-ness, heh.

For reference, this case was what I wanted to get until the budget got blown up.

I suppose I'm wanting a bit more of a classic look if possible, but I may not have a choice with my budget....

-TS

There are plenty of conservative looking cases for less than $100... but they are steel not AL. I've bought my last few from www.mwave.com, which is where I get all my stuff.

Or LED Fans???  Bummer.  But I'm a sucker for a home built power PC no matter what it looks like.  But I would have to say This is my dream case.  Unfortunately the base prices on that site are over my budget.  I don't think my better half would let me have another computer anyway.

I was a die-hard player of the first two Civ games, and took to III skeptically at first because of the many changes. I eventually warmed to it and grew to love it, particularly once I'd tweaked the default ruleset a bit to compensate for how underpowered artillery and navies were. So take the following coming from that perspective.

My system specs: Athlon 64 3400+, 1GB Corsair RAM, MSI 7800GT 256M, SATA-II HDD

First, the bad: others have mentioned this, and I'll reiterate it as well... C4 is very buggy. I could not reliably play it before I upgraded my video card, and my last card--an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro--was and still is a very good video card. The percentage of people having serious problems with the game running reliably seems small, but they are significant enough that I can confidently say these are game code problems, and not just the usual crowd that didn't update their video drivers in the last three years. It has numerous small bugs as well that, while not game-breaking, are irritating: mouse hover text, for instance, likes to stop working without any perceptible cause or repro.

In terms of gameplay and features, some elements are a clear step backwards from C3. Artillery units, while powerful due to the new collateral damage rules, are fatally flawed in that none of them can move more than one square per turn. So while your cavalry or tanks are blitzing ahead and rolling over cities as if they were nothing, your artillery are still three turns behind, which renders near-useless their primary role in reducing city defenses. This flaw becomes even more pronounced with the way cultural borders work in C4, and how easy it is for them to spread four or five squares out from a city--meaning that whereas your tanks might reach this city in two turns, your arty will be bringing up the rearguard long after the city's been taken.

The new "World Builder" scarcely deserves the name. Gone is the robust editor from C3, which even the casual user could use to randomly generate lots of cool maps, saving the ones they like. Simple mapbuilding in this editor is incredibly tedious, and Firaxis is getting a lot of well-deserved flak for it. Apparently they expected the fact that C4 runs off an extremely moddable combination of Python and XML to obviate the need for them to provide any editing tools whatsoever. I understand that the first patch has added the ability to randomly generate maps from within the WB, a feature which should have been there in the first place and which I'm looking forward to playing with (I haven't fired it up since the patch).

Now that I've badmouthed it, let me tell you why I think you should buy it anyway.

Put simply, it rocks in every other respect.

Forget the pretty graphics. They are pretty, but if you're a longtime fan of the Civ games, that probably doesn't matter to you anyway. Every now and then I zoom in close for the eye candy, or marvel at how nice something ends up looking, but most of the time I just don't notice--I'm too busy playing. So while yes, Civ4 does want a reasonably recent computer to run smoothly, you can turn down most of the graphical goodies and get a perfectly respectable framerate on a computer made within the last three or four years. My fiancee can attest to this. :>

Governments have indeed gone away, but I like the change. Instead you have "Civics", which are like the building blocks of government. For instance, the religious aspect of your government can be Paganism (which has no effect at all, the starting point), Organized Religion, Theocracy, Free Religion, and so on, each of which has different effects and levels of upkeep. The same is true for legal, labor, market, and other aspects of government. This allows you to fine-tune it fairly nicely, and I've found that I like the flexibility.

Religion is done pretty well in the game. I get very irritated at having other people's religions shoved in my face, and I didn't feel like there was any agenda or bias in the game--all religions are equal from a game mechanics standpoint, the only functional differences being that some arise earlier in the tech tree than others due to what technology leads to their discovery. It's too complex a subject to really get into in this one comment, but suffice to say I found it a refreshing change and a new strategic angle to consider.

Most of the irritating micromanagement of Civ3 has either been done away with or made optional. You can, for instance, set your workers to all automate as soon as they're built--though I can't imagine why you'd want to. Pollution and corruption are no more, replaced by a much more flexible system of health and happiness, both of which can be increased in a variety of ways tweakable to your heart's content.

And while some don't like this, I personally love the new way that borders are handled. The cultural borders from Civ3 are back and expand in much the same way--but you cannot cross another civ's borders with your units without either having an open borders agreement or declaring war. This removes one of my all-time greatest irritations, which was AI units traipsing across my territory with impunity, requiring me to either constantly tell them to leave (which they rarely did unless forced) or declare war (not always the best option in a democracy).

I realized the game was a worthy purchase when it earned the same nickname that all of the others have at one point or another: "Civiliza--Oh My God It's 3AM".

If you have questions about any other aspect of the changes in the game, I'll do my best to answer them. But for now, I'll stop here.

I play Freeciv, but I do tend to favor Republic.  Unless opportunity comes for an early offensive war, when I go with Monarchy, I tend to go straight from Despotism to Republic to Democracy and never look back.

I know, I know, but having no corruption is nice when your Women's Suffrage/Cure for Cancer/Michaelangelo's Chapel-backed Arsenal of Democracy is creating an empire, heh.

After the help on this forum and elsewhere... I've decided to go for Antec P150.  It's a bit more than I had hoped for, but it does have a nice 430W power supply, so... I guess that's it then. :)

-TS

You'll never regret buying too nice of a case. The cheap ones will often cut your hands and help you expand your vocabulary while working with them.

while I have already mentioned that I hate it because it won't run on my computer (stupid ATI graphics card), I have played it on my friend's computer and the religion part disappointed me quite a bit.  I had hoped for some type of variation in the strength of each one (like have confucianism provide for a more powerful centralized state type of thing) but as your post points out (and the manual makes clear) the goal was to offend absolutely no one so that they came out pretty bland.  I'm hoping (well, first that I could run it) but then that a mod comes out that develops this idea a little bit.

but I have never understood the fascination with turn-based stratagy games. I always found them tedious and not very interesting. You would not be able to get that addicting rush I get whenever I whup the living frights out of an enemy army and sack or capture his base.

Observing the comments on this thread, I am most likely in the minority. I just think the CNC games are much better the the Civ games. Real- time games are much better because, otherwise, whats the point of having good graphics? If you have a good enough computer, you can make Generals or Rome:TW look breathtaking.

Every D-Day has its months of preparation, though.

I guess if it doesn't thrill you to prepare for the fight, then it would be deathly boring, heh.

Well, I love the system, just because I love rolling through converting everyone to Judaism (I know that everyone wants Jewish Crusaders).

Honestly, I think it's the best Civ out there.

Any word on that?  That's what I'm waiting for.

Hmmmm.

A serious problem for home computer users is the power lines in their homes.  If you're having a lot of computer components fail then your problem might be in the power lines in your walls.  And no, a surge protector doesn't do anything for power fluctuations, only for significant power spikes.

Your best bet, if you don't have one already, is to get a UPS with a line conditioner.  The line conditioner will even out the spikes and drops in the power line.

Hmmm.

I usually leave the case off and hook a small clip-on fan, directed to blow air into the case, to the powerstrip.

Frankly that's worked better than most fan systems I've seen and you can always hook another clip-on fan if you want to.

and checked the power at several outlets in my home.  Apparently the power is fine, but I have wondered about it and still wonder how reliable those results were.

Seems likes its really bad compared to II.

II had a lot more civs to be.  Seemed like a lot more units in II too.

Plus, the graphics run a tad slow on my puter and I have a pretty good one!

I put my jacket on, walked downstairs, and out the door.  Then, I paused...

::What happens every time you buy a game?::

;;I friggin play it every spare moment I get;;

::Do you really want to do this::

;;I...don't...know;;

::Why don't you give it a day and think about it::

;; :( ;;

Hmmmm.

Something to keep in mind is that fluctuations in the power lines can happen because a device has turned on.  I.e. if your sockets were checked while a problem device wasn't running, then the test might come up clear.  But when that device turns on, all hell breaks loose.  This could be a heater, air conditioner, electric stove or any number of other things.  The circuit you're using might also be overloaded with devices drawing power, and or all of which could be affecting your computer.  The total load might not be enough to trip the circuit-breaker, particularly if the circuit-breaker was previously unwisely upgraded, but it could be enough to cause problems.

I also assume the sockets you had checked were the ones you were using for your computer.

Frankly I'd suggest going ahead and getting a UPS+line conditioner anyways.  They very useful and not that expensive.  They're certainly less hassle then having to replace components all the time.

I'm insanely addicted.

After playing months of Civ III, I went back and acquired all the previous versions.  I like to take Civ I with my own a plane trip and play it on my laptop.  Yay, DOS games!

Can't wait to get Civ IV, but might not have time to play seriously until after the holidays.

Its fun, addictive, etc, etc.

Only problem is that it has crashed on me 3 times so far. :(

I really hope this isn't a recurring thing.  Perhaps I should update some drivers and stuff.

I found Civ3 to be a great dissapointment after Civ1 and 2.

On the big plus side, the AI is significantly smarter and realistic in Civ4.  The civic system is also excellent.

On the down side, the graphics are needless fancy, requiring too powerful a computer for a strategy game.  Also, the tempo has been skewed towards shorter games and less military conflict; the game is skewed towards fewer cities and a faster tech rate. This makes it practically impossible to build a large army before it becomes obsolete.

So, for peaceful players, it's a 10. For militaristic players, it's an 8 (compared to Civ3Conquests 6 and PlaytheWorld's 4).

As I said on CivFanatics.com...

The game is perfect.  

(The software, however, is not. :P My machine sucks wind, but I've not had any graphical glitches or memory leaks or crashes at all...)

I was a total addict of the first game, but didn't play 2 or 3 nearly as much... Civ4 is Civ1 evolved -- and I love it :)