Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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I know the vid card issues are legit, but I've seen some nutty or just ignorant complaints, too. People complaining that they can't play anything bigger than a small map without experiencing lag ... when they have only 256 meg of RAM in their system and onboard video. That was too little to run Civ 2 without hitches, years and years ago. Some people also expect to max out their visual settings in a game and crank the resolution to 1600x1200 and can't believe the game doesn't run smoothly when they do.

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All my graphics resolutions are set to the lowest possible setting, running it on a year-old Pentium (admittedly not one made for gaming) with a gig of ram.

I'm not bitching about not being able to run really large worlds on it -- not much, at least. I *am* bitching that there were a bunch of assholes pre-patch claiming that the reason it wouldn't run had nothing to do with Firaxis screwups, that it was all us. Yeah, I get dark terrain playing the normal game, but in the global editor I can see everything just fine . . . sure, all my fault. Shees.

BTW you could run CivII on 256meg of ram -- or even less -- without many problems at all. I know I did. This new puppy is a hog. Fantastic game, though. All my old strategies just got tossed out the window . . .

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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You were waiting on a patch to play? Hmm.. one of those guys with video card problems?

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No vid card problems- just the memory leak. The end game becomes incredibly tedious- it takes forever to scroll in and out, move around the map, etc. Even a freshly loaded save game is bad, but if you play it in one sitting it becomes completely unplayable eventually.


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There is a memory leak fix here. Even if you have a high end machine, this fix helps a lot.

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Nice...thanks! I will give it a shot.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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I know the vid card issues are legit, but I've seen some nutty or just ignorant complaints, too. People complaining that they can't play anything bigger than a small map without experiencing lag ... when they have only 256 meg of RAM in their system and onboard video. That was too little to run Civ 2 without hitches, years and years ago. Some people also expect to max out their visual settings in a game and crank the resolution to 1600x1200 and can't believe the game doesn't run smoothly when they do.

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All my graphics resolutions are set to the lowest possible setting, running it on a year-old Pentium (admittedly not one made for gaming) with a gig of ram.

I'm not bitching about not being able to run really large worlds on it -- not much, at least. I *am* bitching that there were a bunch of assholes pre-patch claiming that the reason it wouldn't run had nothing to do with Firaxis screwups, that it was all us. Yeah, I get dark terrain playing the normal game, but in the global editor I can see everything just fine . . . sure, all my fault. Shees.

BTW you could run CivII on 256meg of ram -- or even less -- without many problems at all. I know I did. This new puppy is a hog. Fantastic game, though. All my old strategies just got tossed out the window . . .

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I'm with you on the crap that fanboys spew about there being nothing wrong with a game as long as they can run it. Game fanboys are among the most degenerate species of mankind, not quite as bad as child molesting priests, but they'll probably grow up to be them or, if already adult, probably admire them.

Not with you on the 256 RAM being okay for Civ 2 though. I ran it on a very nice machine for the time with a gig of RAM and still found very notable hitches when panning across the screen. A gig of RAM for strat games with lots of units, and RTS's, has been standard for years now, since well before Starcraft.

Many people claimed basically if there machine wouldn't freeze up totally that it ran any game fine. These buggers were accursed wretches when they joined a multiplayer game online and bogged it down to a crawl, claiming it wasn't them and their machine was fine. For a huge number of people, admitting their machine is underpowered is tantamount to publicly broadcasting that they have a tiny penis. This is as it was, is, and ever shall be.

I seriously wouldn't expect smooth play out of any game these days with less than a gig of RAM, and that prescription goes back all the way to my Total Annihilation days in what, 1997 I think. Now that is one long, long ass time, centuries in gaming years.

Back then computers still had a touch of the DOS to them and had a geek and afficionado vibe, not a mom and pop thing nearly as much as today. It hadn't been long since computers were a totally geek thing. People expected you needed some savvy and a good system to play games. Now I think it's more common that people just assume that any computer can play anything and even get angry at the game if it doesn't. Me, when I see Civ 4 recommending 256 megs of RAM to play, I laugh. And at the recommended specs, I'm still laughing.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

I got the original Civ as a graduation present from elementary school and have never been so hooked on a game in my life (except maybe Doom). I still remember a game I played where I was the Americans, and took over the Americas and Africa, before running into the Indians, who were the dominant force in Eurasia. They were pretty f-ing big, so I bided my time and built my spaceship, and everything was going great until...

THAT BASTARD GANDHI SNEAK-ATTACKED ME WITH A NUCLEAR BOMB!!!! MAHATMA [censored] GANDHI!!!

My life hasn't been the same since.

In Civ IV, is there any way to start a normal-ass game on Earth like in previous games? I've always enjoyed playing games with all Civs starting in their historical homes, but I can't figure out how to do this. When I load up the Earth map, the only starting Civs it will allow are those in Europe or Asia - all "old world" Civs. I want to renew my America vs. India fight, dammit!!

Re: I hate seeing *** posts, and some civ4
 

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I think bicyclekick is really playing this heavily. Maybe you can hook up with him. In a gaming way.

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I play it from time to time. Haven't in a few weeks. I'm actually doing a good job of not overdoing it with this one.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

I'm pretty sure I saw a way to do something like that in Civ 4. And you can have an American leader, Franklin Roosevelt, in any game. It's under one of the custom scenarios or something, more toward the bottom of the screen when you're just starting. You can play on a map of continents configured like Earth's regular cast of characters.

Re: I hate seeing *** posts, and some civ4
 

Ah that's cool. Last I saw you post on it, you were in deep. I was figuring you were multiplaying up a storm with some of the OOT vets.

I was getting nuts over it for a while too, like I do with anything new I start. Enjoyed working on my Roman rush strategy.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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A gig of RAM for strat games with lots of units, and RTS's, has been standard for years now, since well before Starcraft.

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Well before Starcraft? A gig? Standard?

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I seriously wouldn't expect smooth play out of any game these days with less than a gig of RAM, and that prescription goes back all the way to my Total Annihilation days in what, 1997 I think.

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1997? My god, what kind of computer did you have and how much did you spend?

Edit: It came from Linksville!

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

i used to be really into computer games when i was 12-15 but now they don't do too much for me anymore. there are still some games i definitely enjoy but not too many.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

funny [censored]

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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A gig of RAM for strat games with lots of units, and RTS's, has been standard for years now, since well before Starcraft.

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Well before Starcraft? A gig? Standard?


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Heck yeah. Total Annihilation, AOE2, and CIV2 all needed as much memory as you could get, or you could expect pauses. Total Annihilation let you get up to 500 units per side! All 3d models. Civ2 was just a hog. AOE2 had plenty of units and big maps. You bet 1 gig was standard for a good experience. I noticed a HUGE jump in playability from 512 megs to 768, and a smaller one from 768 to a gig, but it was there both times. 512 was hopeless in many RTS's once you got online and were past the beginning and the unit counts got high.

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I seriously wouldn't expect smooth play out of any game these days with less than a gig of RAM, and that prescription goes back all the way to my Total Annihilation days in what, 1997 I think.

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1997? My god, what kind of computer did you have and how much did you spend?

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I don't remember what I was running then, but I've always bought or made computers one step below the maxed out CPU, which is always going for an outrageous premium even if it's just a little faster than the next step down. I think at the Total Annihilation days I was running either a Riva TNT card or the GeForce3 Ti500, can't remember which. Whichever, it was the top one at the time. Everything was pricey those days, too, but video cards hadn't hit the 400 and 500 range yet. I think they maxed out at more like $250. However, sounds cards and especially RAM were very pricey, as were hard drives and CD's.

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Edit: It came from Linksville!


[/ QUOTE ]I never click on unexplained links from strangers. Mommy warned me about those.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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i used to be really into computer games when i was 12-15 but now they don't do too much for me anymore. there are still some games i definitely enjoy but not too many.

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They'll always beat t.v. for me. Except for reading, I've outgrown passive entertainment. Oh, and the occasional movie.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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Edit: It came from Linksville!



[/ QUOTE ]I never click on unexplained links from strangers. Mommy warned me about those.

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A link to a system from 1997 with a gig of ram.

I really think you are misremembering dates. An average ($1000-$1500) PC in 1997 came with 16 MB, or maybe 32. High end systems more, but not 50 times more...

One or the other of us "needs" to go browse old PC Magazines.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Total Annihilation was released September 30, 1997 and I played it with a gig. This was well past the days of 16 megs of RAM. You're talking about DOOM days, not Total Annihilation days.

Notice the machine you linked was on an EISA bus and used two CPU's, had a RAID controller with 128 megs of ram and six 4 gig drives. The last thing this could possibly be compared to is anything like an average rig or even a good gaming rig. As noted, it was a server made to compete with quad-processor machines.

You've misconstrued what's really exceptional about that machine. It's every last thing about it, to the extreme. But not really the gig of RAM.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Have you every seen Rambo 2?

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

In December 1997, 128 MB of SDRAM cost $655, it seems. Also, a friend of mine who has worked in the tech support industry since about that time thinks you're on crack. However, if your memory is clear, I will defer to you. God knows mine isn't. I spent a lot of late 1997 drinking heavily. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Looks like I misremembered. The motherboard you linked carries up to 384 RAM, so if that's from 1997, I couldn't have been playing Total Annihilation from the very start with a gig unless I started out on a lesser system and moved up to another one and caught a sinificant technology change as I kept playing, which I did for years. Not impossible, but who knows. At any rate, if I got up to a gig on that game, it looks like I didn't start at one. It came out almost in 1998 though and I played it to 1999 or 2000, so it's hard to guess exactly how high my RAM was during that time.

However, it's interesting to note that the 384 gigs that board holds in 1997 is still more than some games cite as their minimum requirements today -- and isn't Civ 4 one of them?

I do know that RTS's were my genre of choice, and I always eventually bought enough RAM so my machines were maxed out or pretty darn close.. And found I needed every last bit of RAM, and even that often wasn't enough to not have slowdowns and hitching, especially when panning. RTS's and and strat games with lots of units on board absolutely devour RAM.

If I didn't hit a gig at any point in TA, then it must have been either in TA: Kingdoms or AOE2.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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[censored] the haters. I laughed. I haven't played the new Civ yet, but I have fond memories of my Panzers dieing at the hands of ancient spearman from Civ3.

Also, this trend of posts consisting entirely of "*" is gay as hell.

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*

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

want a prop bet on TA's memory utilization?

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Why would you think I would think there is any gamble in you?

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

i've actually never installed/played TA, but i don't think there's a snowball's chance in hell of it having that kind of footprint.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

What I do know for sure is that it ably swallowed up all the memory you could put in a top notch gaming PC at the time, and that that's been the case in every RTS I played since.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Just bought the game. Damn cool.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

Quick reply...

So if I have just about a semester off from school and no job, I should buy this game? Or will I regret that decision around March when I decide I'm dropping out permanently? This game sounds really good.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

This game = pwnage, but you probably need the $50 for BR purposes.

Re: Civilization IV, Baddest Beat of my Life
 

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Quick reply...

So if I have just about a semester off from school and no job, I should buy this game? Or will I regret that decision around March when I decide I'm dropping out permanently? This game sounds really good.

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There is a condition suffered by Civ heads, known as JOMTS.

Just One More Turn Syndrome.

Next thing you know, it's getting light out.

"[censored]."

--- or, if you're married, you may hear, "Did you play that [censored] game all night?"

"[censored]."