woooo! Works on the laptop....Now, time to leave for a few hours:(

I did not say you misspoke, I said you were mistaken in your belief that what you would do is what any sane person would do. Contrary to your perception, the two are not necesarily the same.

Sensible is such a subjective word, though... I'm sure SkyDog defines it such that a sensible person would do what he would do. :p :D

Is anyone else having a difficult time finding the game? I went to three stores in the Baton Rouge area today and they were all sold out :(

Ah, I hadn't thought of that. Perhaps at the level I'm playing at, the AI can't see inside my cities like I can see inside his? For me, I can see exactly what units the Russians have to defend their cities with from two or more squares away. Maybe at the Warlord/Noble level that I'm playing at, the human has an advantage in this regard.

That would explain the stupid moves by their settler as well, and perhaps even their lack of response to my raiders, although that one seems to be a bit off no matter what angle I look at it from.

twothree: Thank you! I'll give that a try. I looked on the keyboard guide and in the manual, but didn't see anything there. I'll take a look at the online help later tonight.

I went to three stores locally with no luck, but ended up driving the extra four miles to Best Buy to snag it once my philosophy test ended.

Thanks. It still didn't work for me, though. Not a big deal, since I want to run it on my desktop more anyway, which gets the black-squares instead of terrain problem. SkyDog, did you ever get that one beat?

try circuit city

p. 167 under "AI freebies"

There is a bunch more free/quicker stuff the AI gets on higher levels listed on that page. This is what I define as "cheating". If you don't feel it's cheating then that's fine we just have different definitions. But it's clear that as you move up in difficulty it's this that makes the game harder. Not "better" AI.

So the game crashed on me tonight when I had built a wonder. The pop-up started and the game crashed. I went beck to the autosave the turn before and it kept crashing. I tried a bunch of things and what ended up working was updating the driver on my video card. I just guessed at that from reading this thread about how much others were having trouble with the video card. Anyway, in case you game crashes randomly when a pop up happens something to check out.

Anyone try online?

Not yet, but I want to.

more questions and answers can be found here
http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/...?tid=206&tid=11

Well, it's 2AM and here I am again, second night in a row. Yikes, I'll be sleepy at work tomorrow.

This game rocks.

And by the way, the AI seems very good at picking effective promotions for its units. I've taken all the Russians cities except for Moscow, but they have six armies of longbowmen specially trained for urban combat and two armies of spearmen to cut up my knights.

The Russians' last stand looks to be heroic. But I shall take their capital, no matter the cost. It will be mine! Our cities are building massive catapults to pound it to rubble. Then we'll send crossbowmen to wear them down more. Finally, waves of knights will roll over anything left standing. Russia shall fall.

Has anyone found the game for less than $49-$50?

I talked to a buddy of mine in California last night and he picked it up at Fry's for around $40. (Don't remember if he said it was $37 or $39).

I usually wait until a big price drop to get a game (I'm just now playing Half-Life 2 and Far Cry) but I'd like to get in on the inevitable FOFC multi-player games that will be happening before long.

So I picked up a new video card, and it works... but it's still painfully slooooooowwww, as I only got a 64 MB RAM video card... I'm thinking about taking this card back and picking up an even better one I found elsewhere for about the same price that is 128 MB, and buying some more RAM (I have 512 MB right now)... all based on what my wife will be telling me about the game today. I tweaked a couple of things this morning to try and coax it to run a bit better... but my God, they went a bit overboard with the graphics on this one.

I did put in a 2 hour session last night, and didn't see where you could change how many Civs you were up against in a single player game, so I've got 9 opposing Civs on a HUGE map... is the number of opposing Civs in a single player game always static based on map size, or did I miss an options screen or something?

From the Main Menu select Single Player, then select Custom Game instead of Play Now.

So that no one misses the FOFC multiplayer signup:

http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~fof/foru...ad.php?t=44005

Thanks!

Sigh.

Just picked this up, this makes 4 games I've bought in the last two weeks, where I had gone a good number of months without getting one previously.

Of course now is also when I have the least amount of time to actually play games. It makes no sense. It's Civilization though, I couldn't stop myself. Life can wait. :)

Same here. I spent over $750 on bb cards this week and so I wasn't going to skimp on paying $50 for a game. I just hope that I can be enthusiastic to play any games which I haven't been for a good part of the year.

yes circuit city this week has it for 49.99 but you get a $10 gift card with it.

I just brought Civilization IV home. I'm not sure if I'm going to install it tonight or not.

but the AI will love you if you do :)

Oh believe me, you will install it. Then you will play it until about 2am :D

Well played.

Just play the tutorial

NO. NO. I will be up until 2am!!

and thats on the conservative side. ;)

Don't forget to toggle on the clock... and alarm, if needed.

Thankfully, I don't have to get up very early tomorrow. I can get up as late as about 11:30 and still get my tasks done for the day. I need to be at the bank by noon, I'll be at a football game at 1:00 if the weather is nice, and then there's bowling at midnight. I could nap after the football game if necessary. I'm still thinking about it. :)

If anybody's wondering which football game, it's just the showdown between the NAIA doormat Seton Hill Griffins (1-7) and the Division II Charleston (WV) Golden Eagles (6-3). Go Griffins!

(we don't stand a chance)

Can you not abandon a city?

Does the collector's edition shown for ordering on outpost.com include the game, or is it just the extras? (I'd presume the former, but I'd like to make sure before I order.)

i was told by the guy at EB that the collectors edition is simply the normal game in a cool box. Nothing extra (except the box) and was only available to pre-order folks.

Well the Special Edition has the CivIV Soundtrack, a spiral bound manual, a tech tree poster, and a keyboard shortcut poster. Not sure what the Regular Edition has.

And yes, of course, the game (why wouldn't it include the game?).

The price is right, so I just wanted to make sure before I ordered it. :)

$36.99?
I don't think I can pass that up

OK, not quite as good as I thought once shipping is factored in, but I'll go for it anyway.

This is the first game I've played where that would interest me. I have only played 1.5 games so far, but I really like the soundtrack - especially the main theme. I really like that piece of music a lot. Very well done, IMO.

Yeah, I love the main theme too. I can visualize an Affrican grassland with a bunch of tribes people holding spears and jumping up and down and dancing and stuff.

I always picture a bunch of Broadway guys dancing in their Lion King tights ... but I think I like your vision better.

well, outpost still has that 36.99 price for the collectors edition, and when I asked my wife to talk me out of it, she told me to get it. so I guess I can't hold off anymore.

plunging away...

You'll be glad you did. :D

I'll also be glad I have a job where I can play games at work on my laptop...

I'm gonna ask a total noob question here, but I haven't played Civ before but I am kinda curious.

Is this a game where you, to relate it to a sports game, have a dynasty or career mode and basically go until you've been defeated in a war? Or does Civ play in more of a "season" type mode where you play to an ending point?

You start in the BC times, and you play straight through to present/near time future times, a certain amount of years go by each turn. There is a time limit at 2050AD. If you hit the time limit whoever has the highest score wins. You can also win by conquest(war), culture, space race, diplomatically(unite the world under you) and other ways I believe. You can pick and choose the winning conditions and remove the time limit altogether if you like.

Not sure I fully understand the question. There is definitely an end point (several victory conditions actually) like total domination, first in space etc... You can turn these conditions on or off. But you always have the option of continuing (indefinitely I believe) if you want to continue on until you've conquered the world. You just run out of tech advances/new units to build at some point.

Thanks guys, that helps me understand a lot better.

You can technically keep going after you've conquered the world, can't you? Although, you just have no opponents.

Anyway, the only thing that HAS to end the game is the destruction of your entire civilization -- you can "lose" wars, as long as you still have a few cities left. Everything else is customizable, so that even if a certain "victory condition" is met, that civ doesn't win. Basically, you can pick which of the victory conditions will actually result in a victory in your game. There are several, and at this point, I don't even think I have them all memorized.