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.

Has anyone found the No-CD exe yet?

Domination (certain % of land and population), Cultural (3 cities over 50,000 culture, I think), Diplomatic (UN Victory), and Conquest (take the whole son of a bitch), IIRC.

Of course if you have Domination AND Conquest actively, you'll never win by Conquest, as Domination victory will come sooner ;).

You can get in trouble talking about things like that....






None out yet. I've been looking.

Y'know, maybe I should be harder on no-CD exe's, but that's in a different category as far as I'm concerned. It annoys the living daylights out of me that I have to have the CD in to play a game. Sometimes I have evening meetings at my office, and it would be a great time to just stay here and play for a little while rather than go home, tool around for 45 minutes, and come back, but I have to have the stupid CD to play the game more and more these days. Very annoying. By NO means do I want FOFC in any, way, shape or form to be seen as condoning hacking, but, right or wrong, I have a very hard time viewing someone who has BOUGHT the game as doing anything wrong when they use a no-CD exe.

Maybe you should concentrate on IHOF while waiting around for your meetings.



:)

at the risk of sending a long thread into a longer tangent, I have a hard time seeing where there'd be an issue with no-cd patches. I use them for every game that I install, and if by some chance there is not a nocd patch out there (like for later versions of RTW), I usually wont bother playing the game.
It's not only just a matter of swapping CDs, or carting CDs to work with my laptop: CD checks can also slow down the game, which makes me insane. I bought the damn game, let me play the frigging thing the right way.

and, not really surprisingly, Outpost cancelled my Civ IV order.

oh well.

That sucks.

They haven't gotten around to telling me yet.

I ordered my copy from EBGames.com yesterday. A few bucks more than elsewhere probably but I had a gift certificate there that I got for my birthday last week. Thanks for Civ4 mom and dad! :)

I completely agree. I can't stand having to have the disk in my computer to play a game that I've bought.

Agreed. No CD Patch isn't out yet, as far as I can tell. There is a no intro fix out right now.

I decided to check on my order at outpost.com; it's showing "partial backorder", but it's not canceled yet.

I resemble that remark....

this guy wants to know how is AI

I have to express how much I am loving this game!

The Battle of Thermoplye was fought again, this time against the Huns, and it saved my empire. A single brave phalanx, backed up by a corps of longbowmen held the city againt wave after wave of hun horse archers and swordsmen. Eventually, we were able to move into their lands, destroying everything in our path. Soon they sued for peace.

Me as well. I was without my PC for most of December and January, very nice to get back in it.

Best Buy will have Civilization IV for $29.99 on April 9-April 15

Has anyone had any luck with the Direct IP multiplayer? Me and a friend want to get a game going, but keep getting a "timed out" message. Firewalls off, got the right IP and everything.

My wife and I have used Direct IP a good bit and not had too many problems.

Last day is today.

Awesome game.

I find it better not to have workers on automatic. Its always best to do it yourself. And best to control what citzen you want on your squares in your city.

If you have workers on automatic they tend to do a lot of cottage.

If one of you have a router, the router can cause that problem - try having the person without a router host, or I think it's on civfanatics (link on official civ site too).. on their forums, they have a list of the ports you need to open on your router to play.

You can also setup port forwarding on the router too.

We both have routers- my friend looked up it, talked to some people- and found out how to open the correct ports, and set everything up. We got it running, and I must say it is a lot of fun.

yeah, this is annoying. caught the AI cheating tonight. Was almost done The Sistine Chapel, so I traded Theology to Napoleon. The very next turn, he'd completed it.

Did he have a Great Engineer that he could use to rush the Sistine Chapel?

Henry's got a point.... that sounds like something I would do. :D

Same here :D.

Diplomatic issue...
 

Im not exactly a noob but ive always ignored the Diplomatic victory condition...
now im going for it BUT...

ive been elected UN Secret
How can i call for a vote on some issue?? i have to wait till the voting atomatically starts?

PLEASE some help :(
thx

Every few (3?) turns, it'll give you the option to call a vote. You can't kick it off when you want.

As long as the thread is bumped... good preview for Warlords:

http://uk.pc.ign.com/articles/707/707377p1.html

Thx Celeval!

http://www.digitalstadium.org/smf/in...sg1786#msg1786

In case anyone is wondering...

I've been using Game Jackal (hxxp://www.gamejackal.com/) to play Civ 4 without a CD. You get 250 free uses and I think it only costs like $10 to buy.

Just put the cd in when you play. It only takes a few seconds to do it.

It's a pain when you're playing on a laptop.

I burned a copy of mine to my hard drive and I mount it as a virtual drive using daemon tools (and hide daemon tools with sd4hide).

Takes up X mb but saves me from messing around with nocd cracks and preserves my original cd (which I needed to dig out when I deleted my iso (doh))

You can download the CD mini image from gameburnworld, and use daemon tools/sd4hide. Then you don't need to take up as much HD space.

Seconded - this method has worked for me for many months with no problems.

Anyway, just a reminder... Warlords is out on the 28th. Oh, and all the new Civs, their leaders (plus some for existing Civs), those leaders' traits, new gameplay 'stuff', and scenarios have been out for a quite a while.

Just a public service announcement ;).

Imran, have they started developing true (event-driven) scenarios yet? All I see in a quick glance are mods and maps but nothing like what we've seen in the Scenario League.

Damned if I know. I like the new civs, leaders, UU's, and unique buildings. I'd like the Warlords addition, but I'm not a warmonger ;).

Though I think Omen scenario may be 'event driven'. I'm not sure.

According the previews, they mentioned such scenarios 'as only Firaxis can develop'. Maybe the SDK is too intimidating, I don't know. Python, I thought, was supposed to be the scripting language. But like you, I like the new civs, leaders, UUs and UBs.

For the Bucc man:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/719/719278p1.html

Chinese Unification, 450 BC


The Peloponnesian War, 444 BC



Alexander the Great 336 BC


The Rise of Rome 300 BC




Age of the Vikings 800AD



Genghis Khan 1206 AD



Omens, 1754



Barbarian Horde



---


Oh, and Python is the scripting language, but the SDK is more the guts of the game. Kind of like the source code (but not exactly, of course ;)).

For example, Python can script events and change up things using the engine, while SDK can do things like:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=151787





Yes, that is ranged artillery attack and stacks fighting against each other at the same time using 'combined arms'.

Though I have not used the mod, people in the thread seem to like it.

From CivFanatics, sorry Imran (note some of these changes were from 1.61):

Since I couldn't find one in the documentation, I have compiled a list with changed things in Warlords as compared with v1.61 (for the NEW things you can go here)

Buildings

• Heroic Epic requires a level 5 unit (as oposed to 4 previously) and West Point level 6 (as oposed to 5)
• Barracks provide only +3XP (instead of +4XP) but are cheaper (50 hammers instead of 60)
• Castles provide +1 Trade route (the benefit expires with Economics)
• The Spiral Minaret gives +2gold per building (instead of +1)
• Obelisk is renamed a Monument (Obelisk is now a Unique Building for Egypt)

Units & Combat

• Chariots get +100% attack vs. Axemen (only attack)
• Chariots have +10% retreat chance (instead of +20%)
• Pinch promotion (anti-gunpowder) is available only after researching Gunpowder
• Drill II-IV provide collateral damage reduction also (besides the original first strikes)
• Guerilla promotion line has III promotions now (Guerilla III adds +25 Attack (!!) to hills)
• Redcoats reduced to 14 strength (from 16)
• Cossacks reduced to 15 strength (from 18)
• Siege units are immune to collateral damage (except Machine Gun)
• Horse Archers have reduced (-10%) City Attack but get +20% retreat chance
• Forts act as a city for combat purposes
• Forts can be built over forests
• Selecting large stacks displays the units on more than one row
• The stack tooltip no longer shows all combat details for all units in a stack.. only the 'first' one in the stack is shown
• When capturing workers they cannot move in the same turn (therefore you have to be able to defend them in order to keep them)
• Marine & SAM Infantry no longer promote to Mech. Infantry (they are end-of-the-line unit).
• Machine Guns promote to Mech. Infantry instead of SAM Infantry

City Management

• Production->Science/Gold/Culture converts 100% of the production (instead of 50%) and the production bonuses are applied (like Forge, Factory etc) (they did not in vanilla civ which makes this the probably the Warlords change with the biggest effect... now the big production cities can become temporary big science/money/culture generators).
• Science/Gold/Culture and Maintenance are now computed with 2 decimal places at the city level (and rounded only at the civ level)
• F1 screen now allows the management of specialists.
• After capturing a city you are prompted to build something immediately (as opposed to the end of resistance)

Game Options

• Goodie huts can be disabled (No Tribal Villages)
• New map options: World Wrap (Torroidal/Flat/Cylindrical), Resources (Balanced/Standard)

Other

• Fascism gives a free Great General for the first civilization that discovers it
• The leader dialog box no longer displays the attitude on the top of the box
• The amount of hammers reported in the tooltips when chopping a forest is not dependent anymore on the production now but the bonuses (if any) still apply (inside the city... the chopping hammers appear in the production tooltip as a separate line).
• The hammers that result from chopping are not added immediately but in the next turn.
• Rivers give benefits to additional plots in some cases (eg.. river delta... give bonus to three plots instead of two)
• Several leaders have the traits changed (complete list)
• BUG?: City governor switches cities with negative food (even with as few as -1 food) to 'Fast Starvation Mode' (it creates the maximum number of specialists possible with the result that city population decreases much faster than 'it should')