Sid Meier Interview

[bapenguin]

Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61945) was lucky enough to sit down with game developing legend Sid Meier. They got to talk about his recent Civilization title, the merger of Firaxis Software with Take Two and their plans for the console market.

"We definitely have an eye on the console market," Meier continues. "We're really happy with the response to Pirates!, which we brought out on PC and Xbox. It was our first console game, unless you count the Commodore 64 as a console. It's got to the point technology-wise, and in terms of the types of games people are really accepting on consoles now, that we're back in the mode of looking at the console marketplace as somewhere for us to grow in the future. So, no specific things that we've announced, but we're looking forward to Xbox 360 and PS3; we think there are some great opportunities. Even on the handhelds, we're seeing a lot of turn-based games."
I heard Civ 4 had a lot of issues out of the box...has any of it been resolved yet?

[Nesta]

The only issues I've had (and they were few and far between) were resolved with the new patch. It's still a helluva strain on my PC if I choose a Huge map, but any other size maps seem to do just fine.

[MrMeatshake]

I heard Civ 4 had a lot of issues out of the box...has any of it been resolved yet?

ask TRiLoGY, he's bin having loads of crashes with this game. don't know if the patch has fixed it...

[Mobeus Chronox]

picked the game up on black friday, its unpatched probably first run copy and I've had zero problems with it. There is a bit of skipping with the videos sometimes but if thats the worst there is then I can honestly say I'll be happy with it unpatched for the life of the game.

[Citizen Philip]

There was a loud vocal minority who were using graphic controllers and laptops who had problems, and there were some problems with Radeon 7500s. Civ4 required new ATI and Nvidia drivers and and the newest DirectX included on the CD: if you didn't install the DirectX or didnt have the drivers you had problems: most average gamers could leap those technical hurdles in 10 minutes, but more average users hit a wall.

I have problems getting the in-game bink video movies of the Wonders to work properly, but my rig and in-game bink videos have never got along. Gameplay is good and it run's well, the patch did some optimization that makes the game run smoother.

[Inverarity]

On my machine, the patch has mitigated the problems I had, but none of them seem to be completely gone. The game runs without too many crashes on small maps, but if I run a large map I've come to expect 3-4 catastrophic crashes (read: full reboot required) before completing a game. Not acceptable at all- just because the crashes are cut in half doesn't make it a working game.

(Athlon XP 3000+, 1GB RAM, GeForce 5900 (soon to be 6600GT))

[Ervin]

I've played for about 20 hours, 3 games, and have had zero problems - no crashes, lockups. Really loving the game.

However - the UI is a usability nightmare, it's a 5 year step backwards. I don't get it... there's a list of cities you can look at and can sort by production and whatever, but you can't even go into the city screen by clicking the city name?! WTF? What I'd assume that screen to do is to allow me to change the productions from that screen for all of the cities, but no luck... it's not that hard to do a good UI :|. What were they thinking... well, maybe they just ran out of time. I'm hoping they'll patch those features in later...

[ruprect]

I've played about 6 games on it and haven't had any issues. Didn't have to patch drivers or anything, but I keep those pretty current anyway.
I've found it much better than Civ 3 in a lot of areas, particularly the UI. For all the information it has to represent, I think it does a great job.

[abso]

I don't like how you can no longer upgrade units from the military advisor window. Or that Leonardo's Workshop is gone as a wonder. :/ I liked getting my upgrades for half price.

[Deadend]

Hmm, making games on portables? Civ 4 DS would be great.

[Librum]

There was a loud vocal minority who were using graphic controllers and laptops who had problems, and there were some problems with Radeon 7500s. Civ4 required new ATI and Nvidia drivers and and the newest DirectX included on the CD: if you didn't install the DirectX or didnt have the drivers you had problems: most average gamers could leap those technical hurdles in 10 minutes, but more average users hit a wall.

I have problems getting the in-game bink video movies of the Wonders to work properly, but my rig and in-game bink videos have never got along. Gameplay is good and it run's well, the patch did some optimization that makes the game run smoother.

This is a bit of an understatement of the problem. No amount of driver updating, reinstalling or .ini tweaking would get the game to work on my ATI x800 out of the box. I had to download an unpacker utility and unpack one of the art files, if I remember correctly, and only then would it work.

So, sure, it did seem to be a 'vocal minority' of individuals who had problems - but it wasn't as simple as a average user vs. technically proficient gamer at all. I find the game itself runs a bit too sluggish for my tastes, especially towards the end of larger matches with multiple civs.

That coupled with some crashing and bugs that would pop up now and again has left me with a lackluster impression of the game, though I've not tried the newest patch yet.

[Karmakaze]

The UI is really bad. There's some nice features, like mouse overs with info, etc., but they are never available when you need them. All the sub-windows (Diplomacy, etc.) are modal, so you can't look at the map or anything else when talking to another civ, or picking what to build next, etc. That and the annoying mix of Leader names and Civ names is really frustrating until you remember who's who.

[TRiLoGY]

I have not got round to trying the patch yet, but When I do, I will post here to let you know If it fixes my problems :)

[Nesta]

The patch definitely fixes the stuttering video problems.

[mister_slim]

My issue is that Civ DS is not yet available.

Also, I'd like to see what Meier would come up with if he tried something like Pirates but designed entirely for a console.

[TheBrainKills]

I have problems too, you are supposed to be able to set custom resolutions but I am unable to do so, so I cant set it to 720p, I have to play it in 800x600 windowed mode. I get catastrophic crashes too, complete computer reset. Sucks monkey balls. I am uninstalling this turd. It is a good game tho ...stayed up till 2am one morning and I havn't done that with a game in a long time.

I hope he ports it to the 360.

[amusedtoe]

It seems that there's little middle ground of Civ4 being buggy, it's either completely smooth or you have an ATI card and the game's a mess I suppose. Granted for like a month I ran the game on my laptop with a Radeon chipset in it without a problem so who knows.

[Stormwatcher]

My biggest gripe is the damned videos skipping. But it runs fine, otherwise.

Regarding the UI: 85% of it is better than in previous incarnations, but the Advisot screens got a lot worse. One example is the City list, where you can only look at the list, while on previous Civs you could jump to the cities or change the production.

Anyway, the thing is that I don't even go to those screens much anymore, most of the info i know is right there at the main screen, including city stuff. I practically NEVER go into each city's screen anymore.

[Chameleo]

i'm playing it on a 3.2ghz laptop with a Radeon mobility 9700. i did the unpacking thing of that artfx file or whatever and my only issue was the skipping video when you built a wonder.

i since disabled the videos for when i built a wonder - but i've now patched the game. i should re-enable them to see if they're working.

the game freezes sometimes, but thats in online mode - i figure my internet caused it by going down. (its been doing a lot of that recently)

[amusedtoe]

the game freezes sometimes, but thats in online mode - i figure my internet caused it by going down. (its been doing a lot of that recently)

I forgot about that little bit. When I would try to browse games for more then a couple minutes the game would crash to the desktop, but I was on wireless dial-up at the time which may have made it want to commit sepuku.

[Mobeus Chronox]

after posting here, I patched my game and it worked fine for a bit, then I found that I couldn't load up a save game that I'd played entirely post patch without the game locking up. Meh, the patch broke it for me, had to uninstall and reinstall.

[MrMeatshake]

after posting here, I patched my game and it worked fine for a bit, then I found that I couldn't load up a save game that I'd played entirely post patch without the game locking up. Meh, the patch broke it for me, had to uninstall and reinstall.

hm. i ran a patch outside of the game and it was TOTALLY borked. even after an uninstall and re-install! but i then just updated from inside the game and it's sort-of-worked since. i still get crashes when starting games sometimes, though :(