I will try Civ 4 when either the 3 things hapen
1)it gets cheaper
2)They release a patch and some things to improve it
3)WOM says everything is ok (according to 3)stay away for a while)
Also im actually looking forward to the Civics and religon systems (Hope they actually work) from what i see its like running a nation on a very low level (Federal but not global like SP2) So it appears nice and some people note it as "not bad"-which actually is not good and therefore...well not good notheless anyways i belive that as games progress people naturally (its true don't deny it) Grade games on past stuff And the thing is...sequels will always be different-That damages peoples respect for it and the game maker. Still sid meiser has made decent games Decent Sim games and stuff...i hope things improve because i would like to try it...

Also from what i understand it appears as if ATI radeon is not liked by CIV4 so when i upgrade my computer to use the game i will go to NVIDA For Geforce Cards (*sigh* no matter what i MUST fork over ks of money which is hard for me to get access too)

Mike C, if you turn off your music, the crashes during movies will be reduced.

You really need a Gig of memory for games with lots of usable land on the smaller worlds. If you want to play large or huge with lots of land, you'll need even more then 1 Gig of RAM.

You can now play a full game of Civ to a space win in less then 4 hours. Most of my Space wins are averaging about 3 1/2 hours on normal sized worlds. That's a huge difference from Civ2, where I'd need a lot of time. The main time saver is "Automated Workers". They aren't as good as you manually controlling them, but not having to constantly micro-manage them gets you into short evening time... if you don't bother going for a military victory.

Religion isn't a big deal. You need it to build temples. It gains you a happy neighbor bonus if you and they are the same religion. It gains you "Burn the heathen!" hate points if you aren't. Other then that, it isn't a major facet of the game.

Civics are nice, but their is a distinct "best choice" at all times of the game. Which means the civics are not balanced, as you'll be following the peaceful line of civic advancement or the best war line of civic advancement. It's a step up from the old government system, but it isn't the true SMAC government customization.

If Civ4 wasn't so CTD prone, it would be a really nice game. As it is, it will be an older Civ killer. It won't be SMAC killer until the SMAC mod is out for it.

I'm another person who hasn't had a problem with Civ IV, and I'm enjoying it immensely. In fact, of the eight people I know personally that are playing it, none of them has had the reported problems. I'm using an ATI Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition 256M video card, with the Catalyst 05.7 drivers. The other pertinent aspects of my computer are 2GB RAM, and a Pentium 3.0GHz., and the game is running fine.

I updated the drivers and it fixed the crash. True about needing a gig of ram.

Currently, I am using a mod that slows things down a bit and lets you soend more time in the eras, so you can use your units.

Religion has been pretty important to me. It gives AI players a reason. I have better relations with those of the same religion and worse with those are different. So the AI has another reason to act a certain way. Ive seen AI's of the same religion ally up, wich is nice cause at least you can see a reason why.

I am enjoying that you can see why your relations are the way they are.

You really need a Gig of memory for games with lots of usable land on the smaller worlds. If you want to play large or huge with lots of land, you'll need even more then 1 Gig of RAM

Christ CIV 4 is the most memory hogging game in the world!

You can now play a full game of Civ to a space win in less then 4 hours. Most of my Space wins are averaging about 3 1/2 hours on normal sized worlds. That's a huge difference from Civ2, where I'd need a lot of time. The main time saver is "Automated Workers". They aren't as good as you manually controlling them, but not having to constantly micro-manage them gets you into short evening time... if you don't bother going for a military victory

Great now i can own every civ with supieror Tech!

Civics are nice, but their is a distinct "best choice" at all times of the game. Which means the civics are not balanced, as you'll be following the peaceful line of civic advancement or the best war line of civic advancement. It's a step up from the old government system, but it isn't the true SMAC government customization.

it looks good though (since it stands mostly unopposed it HAS to look good!) if anyone can waste 6 hours (Excluding WoW in asia... ) playing a *coughs*-SENSLESS-*coughs*
Game then i think it MUST be good!

I haven't had any problems with mine either. I have an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, 1 Gig of RAM and a Pentium 3.06 ghz proc.

Civ4 is really great game. It has multiplayer which is also very nice. There are so many people playing it over internet already. Stardockers, please observe how "unpopular" is multiplayer in turn based games and earn some conclusions.

An yet, all polls on this forum about whether people would actually want/use/pay for a MP GC turn out "NO!" by a factor of 9 to 1.

Also note that Civ4 changes its format so you can play an entire game in less then 4 hours. This was "required" to make the game suitable for MP play, according to the Civ Developers. 2 hours or less is the preferred time frame for an truly strategic MP game.

MP has a lot of different design concerns then SP play. StarDock has already stated that to make a good MP game, the SP game suffers. And that's true in Civ4. The AI is very under-developed for the game. But that's alright, according to the Civ Developers, because the Civ community will develop a good AI, in about 2 years. So that means that the Civ developers made the conscious design decision to short-changing their SP player base (you know, those customers that have been paying Sid's bills since he formed MicroProse), by at least 2 years, in favor of making the game a decent MP TBS game. Of course, the AI in Civ has always sucked, so it isn't really noticable. But Star Dock's AI is known to be of the highest quality in TBS games. Cutting it down would be noticed by the reviewers and customer base. That would generate some badwill with their customer base, so it might not be as attractive to Star Dock as it was to Take Two and Firaxis.