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Shabbaman
23-12-2005, 10:15
quote:v1.52 is a major upgrade to Civ IV and includes numerous optimizations for memory usage that should help performance on all machines but are tailored to especially improve performance on machines at or near the minimum specification.



Major changes include:



-Shared low-level graphics buffers



-Removed many unused fonts and reduced interface memory usgae



-Paged out units which are not visible



-Reduced terrain data size and overhead



-Reduced route data size



-Created a set of low-res movies for machines without dynamic texture support (this is a separate download)



These changes not only reduced the amount of system memory required, but lowered video memory usage extensively. Also, the rate at which the game consumes memory in the late-game has decreased, which is extremely important.



In addition, a new config file (ini) option called 'MemorySaver' has been added for further memory reduction, at the cost of alt-tabbing support. If you set MemorySaver=1 in the config file, you can lower your system memory usage by 70% of video memory. So if you have a 128MB video card, you can save an additional ~90MB of system memory. MemorySaver defaults to off, and is not officially recommended since it doesn't handle alt-tabbing and other cases of graphics device loss at this time. However, we recognize that some users may want to experiment with it.



Finally, the use of unofficial patches is not recommended and is largely redundant with the memory fixes in this patch. Unofficial patches may slow performance, cause graphical problems or conflict with Firaxis code resulting in crashes or other problems. It also makes it more difficult for us to respond to error reports and debug issues reported by users running unauthorized patches.



Suggestions for optimal performance:



Increase AGP memory size in your BIOS settings to 128 or 256 if necessary.

Go to www.windowsupdate.com and apply updates

Update graphics and sound drivers

Close other background applications

Turn graphics to low and use low-resolution textures in the options screen

Turn off Antialiasing in your display properties

Disable virus protection



-Mustafa Thamer



Civ IV Lead Programmer



Changes:

- Tech cost rebalancing

- Improved city attack AI

- Moved MaxAutosaves to ini file

- Slower Great People name generation

- Hide health bars during combat

- Increased late-game tech costs

- Waypoints now invisible when city screen is up

- AI more willing to trade cities for peace

- AI stays at war longer

- Cottages no longer grow durring anarchy

- Combat info now shows odds of success

- WBS's now contain unit damage

- Score from land doesn't count until you own land for 20 turns

- Better invasion AI

- Slavery: No Upkeep

- Emancipation: Low Upkeep

- Tweaked AI civic values

- Filled in missing diplo entries for Frederick

- Praetorians: 40->45 hammers

- Jaguars: 40->35 hammers

- AI turn optimizations

- Interface game messages are now flushed at end of turn

- Environmentalism moved to Medicine

- Increased industrial era tech costs

- Environmentalism is medium upkeep

- Free Speech is low upkeep

- Forests give 0.5 health

- Firepower in combat now based on max strength

- Lobby sorting improvements

- Clearing the table in the MP diplomacy screen resets the "They accept/They do not accept" text

- Dawn of man screen closes with ESCAPE just like all the other interface screens

- The hall of fame now shows only games that have been played with the currently-loaded mod

- When trying to build an item that it not allowed in a city, you will get a production popup asking for a build instead of leaving production empty

- Wonder Movies and other popups may appear in PBEM/Hotseat

- Incremented save version to 102

- Simplified city billboard placement. This should fix the weird billboard offsets and scaling.



Additions:

- Lobby chat and buddy lists from staging rooms

- Combat odds now shown in combat turn log

- ALT-S now allows you to place signs

- Added "Leave Forest" option for automated workers

- Added Marathon game speed (longer than Epic)

- Added NoTechSplash ini setting

- More communication about autopatch failures

- Domestic advisor remembers which cities you had selected last time screen was up.

- Added "no cheating" game option for single-player

- In addition to tradeable techs, techs that are not allowed to be traded to you are also shown, provided that you can research them yourself at the moment

- Added event and replay messages when a human founds a city. This got broken when we added city renaming

- Support for Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard

- When you zoom to a city from the domestic advisor, you return to the domestic advisor after you exit the city screen

- Updated Info Screen with changes 'borrowed' from one of the forum modders



Fixes:

- Unit attack move bug

- Civ naming bug in sp

- No longer keep your gold and techs when regenerating a map

- Missing civic name from popup help

- Minimap now appears correctly after regenerating map

- Unit cycling bug

- Load game freeze bug

- Movement freeze bug in si-move

- Unit cycling bug in PitBoss and HotSeat

- Missing plot list buttons bug with large stacks

- Pathfinding bug involving defensive terrain and group movement

- Bug with AI attacking over rivers

- Can no longer see spies on caravels

- Group attack bug

- Group attack bug with gunships

- GS lobby ignoring game settings bug

- Disappearing popup help bug

- Diplo city trading bug

- Wonder movie/zoom to building crash

- No camera adjustment to city screen bug

- User profiles with build queues no longer crash

- No more negative gold in diplo screen

- Fixed gifting bad cities to AI exploit

- AI issues with Always War and Always Peace

- Units not moving into tiles after combat bug (graphical only)

- Pathfinding reuse fix

- Fixed pathfinding bug

- Fixed SHIFT-selecting multiple cities

- End score not matching up with timed winner bug

- Fixed bug allowing selection of disabled techs in tech chooser

- Fixed Sentry promotion visiblity bug

- Fixed AI city targeting bug

- Fixed AI healing bug

- AI city attack bug

- No more message lag in single-player

- Fixed bug with gunship stacks attacking cities

- Random seed bug (causing duplicate world maps...)

- Unit health bars no longer show up in city screen

- Two-palaces-from-culture-flipping-capital bug

- Foreign Advisor: Gold available for trade does not show up when there cannot be a trade for gold

- Diplomacy screen fix for gold popups not appearing properly

- Foreign advisor: Resources for active player are shown multiple times if you have more than one instance of a resource to trade.

- Fixed weird little bug with Unit Categories page in Civilopedia

- Diplomacy bug for PBEM/Hotsesat

- Removed some cheats from password-protected games that should not have been allowed in the first place

- Fix for competitive games: Password-protected saves can no longer be easily stripped of their passwords, and the assets checksum in the save can no longer be modified by external means

- Fixed vanishing yield symbols in multiplayer

- Fixed some PBEM/Hotseat issues when there is just one human player

- River and Wind sounds are now properly classified as ambience. This fixes inconsistent behavior in audio options

- Minimized or No Interface no longer reverts to normal after entering, then exiting city view

- You can no longer duplicate deals with the AI from the "Active deals" section of the diplomacy screen

- Out of memory message problem on machines that don't allocate small textures properly

- Assert error for software vertex processing only machines

- Bug where you could draw strategy lines and signs outside of globe view

- "globe view buildings disabled" option now hides buildings in globe view properly

ProPain
23-12-2005, 12:23
well, to me it sounds they should have done this for the release version. At least it will motivate me to retry playing civ4 again.

Also I dont really get what's the big deal about alt-tab support is: Alt tab would always result in a crash on my laptop anyway, so I'd say removing that 'support' is no harm done. 70% less mem usage however sounds like a significant improvement :)

I reallu have the impression that firaxis thinks the 'release now, patch later' model is working fine, it seems these bugs are worse than the C3C bugs, which in turn were worse than PTW bugs. It's a pity.

ERIKK
23-12-2005, 13:01
Yeah, you are right. I suppose they think the mass-beta-test-way is best. But first wait and see (this version)...
;)

Whomp
23-12-2005, 16:55
Patch 1.09 blew out the first PBEM between Tubby and I. Do you guys think the same will happen with this patch?

akots
23-12-2005, 18:34
It is quite possible. Also, while many people were playing just fine with 1.09 and Harkonnen fix, it seems that in many cases, 1.52 either decreases performance or requires to lower graphics resolution. But it might make the game to use less memory.

There are apparently also many "minor" undocumented features. This sucks because it seems even developers themselves have vague idea about what had actually been changed in the patch. [lol]

Beam
23-12-2005, 20:04
The Christmas release. [rant] These are massive release notes. Wasn't the original releasedate about now before they expedited?

grs
23-12-2005, 22:06
I have no problem loading the PBEM I am playing with Darkness. Is just asks me if I would like to take or abandon my city of Delhi and lost all my settings, but that was it.

ProPain
23-12-2005, 23:53
reading this I just settle for the next patch beforehand.

- Back to WoW -

Darkness
24-12-2005, 11:07
quote:Originally posted by Whomp

Patch 1.09 blew out the first PBEM between Tubby and I. Do you guys think the same will happen with this patch?


Like grs said, we also moved to 1.52f. It works just fine (loading the saves, etc.). The game only messes up some of the game settings, like the multiple unit display option...

Lt. Killer M
27-12-2005, 00:00
hm, I do see ProPain's point, but I must say that as long as one wasn't hit by the graphics problems, then CivIV was pretty much a 'good game' in the 'out of the box' setup. The first patch, well, the usual: mass-beta-testing, and the graphics bugs were simply inacceptible.

The new patch - I am already salivating! Monster game length, here I come :D

Socrates
28-12-2005, 02:22
1.52 ??? [eek] I can just conclude that they've been working like crazy, we should at least be content about it ! That's many, many unsatisfaying versions there, but indeed, I think they thought of refraining from releasing other versions inbetween and just giving us a good Christmas present. :) Just have to finish my Epic1 (lol) with 1.09, and then it's 1.52 all the way of course.

There are many things I don't understand in this huge log (most of them I don't care, since it's bugs I will never encounter anyway), but just this : what is that about alt-tab ? Does it work as badly as before (same lagging time, especially in the modern era), or doesn't it even work ?? Frankly, I'm OK for the moment if I can do just like before (full-screen and alt-tab), as long as it doesn't harm the game (since the game itself should be quicker on my obsolete machine), but if it can be a bit quicker, then no problem.

Ginger_Ale
28-12-2005, 05:36
krys: Alt-Tab works faster now. Where you might've gotten confused is the "MemorySaver=1" option in the .ini that speeds up the game (I've heard by around 50%), yet it kills Alt-Tab support.

Sir Eric
01-01-2006, 13:43
Patch v1.52 made a HUGE difference on my machine.

Before the path the load times use to take up to 4 minutes and when you exited the game the pc would react slowly for a few minutes afterward.

Since i installed the patch, the time it takes to load a game had decressed significantly and once I quite to windows, I barely get that lag period.

Ribannah
03-01-2006, 13:51
All that MemSaver=1 does for me is increase the number of crashes.
With MemSaver=0 the game runs faster, too.

Lt. Killer M
03-01-2006, 14:49
since the patch I have abundant crashes, especially during saving of games :(

Shabbaman
03-01-2006, 15:02
Since the patch I have crashes in Battlefield2. Might or might not be related.

Matrix
03-01-2006, 15:11
I wonder how useful I would've been as beta tester. The game runs perfectly here! Never had any crash. I probably would've thought this is the case because I was beta tester. [rolleyes]

Pastorius
03-01-2006, 15:26
One test 1.52, and it seems to work. No significant speed increase noted yet.

But no slowdown/crash noted either.

In my case, the game was very playable from start

Ribannah
04-01-2006, 01:32
quote:Originally posted by Shabbaman

Since the patch I have crashes in Battlefield2. Might or might not be related.

I might, you know. I've read that Civ4 makes such extensive use of the video card that it can get overheated.

Lt. Killer M
04-01-2006, 13:00
my crashes all come when trying to quick-save, I am starting to notice :( finally a good featuer, and WHAM it is broken

Shabbaman
04-01-2006, 13:04
quote:Originally posted by Ribannah

quote:Originally posted by Shabbaman

Since the patch I have crashes in Battlefield2. Might or might not be related.

I might, you know. I've read that Civ4 makes such extensive use of the video card that it can get overheated.



Well, I'm not using both programs simultaneously ;)

Melifluous
04-01-2006, 14:38
quote:Originally posted by Ribannah


I might, you know. I've read that Civ4 makes such extensive use of the video card that it can get overheated.



I have certainly seen this.

My stupid ass laptop has the fan vent on the bottom of the laptop and often overheats...

But it also does it in World of Warcraft and GTA: San Andreas so it's not just civ...

[meli]

Shabbaman
04-01-2006, 14:41
quote:Originally posted by MelifluousMy stupid ass laptop has the fan vent on the bottom of the laptop and often overheats...

Hehehe, mental image of meli with his laptop in the commuter train :D

Not good for your little soldiers dude!

digger760
04-01-2006, 16:34
quote:Originally posted by Ribannah
I might, you know. I've read that Civ4 makes such extensive use of the video card that it can get overheated.


Sounds more like bad video card design that bad software design

Beam
04-01-2006, 21:10
Game runs ok with 1.52 but the copy protection seems to be changed and I have to put the CD in the drive now each time for play. :(

Melifluous
05-01-2006, 12:52
Beam I'm still using the Markstar inspired workaround.

CD mounted in Alcohol and use sd4hide to get by.

PM me if you need more info/files.

[meli]

Pastorius
05-01-2006, 14:50
Alcohol, the solution to and the cause to all problems :D

I run it on dvd myself. And it is the only damn thing I ever put in my dvd player.

I thought the euro version was dvd, not cd?

Or did you guys import the US version?

digger760
09-01-2006, 00:16
There is a no-dvd fixed exe on gamecopy world...works just fine for me.