So I eventually started Civ4 on my PC.
I installed it (in English), then installed the patch downloaded from CDZ. Odd, the PC freezes when I try to access/open the Civ4 directory (seems to work OK now, but before I launched the game, it would freeze, then accept me in that folder) ; BTW, I installed the game in another place than the default directory. OK, so, now I have launched the game, I can find the directories and INI file to which 10 links point (/Civ4/My Games) : is there something to do about that, to make the Civ4 activity running (taking screenshots, save games, etc...) ?
I launched the game, and watched the intro movie. It was completely fucked up : graphics and sound were glitching every 2 seconds, making it unbearable to watch (fortunately I saw it in a vid before and we can skip it). The main menu runs fine, the Earth rotation's cinematics and the superb music (Lion King
). Just, I get a message that I'm below the recommanded configuration (and so it will give low performance), but it was expected. Odd, when I entered the tutorial mode and got out of it, the game would leave full-screen for a few seconds, back to Windows, before going to this little box with the status bar again (like when you launch the game), and then go to the tutorial/main menu.
The graphics are fair, not splendid. Can't tell much by what I saw, since the tutorial prevents you from messing with the game as you want. I stopped there (well, I went as far as Sid was there). In fact, I have never seen a game exiting as fast as this one (a very few seconds including the "bzzz bzzz" in Windows). Leaderheads would show completely. Noticed a few strange things on the map. I could see the terrain east of Rome in the tutorial (beyond the sea), but when I moved the screen towards it, it would become black (fog of war) as it should always be, and the rest of the land would turn blueish ; mousing over the "new" terrain in the east wouldn't reveal the usual info though (normal). Also, I was able to see the greenish stuff specific to the (long) flood plains in the fog of war... effectively indicating that there were some flood plains there. That's all so far, I think.
Anything to comment on, direct me to ? How do I stand on the system's issue ?