Civ 4 patch 3.19 released

A big surprise from Firaxis, Civ 4 patch 3.19 released with no fanfare on June 10th. Users who logged in multiplayer were immediately told to upgrade or not play MP.

MP is now impossible with a patch lower than 3.19 because of a bug discovered which allowed bad users to spoof someone's account by logging directly into gamespy.

The game has no new content but fixes quite a number of bugs. There's a number of undocumented bug fixes as well that are just being discovered. There are new changes as well including moving some resources to to XML rather than raw code so this is a small boon for modders.

There is a small controversy after Firaxis fixed a gold exploit when workers chop trees just as a building is about to be finished in a city. Some players complain that this will lead to a return of mircomanaging.

more info here

Surprising indeed. Thanks for the heads-up, downloading the patch now.

Also, the CD check is removed.

HUZZAH! No more cd check! See you in hell, Civ4 cds!

Yeah, that was seriously cool.

Weirdness, though, was that the game yelled that my system was below spec and turned down everything to the minimum. Turned everything right back to the maximum, so no damage done, but still weird.

I like the look of the new Tectonics map, btw. (It is new, right?)

Always love CD-check removal ...

Now why did I forget to mention the DRM removal? My computer boots up faster without the CD in it now, thank you.

Civ4 does the same thing to me PJ. My guess is the game is old enough not to recognize the new hardware or possibly the Vista 64 drivers.

Tectonics is a user made mod created by LDiCesare and incorporated into BtS. Almost everything on BtS is. I've yet to play it so I'll check it out. Thanks.

I like the Gods of Old Mod in BtS. Its just a simple mod which lets your prophets bring down fire from the heavens, etc. Nothing ticks you off more than a sudden earthquake hitting your Capitol during a time of peace and your spy network can't figure out who it was. It also adds a religious victory condition.

I've been playing around with different maps lately. The most popular one seems to be PerfectWorld2 which seems to combine Tectonics into some new ideas such as creating New World and Old World continents and making it very, very likely you and your rivals in MP will start in the Old World.

I used to play the Rise of Mankind, Revolutions and (later) RevolutionDCM mods solo.

I've yet to play the most poular mod, Fall from Heaven, which adds the fantasy elements to the game

They are guaranteed to be broken with the new patch of course but I look forward to their fixes.

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From my previous thread about the Take2 guy lecture its clear that the all the devs over there still play this game..alot, so this new patch is not as much as a surprise to me as most people. There's a new version of Civ4 complete available in NA for $37 too so I'm guessing that has something to do with it.

Whoa, that's a pretty hefty price tag for a game that's, what, four years old? OK, it includes some major additional content, but still. IIRC I paid about 10 euros for my Civ IV Complete.

Has there been any talk of Firaxis' next game? Be it CIV5, SMAC2, or something else?

well it includes Colonization which still retails solo at $20 at Amazon. Civ4 gold has been around $30 and BtS has been largely off the market as well as the original Civ4:Complete. Strange marketing if you ask me.

There is absolutely no word on a Civ 5. I've been tempted to try Civ3 again I've played Civ4 so much.

There's a good article here on something called Elemental:War of Magic which looks to be something like a Disciples clone. In the article its about a discoussion the dev had with Soren Johnson, the lead on Civ4 at the GDC.

I played Civ3 again the other day. Although I got farther than the first time, what a horribly dated and primitive game. I don't remember it being so bad (that way).

Since most of hte mods are broken I've been playing with custom maps. An amazing one is Ringworld which is gigantic in width but really narrow in height. It makes for a unique style of play.