Missy

This year I have mostly been receiving: League of Gentlemen Complete DVD Set Lord of The Rings Trilogy Soundtrack A vintage fountain pen Notebooks Fast Show Series 1 DVD 3 piece oriental chef's knife set A shiny meat cleaver A cloth knife roll thingy A cold Some good news Much alcohol I gave someone the Sideshow Weta Sauron statue, which is large and awesome.

Working on my WH40K Witch Hunters (Ordo Hereticus) army at the moment.

When the moon is full and I have partaken of a cheese sandwich there's no telling what I'll do. If the moon is not full, and I have not partaken of a cheese sandwich, you will receive a private missive on most occasions. I might even include a smiley. Depends which way the wind is blowing.

While it is true that people can use less up to date PCs for work, there are still a great number of people that need to have fairly current hardware for their work. I use my laptop and PC for work and there are certain specifications that I am required to meet - my current set up exceeds these definitely, but because the work involves use of MS Office, and websites of varying degrees of complexity - some flash, some more basic - I need to be able to run a browser, outlook, word, MSN messenger etc all at once without too many hiccups. Gaming is the major driving force for upgrades certainly, but then there are other applications that benefit also - I know several people that use their home PCs for graphic design, website design, programming and most of them are non-gamers.

Interestingly, all the PC gamers I know have built their own PCs at one point or another, or had a friend build for them.

Same here - while it would be lovely to be at the cutting edge all the time, it just isn't possible for me, so I've learned to live with it. As for PC games over console - most of the time PC games just feel more comfortable for me, although I do also play on consoles and handhelds... Also still using a Radeon 9800 Pro in my desktop.

What is your laptop? I'm planning to buy Civ4, but I don't know if it happily runs on my laptop. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fujitsu Siemens Amilo A1630. It's a P4 3.2Ghz, with a Radeon 9700 mobility, 1Gb RAM. So, you'd expect it to run the game just fine anyway. The same laptop had some difficulties with Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies though. Also, my boyfriend's brother's laptop, which was only a few months older, pretty much couldn't run either game. The recommended spec for Civ4 says: 1.8Ghz P4/Athlon 512Mb RAM 128Mb video card with directx 8 Directx 7 compatible soundcard Supported O/S: Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I was expecting some issues with Civ4 on the laptop as I've read there are some ATI related bugs...which would be a pain since both my desktop and laptop have ATI cards - all fine so far though. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> See Ati, thats the point tho Your system might be 3 years old but 1 gig ram was not the standard 3 years ago. Heck, most computers now adays dont come with 1 gig ram yet for that matter. So you payed extra back then rather then upgrade later when needed. End result though is you still had to pay extra. When I bought my system 3 years ago I upgraded my ram order to 256 (it sold with 128). Year later I was buying anouther 256 megs. Year after that was new vid card. My system is P4 3.2 gig, 256 geforce 4, 512 ram, and civ 4 runs slow. Its playable but its obviously slow. IE: Even though I meet and beat the recomended standards for civ4, its still taxing my system for all its worth. Just a vicious circle far as PC games go in todays markets. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Actually, I paid less than some people were paying for the model with 512Mb. Internet how I love thee. Sixteen months, not three years. My desktop I bought nearly three years ago and yes, I did pay extra on that because it was my first "top of the range" non-selfbuild PC. I do take your point though, the only real reason I was in any way considering that it wouldn't run a new game well is because of EQ2 and SWG, which made my laptop sad. I think that really, I'm used to PC gaming being a costly business...it has been for the last few years at least. I think one of the real problems is that we have a "gotta have it now" mentality in society - people don't want to wait, so they have to be up to date. Game doesn't run fast enough, graphics not quite good enough, etc. Most of the time I just think back to having to swap disks in my Amiga...and check myself for being spoilt.

I was just trying to remember the name of the people that did Galactic Civilisations.

At the moment it would be more expensive to buy it on ebay than it would from play.com! It's

I lost a lot of hours to AoE II. Lots of fun. I'm having difficulty maintaining my willpower and not ordering AoE III...Give me strength!

I never did get round to playing AoM The Titans. I liked AoM but I think I lost interest for some reason, probably due to something else being out at the same time or something. I'm debating getting AoE III since I do love the AoE games...I'm having a lot of fun with Civ IV though...

Darwinia - maybe.

Enigma - Cross of Changes ^ helps me feel all relaxed and creative.

What is your laptop? I'm planning to buy Civ4, but I don't know if it happily runs on my laptop. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Fujitsu Siemens Amilo A1630. It's a P4 3.2Ghz, with a Radeon 9700 mobility, 1Gb RAM. So, you'd expect it to run the game just fine anyway. The same laptop had some difficulties with Everquest 2 and Star Wars Galaxies though. Also, my boyfriend's brother's laptop, which was only a few months older, pretty much couldn't run either game. The recommended spec for Civ4 says: 1.8Ghz P4/Athlon 512Mb RAM 128Mb video card with directx 8 Directx 7 compatible soundcard Supported O/S: Windows 2000 or Windows XP. I was expecting some issues with Civ4 on the laptop as I've read there are some ATI related bugs...which would be a pain since both my desktop and laptop have ATI cards - all fine so far though.

This is true. I think that really I was thinking less of the statistics and the fact that kids play adult rated games than of people like my boyfriend's dad ranting about us being childish and that games are for kids.

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Thanks Darque, much appreciated. Back to Civ4 - I like the new religion and government approaches. This game feels more Civ than Civilisation 3 did. Even though I had a Civ3 addiction for a while, it wasn't quite this good. I played the tutorial to "get into the swing". Nice idea, but I hit a block when Sid wanted me to create a farm in a tile that had jungle and I didn't have bronzeworking...so couldn't...and then couldn't go any further...or do anything else really. Not sure what happened there.

My desktop PC is almost three years old now, and still runs newer games pretty well. My laptop is about fifteen months old and wasn't exactly top of the range when I purchased it, although it has a decent spec. I'm running Civ4 quite happily on the laptop so far. I do know what you're saying though - PC gaming can be an expensive hobby. There is no way I can afford a major upgrade in the foreseeable future, but then that is okay as there aren't that many new games around on the PC that have me bothered enough to worry about upgrading.

Ok, I'll have to have a hunt around, thanks. Note to all: I have split off some of the continuing discussion on PCs and upgrade costs etc, you will find this discussion in this thread. A couple of the posts split off do partially relate to the other non-Civ discussion of game choices, apologies for that but it was an awkward split. Lets stick to Civ4 and more closely related topics in here.

At 1a? What's at 1b? :ph34r: Antimatter: Don't expand to quickly. You'll drive yourself into the ground with maintenance costs from your cities and possibly leave yourself open to attack. Stupid barbarians. You're not supposed to attack my undefended cities! <_< <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I tested this out while playing around yesterday. Damn those barbarians - they razed Hastings to the ground! My first game went a lot better - time based victory. Wheeeeee. It should be noted that I played for about five hours...straight. And so the Civ addiction recommences. I'm seriously considering reinstalling SMAC too, if I can get it to work ok that is.

Currently playing: Civilisation IV - already sensing impending addiction World of Warcraft - on a fairly casual basis Death Jr. on the PSP - so damn cute

All of Empire Strikes Back, because that is the most awesome Star Wars film. :D Vader force chokes Captain Needa to death "Apology accepted, Captain Needa" Or, the fantasy sequence in my head where Jar Jar Binks gets riddled with bullets.

Did you mean tiresome? Anyway, I think, the best way is when a mod is not seen. If you want to participate and mod at the same time, have an alt account. Even if people know that fact (better if they don't, of course) they won't take it as personal as if you engaged in the conversation with a mod account and then locked the thread. It is an emotional thing, but humans are mostly illogical beings. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It all depends on various factors. Some communities suit faceless moderation, others work better when moderators are seen as part of that community.

Back to Civ 4 again please folks. Well, my copy finally arrived, somewhat rudely. About twenty minutes ago I was enjoying a fairly pleasant dream, suddenly I was startled out of my slumber by a loud bang. Another loud bang came shortly after and I realised that it was someone banging on the front door. I pulled on some jeans and ran down the stairs to open the blasted thing. There stood the postman. He left quite rapidly after handing me the parcel, with a shocked expression - a quick look in the mirror afterwards suggested that perhaps my hair may have given him a fright. Anyway - I ripped open the envelope and lo - twas a copy of Civilisation 4. My copy is in a cardboard sleeve - a fairly typical Civ sized printed manual and the DVD box. Time to install...and drink copious amounts of coffee to sort my poor head out... Tips and advice for when I actually do start a game would be super

I've never actually visited that site before - have bookmarked it now.