Download Civilization IV demo for Windows to play as the Greeks, Romans, Incans, or Indians in this turn-based strategy game. Civilization 4 1.74 Warlords 2.13 Beyond the Sword 3.19 Some versions of the game released (such as Civilization IV Complete) have the patches included in them. To check the patch number you have go to the main menu and select 'About'. The low resolution movies files are also included, which can help performance when playing movies on older. Civilization IV brought about an unprecedented level of customization, easily earning the role of the most flexible and modification-friendly title in the Civilization series. This is great news for those of you who.

Quite Often, I find myself going off passionate about, and realise five minutes later that the room has gone silent and everyone has started looking quizzical. It's an occupational hazard of sorts: the unwitting social mishap of a gamer forgetting the company lie's in and the fact that not everyone will understand a metaphor based on the intricacies of de_dust.

My very worst experience of this though came when I was drunk in a Wetherspoons on Bedford High Street, talking to a random group of pretty nurses and with almost Machiavellian prompting from an associate. Stupidly, I embarked on a solo discussion on exactly why Civ IV suffered from not having a diplomat unit. This is a true story. Honestly, I didn't have to get my coat - it was handedto me.

Never mind though, because the sneaky technology stealer is back! Or at least the essence of him is, now under the guise of a brand-new espionage system - just one of the countless features being jammed into Beyond The Sword. It's an expansion designed primarily to flesh out the later parts of a bout of Civ, and simultaneously a compendium of professionally created mods that veer so sharply from the usual template that they could be another game entirely. This thing is just gigantic - I'm going to have to take two weeks off work just to review it.

SPY VS SPY

So you've got your spies, invisible to all but other spies, setting off revolutions in rival cities, poisoning water supplies and whispering how about that Will over in the Willish Empire? You'd love to be more like him wouldn't you?' into the ears of the populace.Then you've got your Great Spies sauntering around, and situations of Cold War-intensity when other nations start ramping up their counter-espionage: it's almost a means of combat without sending the boys in. Alongside this, Firaxis are looking at the fact that come endgame, religion doesn't seem to matter as much as it does in the early days of a civilization.

In a move that could have a good few capitalism is the new religion' PhDs being thrown around, come modern times, corporations will be spreading much as the word of god once did. It's all based on resources this time round though, with your corporation execs being spread out from your multiconglomerate HQ, piling cash and influence into the home nation - even if this greed may well give opponents access to your oil or mass-produced fizzy drink supplies.

The primary Civ climax (one of several) is the race to build a spaceship to take your little Civ-chaps over to Alpha Centauri - but now the space race is going to get a little more involved. Rather than simply being the first ones into the big black, there'll be extra technologies to probe before takeoff. This means that you could well take-off the minute you get the ability - but Napoleon could spend a few more turns researching things, then end up flicking V signs at you as he's overtaking with his go-faster stripes and more efficient propulsion system.

It's A Monster

As previously stated, there's a lot in here. Twenty-five new units (including paratroopers and tactical nukes), 18 buildings, a massive 16 extra leaders, ten fresh-faced civs and eight new wonders. But compared to sheer scale of the 12 scenarios being packaged with the game... Well, there's no comparison.

There's Afterworld, a tip of the hat to X-Com, with hit-points and campaigns where you control a team of five futuro body-tanks quelling an uprising of machines gifted with human sentience. There's Next War, a tip of the hat to DEFCON, that's set after 2050 and conies with a full armoury of devastating nuclear strikes and gigantic Meehs. Then there's Charlemagne, a tip of the hat to the legendary French king. In this, you have to conquer all of western Europe, kissing up to the Pope by spreading his brand of religion and warring with Saladin, then receiving some natty fighting units.Y'see, it's a blend of traditional and the off-the-wall, with Final Frontier so far from that wall that it's left the room (see 'Not As You Know It', above).

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For Civ-philes, this is Valhalla: the mother penguin of Firaxis effortlessly spewing the finest of gaming fish-guts into the clamouring open mouths of its fans and floating voters alike. I'm going to tell every stranger I meet all about it; even the sexy ones. Social exclusion be damned and Sid Meier be praised.

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Desert Island Discs is a radio show broadcast here in the UK on the poshest of stations, BBC Radio 4. In the show, various celebrities and politicians choose which particular gramophone recordings they would choose to be stranded with if they found themselves on a desert island. Should Radio 4 ever decide videogames were culturally relevant and subsequently launch “Desert Island Games”, then it’s a fairly safe bet that Sid Meier’s Civilization series would feature frequently. In the fourth instalment of the game, the rules are remixed and the graphics are tarted up, but the engrossing turn based strategy remains as compelling as ever.

Installation

The game should install just fine from its original optical media discs. Simply place the first disc in your computers optical drive and follow the on-screen prompts. If installation does not start automatically, browse to the CD in Computer/This PC and run the “Autorun.exe” file manually. At the end of the installation process, the installer may offer to install Xfire. Unfortunately the Xfire service shut down some time ago, so simply skip this part of the process.

If you’re installing the Steam version, installation is automatic and managed from your Steam library from within the Steam program itself.

Patching

Before starting your quest for world domination, you should install the latest patch. Users who purchased the game on Steam do not need to install any patches, as the Steam service itself keeps the game fully up to date. For those of us playing using the original retail version, you should download and install patch 1.74. You can download the patch here.

Once the patch has downloaded, simply run it and follow the on-screen prompts.

Uncivilized copy protection

The retail DVD versions of Civilization 4 are protected with a copy protection system known as Safedisc. Unfortunately, citing security concerns, Microsoft removed support for Safedisc protected games both in Windows 10 and, retrospectively through Windows update, in Windows 7 and 8 as well. Unfortunately this means that in order to play the retail version on a modern PC, you will need to obtain a de-protected or cracked version of the game. Due to copyright laws we can’t link to this file directly, we can tell you however that the cracked version of the game we obtained was by a group called “Reloaded” and had an MD5 hash of AE3B47863E7D88636A5C87D90643E845. As always, take extra care on the shadier parts of the internet when looking for these files.

When you obtain the cracked Civilization 4 executable, you simply need to replace the existing one. Use Windows Explorer or File Explorer to browse to the games installation directory, by default that is “C:Program Files (x86)Firaxis GamesSid Meier’s Civilization 4”. Find “Civilization4” or “Civilization4.exe” and rename it (e.g to “old”). Now, copy over the de-protected Civilization4 file. Once it is in place, you can start the game from the Start menu or screen normally.

Graphics and other settings

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Civilization 4 isn’t a game that’s big on fancy graphical effects, but that’s no reason why it shouldn’t look as pretty as possible. From the games main menu, choose “Options”, then on the window that appears, choose the “Graphics” tab. The window shown below should then be displayed.

Some settings here are down to personal preference, for instance “Show Health Bars”, while other settings affect the visual quality of the game. For the most part you can simply set every setting to the maximum. You should set the following options as shown below for maximum visual quality:-

Globe View Buildings Disabled – Deselected

Full-screen Mode – Selected (unless you wish to play in windowed mode)

High Detail Terrain – Selected

You can also set the games screen resolution from this window. Generally you should set this to the highest available option. If you use a widescreen resolution (such as 1080p, 1920×1080) some of the games cut-scenes may appear a little stretched, but the game itself should look fine.

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Troubleshooting

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“Please login with administrator privileges and try again” or similar error when starting the game – This is the games copy protection failing to initialise, you will need to find a crack/hacked version of the game or purchase the Steam edition instead.

Multiplayer and other notes

It is possible to play Civilization 4 in multiplayer mode, though the services that facilitated this originally have long since shut down. 2K games very generously started a program whereby customers could get a free Steam key for their copy of Civilisation 4. Since the Steam gaming service includes Multiplayer functionality, this meant that Civilization 4 is fully playable online again. You can find more details of this offer here. This program is due to shut down in June 2017, so hurry if you want to take advantage of it.

The game is also compatible with direct IP connections and therefore compatible with the Evolve gaming service, however we haven’t tried multiplayer using this program so we cannot comment on how well it works.

Save games for Civilization 4 can be found in C:Users(your username)AppDataRoaming, or, if you’re running the Steam version, in C:Users(your username)DocumentsMy GamesSid Meier's Civilization IVSavessingle.

Screenshots

…but they soon find high-tech ways to kill each other.