Earlier today, I decided to update my Civ 4 version (1.09) to the latest patch, which is 1.61 (earlier). And yes, this is true (from the readme notes):
“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”
If you’re into ‘modding’, the Apolyton site has several user-mods listed, some of them in development and some of them in ‘beta’. Most of the Civ 4 code is in Python and all of the structural data is modelled in XML. Oh, and the summary of changes is right here.
Update 1: I noticed that some things have chanced in 1.61. As mentioned it runs faster on my (non-TL-enabled) graphics card. There’s also a graph at the end of the game I don’t seem to recognize.
Update 2: I was just beat to the punches by the French. Holy smokes…