I think I'm "up to proverbial creek", but I figured I'd give you guys a shot.

I purchased civ iv after reading that the minimum graphics card was an ATI Radeon 7500 or more. I have a Mobility Radeon 7500C. However, I failed to notice that my card is at 32mb instead of the required 64mb. Ooops! I guess that "Mobility" part is kind of a "catch" as well.

I have another computer I can play on, but my wife may get mad at me cutting into her time with "The Movies". I was hoping I may somehow be able to squeak out playing on my computer (Dell Inspiron 5100).

I've updated my firmware, all video and sound drivers.

The program installs and runs without errors or crashes. However, the animated "faces" of the leaders only show teeth, eyebrows, and maybe a bowtie. The main map is mostly black with some highlighted items like my cities, some resources, rivers etc are visible. I can't really see the terrain. It looks fine in the "world editor". The main map basically looks like the middle of the night.

I'm attaching my diag.log file in case it is of any help.

oops...here is my dx info....

Sorry, but I don't think this is going to work on your video card on that system...

Then again, I've got a nVidia 6600 and it doesn't work on mine, either.

Heh.


Later!

--The Clown to the Left

I'm running CivIV on a lesser card than yours -- a 32MB Radeon 7200, along with a Athlon 1600, WinXP SP2, and 768 MB of SDRAM.

I can (and do!) play the game. However, it's slow -- unless zoomed out to 'Globeview' the framerate absolutely sucks. But I love the Civ games and am a patient person, so I just wait for the transitions.
I have seen the Chesire cat leaderheads on occasion, though most of the time I get the full person.
I don't have the black terrain problem that you've mentioned (and many others with better GFX cards than us have had).

If you've tried all the suggested fixes in the forums and the support site, you may be out of luck. But I would also say that you should wait until the patch comes out, as that might (hopefully?) address some of the issues that you and others are having.

Good luck...

Guess I'll cross my fingers and wait for the patch.

I got some "Omega" drivers for ATI that were referenced in another post. Didn't help with Civ....but I can play "The Movies" now! But that's my wife's game.

I didn't see how frequent the black terrain problem was until after my original post. It is happening to a lot of people.

Thanks anyway for the replies. I'll keep watching the message boards to see if anything turns up.

marc

-marc