I can't play any of the preloaded mods (Broken star, charlamagne etc) because the game crashes and I get this error message

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k104/gpshaw1987/stupiderrormessage.jpg

um little help here

your graphics card is not up to the task, try reducing the graphics settings in the options ingame :p
you can get rid of the crash and the error message though by opening your civilizationIV.ini and setting the following to 1:

; Don't show minimum specification warnings
HideMinSpecWarning = 0

thanks guess it's computer again :badcomp:

hey if I make those changes it won't adversly effect my computer will it?

Changes in the .ini only affect the way the game starts - the one I posted just makes sure it does not check for minimum requirements. So no it won't affect your computer.

ok and I'll be able to play the mods albeit with the chelseri cat style leaders?

:)
Of course there is no guarantee, but its easy to reverse if it does not work. The MinSpecsWarning is there to ensure you don't run the game with hardware that does not cope with it. This warning sometimes triggers too liberally so you can try to run the game by disabling it. You should in any case lower your graphics setting in the in game options.
You can also lower the video settings in the .ini file by setting the following values either to 0 (if I quote them as 1) or to 1 (if I quote them as 0):

; Set to 1 for no intro movie
NoIntroMovie = 0

; Don't skip frames if falling behind
BinkNoSkip = 1

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 1

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 0

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 0

; Allows some memory savings *** ALT-TAB WILL NO LONGER FUNCTION ***
MemSaver = 0

; Dont show the game background during movies - may speed up movie playing
HideMovieBackground = 0


I would recommend trying the last two first since they don't affect appearance much - but you can work yourself up the list if it still has issues. Again: this is not a wonder cure if your computer is below minimum specs it may not work at all - but it definitely is worth a try since you don't need to do much :)