Ok, I made a thread, but my entire BTS is like broken. It can't play most videos(wonder, intros) and it crashes whenever I build a wonder. What's up?

try reinstalling the game

Reinstalling the whole game will work if you're lucky. Maybe you have to check all your video settings (maybe turn off movies?).
If that doesn't work, you must check that you have the latest DirectX and drivers to your video and screen card.
Good luck ;)

I have run into the same problem ;(

I'm hit with a similar issue... Went to put civ IV + BTS on my new laptop, so I installed civ IV (unpatched) from disc - ran fine. Downloaded a patch and patched civ IV to the latest - oops, ran into a bunch of the D3D dll issues that are documented in the tech support section... won't run at all. Tried BtS anyway, but that won't run either (no real surprise...)

Best part is, some part of the bug prevents me from uninstalling it (gets an error message when I try) so I can't uninstall, therefore I can't reinstall. I can't just delete the file folder, as the game will still THINK it's installed and won't allow me to install..

(sigh!)

Kinda at a loss. Won't work, having trouble fixing it, and can't uninstall and start over. I'm in the process of working through some proposed solutions in the tech forum, but I'm pretty bummed. I guess, as it's a new computer and I don't have anything important on it yet, I could get the recovery CD and reset it to 'factory settings', uninstalling it that way, but that seems like an extreme solution... (plus I'd have to go back though and re-remove bloatware...)

anyone else have similar issues that could offer advice?

Well, I'll fix this later. I've turned off all movies and it works.

so I can't uninstall, therefore I can't reinstall.

Did you try System restore (not the CD)? It is on your computer (Vista or XP). You can usually go back to just before you installed the game without the hassle of restoring to factory settings. You do not loose any documents. It just pulled me out of a driver conflict I had when I installed a game on my Dell.

So I've turned of movies etc, put everything to low. So I've narrowed it down to the new rulers, esp gilgamesh. That one crashes my video card every time. Any other sugestions?

well i can think of a kludge, but it impacts the game pretty big and i don't even know that it would fix your issue. you can alter the .xml files to make civs not playable by the AI. i thought it was by leader, but it's actually by civ which is worse :(. anyway, you could set that flag as "nope, you're not allowed" for gilga if it's just him.

if the game won't load at all, that wouldn't fix it. but if the game works fine as long as he doesn't show up, you could rule him out and still use random leaders that way. if you want to try it, it's in the CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file. it's not an elegant fix and i don't even know if it would work, but it's the only suggestion i can think of.

i was hoping i could find a place where it calls out the videos to play for the individual leaders, and we could just tell it to play somebody else's video, but if that's there anywhere it doesn't scream out at me. copy any files before you change them of course.

I'm hit with a similar issue... Went to put civ IV + BTS on my new laptop, so I installed civ IV (unpatched) from disc - ran fine. Downloaded a patch and patched civ IV to the latest - oops, ran into a bunch of the D3D dll issues that are documented in the tech support section... won't run at all. Tried BtS anyway, but that won't run either (no real surprise...) ... ... ... anyone else have similar issues that could offer advice?

I had that, and I solved it, or rather Firaxis solved it for me. Unfortunately, the link Firaxis had for fixing the problem has been moved/deleted, so I can't give exact info, I'll have to play by memory.

Those .dll-issues come from DirectX lacking a .dll-file that makes CivIV run. If you have the latest version of DirectX (which is 10.0, I think?), you still need to install DirectX 9.02 (or was it 9.03? 9.0-something, anyways). That DirectX 9.0-something will provide the missing .dll-file, without corrupting your never version of DirectX.

Visiting Microsoft's site (http://search.microsoft.com/results.aspx?mkt=en-US&form=MSHOME&setlang=en-US&q=directx) should, after some searching, give you a chance to pick up the right DirectX-version.

After installing that, you should be able to uninstall/install/play.
I had first installed vanilla and warlords, and run into problems when I tried to install the latest patch for warlords, I got those Dsomething32.dll annoying messages. I then installed the proper DirectX and could still not install the patch, but could play.

But at least the DirectX allowed me to uninstall both vanilla and warlords. I also uninstalled that new DirectX (just in case vanilla/warlords had messed with it - I'm not computersmart, so I do a lot of things to "be on the safe side"). I then reinstalled DirectX 9.0something, and then reinstalled vanilla + the patches for that, Warlords + the patches for that - and voila, everything run smoothly, and when I got BtS, even that run smoothly. And I haven't (touch wood) had problems since then, not even with patch 3.03! (I do have some multiplayer issues, though, witch makes me not install patch 3.13, but that's another story.)

Hope this can be of some help, best of luck.