Hello everybody.

Ive had BtS since the day it came out and Ive never had the problems Ive been running into lately. In the late game, the screen will start petering out, leaving only the land and water to be seen. All units, cities, menus, etc disappear completely. This happens for a few seconds at a time. The graphics come back, then it usually vanishes again. Ive noticed its worse when the screen is being scrolled. I also imagine that the number of units/cities in the game cause this to happen.

Eventually, the game crashes in one of three ways. 1: it locks up completely and I have to shut the computer down with the power button. 2: an error message pops up and the game shuts down by itself; my wallpaper is completely discolored and the game gets an initialize renderer error when I try to reload - then I have to restart. 3: no error message, game closes, reloads if without a restart.

Also, when I restart the game, it runs very well, no problems at all for a good length of time (hour or longer most of the time) before the problem starts occurring again.

Ive turned all the graphics settings as low as possible but that doesnt seem to help either. I used to have the graphics on high.

As far as my computer specs go, I have 1 GB of RAM (thinking about upgrading, I know I have two card slots, can I go ahead and go for 2 GB or does it depend on my motherboard, other parts, etc?) my graphics card was made some time in the 1800's I believe (nvidia 5200 Im thinking), pentium 3 2.79 Ghz.

Can anyone help with this minor, yet annoying, problem? Is there a reason why this problem just started to occur when it used to run so much better? Will upgrading my RAM help? If so, any suggestions on what to buy and so on? Perhaps this is a sign of a serious problem in my desktop PC? Maybe I have crap running in the background that is hurting me? Could my PC get damaged if I continue running BtS in this manner?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the super long post but I wanted to have all the details covered.

I'd rather suspect your card to be the root of the problem. Does your machine make any louder than usual noise when this happens?
what does the error you cite say?

Well, shoot, I knew I should have copied the error down. Its occurred two or three times but it looked like a typical "this program has encountered an error and has to close" (paraphrased :mischief: ) so I didnt bother reading it too closely. I think I have a save game where its pretty close to falling apart so maybe I can try to make it happen again.

While were on the subject of cards, any suggestions on upgrades in that area as well? Been looking at them forever.

Thanks for the reply!

what card exactly do you have? if you don't know just click start, then run and type dxdiag and hit enter - the program that starts will tell you and a whole lot more...

Sorry it took so long, I work 12 to 16 hours a day and dont have much of a home life anymore :mad:

Ah, just as I thought. Its an NVidia GeForce FX 5200. Came with the model which I bought in October of 2003.
Approx. Total Memory - 128 MB
Current Display - 1028 x 768

Don't know if any of that helps. Appreciate the input, once again.

what you describe is definitely a graphics card or driver problem. Did those problems occur just after patching the game? If so its most likely a driver problem - if not I'd suspect some problem with the card itself. Still checking for an updated driver would probably be good.
Civ4 does put surprisingly high demands on the graphics card - and it is well possible that it starts overheating - that was the reason I asked about higher than usual noises - from the fans. Is this a notebook or a desktop?

Well, overheating does make sense to me. Like I said, it only starts to get bad in the late game when a lot of stuff is going on (units, cities, screen scrolling). Also, when it crashes, after I restart it usually runs well for a half hour to an hour. Perhaps the card has cooled down for a bit?

Another thing is the videos (wonders, victories, opening scene). They glitch and freeze alot, jump around and so on. That has also gotten worse.

Im not sure about the patch. That seems very possible. Ill check into the drivers thing as soon as I can and get back to the forum.

Edit: It is a desktop. Dell Dimension 8300.

Also, I did have some problems with sounds a while back. Id get this odd clicking noise whenever Id mouse over items in my start menu. Every time I hit a new file or program there was a click. Minimizing/maximizing screens caused a buzzing sound until the action was completed. I think it had something to do with my harddrive though. I took it out and reinstalled it. Hasn't happened for a while so it might be irrelevant.

You're a tremendous help, ori.