I've played Civ 4, Warlords, and BTS since release on the same computer. In the last week the monitor has started to go into sleep mode after starting a game. I can run the BTS program and create a new game, but after a couple turns the monitor goes into sleep mode. I can hear the game running on the speakers. This only happens while playing Civ and I can surf the internet for hours and use other programs with no problem.

I re-installed Civ4, Warlords, and BTS but the problem still exists. I also made sure I have the latest directx and installed a newer graphics driver. No luck. I switched to an old monitor to see if it was somehow a monitor going bad but it still occurs. The only bright side is that at least with the old monitor I can turn it off and then back on and continue playing which for some reason my latest monitor could not do.

I am a new player. I just installed Civ 4 Gold edition yesterday. I have a very similar if not the same issue. I go quite a few turns though. It seems to be maybe 20-30min and then the monitor goes into power save mode and the PC sounds like its still running but is totally frozen.

I've tried newest nvidia drivers along with older ones people have said to use. I've checked heat, memory, background processes, turned down settings...plus more...

Perhaps it is the same issue. Do you have the following in your ThemeParseLog.txt after the crash?

[Apr 01, 2008 - 00:27:24] Messages while processing 'Resource/Themes/Civ4.thm'

Error : Decl - ('Civ4Theme_Common.thm', Ln:401, Col:13) Assignment source propertyId 'SF_CtrlTheme_Civ4_Control_Font_Size3_Italic' not found
Error : Decl - ('Civ4Theme_Common.thm', Ln:402, Col:13) Assignment source propertyId 'SF_CtrlTheme_Civ4_Control_Font_Size3_BoldItalic' not found
Error : Decl - ('Civ4Theme_Common.thm', Ln:408, Col:13) Assignment source propertyId 'SF_CtrlTheme_Civ4_Control_Font_Size1_Bold' not found
Error : Decl - ('Civ4Theme_Window.thm', Ln:3048, Col:9) Assignment source propertyId 'SF_CtrlTheme_Civ4_Control_Font_Size1_Bold' not found


Edit: From what I can see people have these same messages even without game problems so perhaps that is no clue at all...

I got it fixed. Turns out my graphics card is dying which was hard to diagnose because the computer and graphics card only had problems when running Civ. I popped out the card and tried going with the built in GeForce card and things are working again.