Ok, so I load up the game and there are no problems, the game runs fine. Then about 10 mins in, my bottom bar goes away when I click on the minimap, with a little lag in-between, and the bar coming back eventually. About another five mins later, one of the sheep starts flashing a yellow color, and then yellow beams start shooting out of a nearby warrior. I change my resolution and everything goes back to normal. Then a little while later, certain terrain features start disappearing when I end turns (rivers and forests to start), they come back after awhile. Then the disappearances become more permanent, and soon I can't see units, rivers cities or forests, and my game freezes.

Shouldn't be my graphics card as I have a GEForce 8600, any ideas?

It sounds like your video card is overheating. Do you have similar problems playing other games?

Yeah, it would happen at one specific point at Half-Life episode 1, and once in a while in Guild Wars (all I had to do for that game though is hit "reset defaults" under the option menu and it would be fine.)


But I decided to give downloading new drivers a try, updated graphics and processor drivers. I guess it must've done something about the overheating because the game works fine now, just a little choppy at some points for sound.

Okay... I KNOW it was told that you should never ever post on someone else's thread with a "me too," but... well... me too.

I've been playing Civ4 and Warlords for a bit now, and initially it all seemed to work fine on both my desktop and laptop systems. But towards the end of August 07-ish, my laptop started acting funny with Civ. JUST Civ. I had the exact same graphical errors described by Owen. Well, of sorts. I can't promise you that yellow beams shot out of any warriors.

I was deployed to the Middle East at the time, so I just bit down and accepted the fact that my laptop is crap. But then I got home and found that the same problem is now happening on my desktop system. Feh. My desktop is a bit more powerful than my laptop, so I'll give you those specs.

First off, I am also running on a GeForce 8600 GT. But I don't believe the card is the issue, because it is new due to the old card kind of blowing itself up. Overheating. The fan was clogged. But THIS fan is fine. I just checked. Regardless, Civ was glitching on the old card before it blew up.

My processor is an AMD Athlon 64 2.20 GHz, I have 1.0 G of RAM, and I am running on WinXP Pro. In case you're wondering, though, my laptop runs on XP Media Center with a 1.8 GHz AMD, it has about 512 M RAM, and uses an ATI Mobility Radeon card with 128 M of graphics memory. But again... It started out running fine on both systems, then took a poo after many, many months.

The symptoms appear, to me, to be a DirectX or OpenGL issue, but I am not even sure if OpenGL applies with Civ. But it is definately a graphics rendering problem. And it isn't triggered by a particular event that I am aware of. I can save the game, it'll crash on my next turn, then I'll shut down and reboot, and it'll run fine for anywhere from two minutes to an hour. Its dadgum odd.

Speaking of DirectX, I am running 9.0c, and I just downloaded the latest drivers for my GeForce, version 175.16, about two hours ago from the NVidia web site. I am also running the Warlords patch version 2.16, and whatever version of the Civ patch that comes with it. 1.61, I think.

So yeah, thats my dilemma. ANY and ALL help that can be provided is much appreciated. Thanks, in advance, to all. Now I'm gonna go back to scanning the other threads to see if a solution has already been proposed elsewhere...

Welcome to CFC :band:

first off: I don't believe it will help, but patch Civ4 to 1.74
also install the newest version of DirectX 9c (Microsoft just posted a new one - it will not autoupdate with windows).

then please post your dxdiag results :)

Yeah, that's what I tried.

The first thing I did was check for Civ4 patches (downloaded those). Then I basically did this whole cleaning of my computer, and then I updated all my drivers (boy was that irritating)

and I've put in about 5-6 hours since and there have been no hiccups so far.

Welcome to CFC :band:

first off: I don't believe it will help, but patch Civ4 to 1.74
also install the newest version of DirectX 9c (Microsoft just posted a new one - it will not autoupdate with windows).

then please post your dxdiag results :)

So I'm a homer moron, or something... dxdiag? I just updated with the most recent directx patch, Civ4 was already ver 1.74 (my bad), and I got the glitch again after about five turns.

I assume you are running windows xp:

click start -> click run -> type dxdiag -> hit enter -> click save results -> post here and attach the saved file by: -> clicking on go advanced -> then on manage attachments (below the reply box) :)

I will buy you a cup of REALLY good coffee if you can read that stuff. I ran all the system diagnostic tests within dxdiag, but they were all pretty cut and dry straightforward with no issues. I assume you're looking for the specific driver files listed within, so... I'll go get the coffee. :)

well I can read it alright - and no need for coffee, we have plenty here :coffee: ;)
but it looks all good - your card driver is uptodate and the card should definitely handle it.
this makes tracking those things down a tad harder. Does it give any problems in other programs?

I don't really run that many games on my PC that one would consider particularly graphics intensive. But I guess I never really felt that way about Civ4 either... To answer your question, no. I don't see any graphics glitches at all anywhere else on my PC. But I do have a bit of a random question. Does Civ4 read any in-game graphics data off of the play disk at all? Could some heavy scratches in the disk cause a graphics glitch? Yeah, yeah... rather off the wall. But I think I might be THAT desperate that I'd stretch for possible solutions.

Okay, so... Yeah. Heres the thing. My idea was that the graphic glitch I'm seeing isn't a hardware problem. It isn't a driver problem. It isn't even a Civ4 problem. Its a WARLORDS problem. My idea was that the disk is sufficiently damaged, or perhaps the files specific to some various patch of Warlords is corrupted... Or maybe God has a grudge against me using trebuchets. I don't know. What I DO know is that I just finished playing four hours of Civ4, not Warlords, without a single graphic error. Nada. Nuthin. I'll have to go back and try Warlords again tomorrow just to see for sure. But if thats the case, I'm gonna be hella pissed.

:hmm:
would be curious - the only reason you need the disc in the drive is that it checks for it during startup - you could actually remove it afterwards when it is satisfied that you have a genuine disc... On the other hand: the graphics engine should not have changed that much between Civ4 and Warlords...
but let me know :)

Okay, so I are stoopid. I guess, even though it didn't tell me to, that I should have restarted my computer before I tried playing Warlords after I updated DirectX. Civ4 played fine the other day, and thusfar I have had no further problems with Warlords. So yeah, if anybody comes across this glitch like Owen and myself had, more than likely its a glitch with DirectX 9.0c. Thank you to Ori and Owen for your help and input.