My wife surprised me by pre-ordering the game. It was waiting for me at home on the day it came out. Needless to say I was disappointed when I got the black terrain. My display adapter obviously needs to be upgraded (its an NVIDIA TNT2 Pro), but I want to be certain that I get the right card. Will I be able to put any card that's listed that can run the game? Or are there only specific cards that would fit my machine based on the one that's in there now? Please tell me what to look for. We don't have a lot of $$ right now with Christmas quickly approaching, but I'd definately like to get the most bang for my buck (rather 128 Mb than 64 Mb if it's reasonably priced).
Also a question about memory. The game box says that 256 Mb (the amount I have) is the minimum requirement, however the Civ IV site says that 512 is with XP. The game seems to run fine other than the black terrain. Can I hold off on a memory upgrade for a while or are there other issues that might pop up once I get into the game?
Other possibly useful info: I bought the computer from someone who built it (mostly out of HP parts). It has a "very good" mother board (not at home right now & I don't remember the specific type), and a Pentium 4 - 2.0 GHz processor.