Fix-It List

Nothing worse than installing the patch 1.09, playing on a Pentium D (3 GHz) with 1 GB RAM and downgrading to 71.89 and still crashing every couple of turns (huge map, medium graphics, 3 hot seat players, and 10 AI players).
 
Matthias73 said:
Hi Everybody

My problem is, that the mouse (USB) is freezing after several turns, sometimes it's possible to play 30 minutes and sometimes it's only possible 2 turns or none. Sometimes it's possible to save the game using the keyboard and restart the computer regularly and sometimes I have to reboot. I have tried many things to find a solution for this problem (drivers, graphic settings, etc), but without success. Should i wait for the patch or has anyone a solution?

thanks
Matthias73, Switzerland

My system
AMD Athlon 1800+
MSI RX800SE
512 MB RAM
Yamaha SW1000XG Soundcard

Still the same after the patch, but now I have also black screens and DTC's... :mad:
 
At the moment I have:
- Geforce 4 TI 4200 graphical card (so without TnL )
- AGP version 3.0 (max 8x supported and in use)
- Intel P4 Celeron 2.4 Ghz processor
- 512 MB memory DDR SDRAM
- P4P800 Asus motherboard

I am moderately happy with the performance, but when using the world view in Civ IV things go very choppy.
Because of this choppy world view I am thinking about buying the following graphical card:
XFX GeForce 6200A 512 MB AGP DVI/TV
http://www.dynabyte.nl/hardware.php?i=19238
In the 3D chipset specifications chard I can't find the whole XFX series!
Please can somebody tell me if this would be a good choice?
 
hello fellow CIV fanatics, would anyone pls give advice on my problem?
i have read solutions posted by many people such as ainwood and alamo, but i really cant understand whats going on, though i tried to follow their instructions.

alright, here's what i have:
1 GB DDR Ram
GeForce 6600GT 128 MB
Pentium 4 processor

my problem is that the map always shows jaggy stuff(or choppy as u guys call it) all over the place, and the gameplay is really laggy too.
oh, i dont have the crashing problem.
i have downloaded the new Civ 4 patch in, so....what should i do now?

any advice will be deeply appreciated, thx =)
 
Hellow all, sorry for the prolonged absence. I'll try to get to some of the latest posts.

@Santouryuu: It definitely is a video problem. What have you tried for the latest correct drivers? Be sure to go to the video card manufacturer first.

@hanterp: If you can stand to wait another 45 days then I would wait for the after xmas sales. You should be able to get a good card for under $200 US.

@Matthias73: Obvious, but I have to ask - can you try a PS2 mouse? It could be a USB compatibility issue.

@brpounds: Could very well be graphics - can you play ok in single player mode?

@omgfrank: This is curious - do you have a non-standard pointer set? Try disabling the Themes service and see if that helps.
 
Great work alamo - you are a wizzard but none of this seems to help with my problem: I can start the game now (after dealing with the renderer problem and applying the 1.09 patch) but I cannot build the 1st city. I can move the scout or worrior but on the build command, the screen goes black and I am returned to the desk top without any message. Any ideas? And sorry if this is not the right place to ask for help. [I meet minimum specs and better].
Also, I have another thought: will we need to do the renderer fix each time we need to reload the game for some reason? and if so, should we all be asking for a replacement CD when it gets fixed eventually? at this stage we have been sold a not fit for purpose pup (sorry to all the dogs out there).
 
That's strange. There is some action as the settlers make camp, and a small window pops up with the city name for confirmation.

My guess is some of the 3D commands are not getting implemented correctly. You need to verify your video card driver is the latest vendor-approved one.
 
More responses to previous posts:

@Zazabar: The "level up" for pasting the compressed art pak is simply the parent directory. The main point is to move the compressed art pak so it will not get used. I will amend the item to be clearer.
 
Alamo - no pop ups, no messages, just black screen and back to the desk top. I have now seen a couple of similar posts so I am not alone. This does not make it better though. I have ATI Radeon R9550 and Catalyst 5.11. Should I try 4.12? do you ever sleep?
 
@brpounds: Could very well be graphics - can you play ok in single player mode?

I have tried at low graphics and it crashed once, but I played an entire game without a crash. My son has also played a bit at single player without crashing. We have not tried full screen, but it has been ok at medium. I have also sent in my hotseat save to support but will not be able to receive a response until the weekend.

buzz
 
Currently, I will occasionally get the following error:

Fatal Error

Memory allocation failure - exiting program.
Reason:bad allocation, File:.\CvAppMainLoop.cpp, Line: 261.

This only has happened when saving a game. I'm playing on a large map with lots of opponents and thus the savefile is large. Happens when quicksaving and overwriting an old save. Haven't tried saving a completely new file.

I hope this isn't the wrong place for this error...

burt.
 
Can't say I've experienced any crashes, however I have noticed the following issues since the Patch 1.09
1. Wonder Movies are no longer playing. I get the "blueprint" then nothing until the end when the Wonder Stats pop-up
2. The tooltips, the info which pops up when you hover your mouse over Research Items or next construction choice, occasionally stops showing for no reason.
3. Dragging the cursor off the map and onto the flag causes the civilisation info screen to display. Change to mouse-down event instead of mouse-up?

I have a 3GHz Intel, 1Gb RAM with a recently purchased GeForce 6800LE graphics card, performance is ok. Nothing great. Prior to the patch, performance was lousy and I suffered major slowdown (memory leakage?), no evidence thus far post-patch.

Thorax.
 
Hi guys

I assumed that my Radeon 9700 had enough memory for all current games, and therefore I had limited AGP aperture size to the minimum of 8 or 16 i think. After an increase to 256 mb, civ4 performance is much better, and I'm now enjoying acceptable fps at 1024*768, medium graphics quality and even 2xAA

Sweet.

For more info on AGP aperture see:
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/overclocking/vidcard/43
 
Hey - I've had a problem with playing the game on my computer. Basically, I get about 30 minutes into the game and then the computer screen turns black and presumably it's beginning to restart. I would imagine it's something memory-related but I thought I'd rather ask the pros than take wild stabs in the dark. Previously, my LOTR - BFME game did the same thing too. But this only occurs on these two games. Thanks in advance.
 
My wife and I have identical computers (I built them both), AMD Athlon 3000+ processors, 1gb PC3200 memory; Nvidia FX5200 with 256mb vid mem.

We were having crashing problems and then installed the patch and they got worse. In the game I'm playing, I can only go 3 or4 turns before the game will crash. It usually crashes to a black screen and a memory dump, but, it never completes the dump (it should, it's set to) and reboots...too quickly to get the error code. Other times it just bogs down and I have to save & reboot...if it'll let me. I am playing a huge map, with 5 civs (I'm one of them). I've also noticed that if you make the screen scroll fast by moving the mouse to the edge and letting it scroll a bit, or, by clicking several different places on the mini-map, it'll hang up.

Now, I've tried the latest Nvidia driver it didn't help so I rolled it back to one recommended in this forum. I've tried the pixel shader trick (knocking it down to 1.1) and that just made it worse.

I was hoping the new patch would fix this...then I realized today that I got the new patch the other day :-(

Paul E. Mason
 
dankovci said:
I am having some video issue similar to what King David is describing. When zoomed in to the detail level, all I see is blackness with the exception of towns, units and resources. Anything that overlays the base tile is displayed, but the base tiles are all black. If I zoom out, to the level where the clouds are visible, the base tiles become visible, but the units, etc. are no longer visible at that level ov view. Also, the leader views only show disembodied teeth and eye - somewhat cool but rather disconcerting to see teeth hovering in mid air. I tried updating every driver I could think of, I reloaded directX, I applied the art pack patch, nothing. I am using a 1 year old Dell computer that has basic on-board intel video. It has 96 mb memory and has been up to the task of everything else I had thrown at it until this game came along. Any ideas (other than going out and buying a $300 video card to run a $50 game) would be appreciated.

As an aside, I am not certain I like the new interface. Having been an avid civ fan (including the spectacular Alpha Centauri) since nearly the beginning, I am having a hard time swallowing the new interface. It appears to be very cluttered and pop-ups come at me from every direction wheter I am interested in what an icon does if it just happens to be between where my cursor and and where I want it to go. And while much of the graphics are quite stunning and detailed, others are quite cartoonish and out of place. And the civilopedia looks like a childs picture matching game, its quite visually assaulting. Call me old school, but I much prefer the older games to this one, but if I can get around the video display issues, I will perservere and give this game a chance to see if it grows on me.

I "had" that problem too when i got my copy of Civ4 about a week ago. The terrain looks all black and the civ leaders look like floating eyeballs and teeth. Fortunatley there is a cure to this problem. I downloaded the civ4 v1.09 patch when i almost lost hope of not being able to play the game. When I installed the patch the leaders and the terrain went to normal. I would highly recommend the people who has this problem to download the civ4 v1.09 patch. Take the word from a guy who doesnt meet the minimum requirents in the graphic card or RAM. and the best part is that nobody will have to buy very enxpensive graphic cards in order to play civ4 ;)
 
ok i must be doing something wrong with the art pak. i download it and unzipped it following the directions i had no trouble with a), b) or c), my path to the art0.FPK folder is a bit different than what is listed though. now i get to d) what am i suppose to unpack. also im not sure what you mean by a windows explorer? ive gone to the folder but there is no edit/cut option when i check on the options for it. what am i missing here?


9. Art Pack Patch

A new game utility can be found here for WinXP or Win2k.

The utility uncompresses a game file to (hopefully) make it easier to load. Detailed instructions are at the bottom of the Render Error page. Note that WinXP users must have SP2 for the utility.

a.) Unzip
b.) Run PakBuild and Choose PAK / Unpack
c.) Open C:\Program Files\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\Art0.FPK (Firaxis Games/ in path?)
d.) Unpack to the same folder
e.) Open a windows explorer and go to that folder
f.) Select Art0.FPK and choose Edit/Cut
g.) Click the Up button to go to the parent directory
h.) Choose Edit/Paste (this makes sure the unpacked art gets used)
 
I have 2.66ghz 768MB Ram, but since I replaced my old 64MB geforce card with a Geforce 6200 256MB 64bit card I cannot complete the turn I saved only 19 turns from the end. Also games I've started on smaller maps now crash a few turns in even though they are not running slowly. I've tried the latest video drivers (made it worse), updated my motherboard bios and drivers (not VGA drivers though, didn't understand which one I needed) and did everything the men on the civ 4 support line told me to do. Can anyone help me or do I need to put my old Graphics card in everytime I play this horrible game? I've even sent a huge message to poor alamo begging for help. Its getting to the point where I'm considering taking the game back, please stop this happening as I bloody love this game to the extent that i'm letting it kill my degree.
 
Hi guys, not very happy at all. i have applied the new patch and found that it works even worse than it did previously. even after rebooting every game crashes after 5 or ten minutes wether they are new or saved games (if they ever load). After being a fan and avid player of all the previous games I would have to say that now I will open my bin and gladly drop my copy of Civ 4 straight in. i have been trying to get it running on a brand new, way over spec Alienware Pc and it works even worse thatn my old workhorse pc (which was way over spec for the game. i tried the patch on both and they bothe are now going worse. sorry Firaxis and whoever else is there, you have lost yourself a long term customer unless you can get it fixed to everyones satisfaction. Also dont bother trying to email them, they just ignore you and delete the emails without reading them most of the time.
 
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