Failed to Initialize Renderer

[vincenzo7]

i am so disappointed.

[Dreck]

I, too, am having this same problem. I'm running on-

1.7ghz Pentium 4
768MB of RAM
Radeon x700 PRO

I've checked other forums on the internet (Apolyton, GameFaqs, PlanetCivilization), and this problem is all over. Everyone who is having this problem seems to be ATI users. I tried contacting support by phone but they put me through the "update your drivers" generic help that you'd expect to get. I'm definately a fan of the Civilization IV series, but this is really frusterating.

[Knight451]

If anybody at Firaxis reads this I WANT THE COLLECTOR'S TIN. After all we should get something for our suffering right?

[Mikeytikey]

This is really awful not only did the game get delayed here in the UK but now I have to sit tight and wait too see if my graphics card won't work. (I have a Radeon 9550 which I got especially to play Civ 4 and EE2 on). I really hope they patch it soon!

[Kinjiru]

Well, my laptop card (Ati Radeon Mobility 9800, 256 meg) get the render error, but my desktop card (Ati Radeo 9800, 256 meg) runs the game just fine.

This is just so damn annoying and shows that it will probably be difficult to fix because they first have to isolate why some ATI cards are having problems and some are not...

[Speaker]

I've been on the phone with Take2 support for the past hour working on this same problem (Gigabyte Technology ATI Radeon 9550, AMD 3200+, etc) and we tried every possible solution--directx, drivers, firmware, compatibility, background programs, and so on). None of the tech guys have any idea what else to try. He has "escalated" my case, meaning it is now a top priority to be looked at by their ATI support specialist. Unfortunately it is late at night at Take2 support (are they in Australia?), so there are only 4 people in the office. He said I should hear from them first thing in the morning (their morning, whenever that may be) by email.

He said to expect a patch, barring any miracle, but the time frame he gave was 3-4 weeks. Ouch.

So far they have gotten calls from people with this problem with 3 different video cards (including my 9550). A couple people had their problem fixed by updating drivers. I was already updated, so we tried rolling back, to no avail.

I want to be mad at Take2, but the support guy was very nice and quite thorough. Unfortunately, none of his suggestions were the right one!

[Dreck]

Aye, but I hope it won't take that long nonetheless. I have to look forward to 8 hours of FAST FOOD employment tomorrow, and would like a relaxing nights game. The only other card I have is a radeon 9600 and a geforce 2. I dont have much of a choice.

[invoke41]

Try turning off any backgroun services like remote desktop, vnc and other stuff that hogs the display. See if that helps.

Also try and create a new windows account (i assume XP here) so it has 'clean' settings. Try running the game from that.

[Naveed]

Man this sucks! I have ATI X300, now it looks really bad

[FrequencySurfer]

Originally Posted by Kinjiru

Well, my laptop card (Ati Radeon Mobility 9800, 256 meg) get the render error, but my desktop card (Ati Radeo 9800, 256 meg) runs the game just fine.

This is just so damn annoying and shows that it will probably be difficult to fix because they first have to isolate why some ATI cards are having problems and some are not...

For your desktop 9800, what drivers are you using? Catalyst? Omega? And what version?

[Dreck]

Well so far people have had problems with the following cards:

Radeon 9550
Radeon 9600
Radeon x700 PRO
Radeon x800



....I dont think there's been one account of an nvidia card. I imagine they would be on here already.

I just bought my Radeon x700 to play Black and White II properly, and now I cant play one of my other favorite games - Civ IV. *cries*

Anyone else feel free to add their own model to this list.

[Cidrick]

My X800XL runs the game, but I can't see the opening videos or any of the menus, so I always have to task-out and kill the process. Once through some mad clicking I was able to get into a game, but all I could see was the rendered world, and I could hear Sid talking but not see anything else.

[stumben]

Has anyone with the rendering issue have Windows 2k?

I am still running windows 2k at home believe it or not ( I know.. I am upgrading whole system soon anyway. ) I also have ATI 9800 128mb.

I am still at work so have not had a chance to even buy the game... but glad now I did not rush out or take the day off to do so

Aside from that, has anyone tried disabling AA Or other settings under the video card? adjusting resolution? ( be sure desktop resolution matches Game setting ). Just ideas for the desperate.

Surely a patch from ATI will be coming, but if ATI has to put out a hot-fix... I would not expect it for a couple days at least.

How they could of missed this baffles me. Not to mention the cds being labeled wrong... other bugs... I would never expect this level of quality screw up from this company.

Also... is it not a tad suspicious that all these "GREAT" reviews have come out before hand and not one mention of these problems? They could not of all been using nvidia.....?

[KingSponge]

Sounds like a conspiracy between Take2, Firaxis, and NVIDIA! :O

Guess I'll have to upgrade my video card a little sooner than expected.

[Naveed]

For those having problem, did you try running game in the compatibility mode, like in Win2K mode under WinXP? Also the color quality, reducing to 16bit, or if it is already 16bit, increasing to 32 bit?

[studhog]

I have a Radeon X850 XT platinum edition and get the same issues.

[jpowers]

For those of us who have no idea how we would even find out what level of Radon our computers have, or how to 'driver' them, is there some English translation of what's been transpiring here?

[Speaker]

Yes I did all the compatability modes.

[Xemu]

My work machine that is now happily playing it on an X800 is using Driver version 6.14.00.10.6458 of ati2dvag.dll (dated 6/10/2004). I think that is Catalyst 4.7, but not certain. I'll try later when I get home, but its possible we need to go back further than 5.5 or 5.7 to get a working ATI driver for this...

[Kinjiru]

Originally Posted by FrequencySurfer

For your desktop 9800, what drivers are you using? Catalyst? Omega? And what version?

On the desktop machine (the one where cIV works), I am running the latest Catalyst drivers (downloaded them 2 days ago).

On the laptop, using the latest drivers that Dell has made available. I am just really suprised, as B&W2 runs extremely well on the same laptop.