My leader is faceless: Faces, terrains don't show up in game

[rahidz2003]

AAAGGH.
Got the game late today (from Gamestop), install went perfectly.
So, I started the game, and the first weird thing I noticed is after I selected "Greek" as my civ, a pic of the Greek background showed up.

And two moving eyes. And a nice smile. With no face, they were just floating there in midair

The intro movie (is there any way to stop it, or do I have to listen to the 5 minute speech every time???) was ok, sound was good.

So, game starts. My units are there, but no terrain. Pop up thingy asks me "Are you sure : Yes/No". Right...no idea what that was, so I clicked Yes.

Bad move. The game quit

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SPECS :

Windows XP SP2 Home Edition
"Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.66GHz
2.66 GHz, 256 MB of RAM"
DirectX 9.0c
MOBILITY RADEON 7500C
Approx. Total Memory : 32.0 MB
1024*768 (32 bit)

Dial-up (ugh.) internet connection

Please, I beg you, speak English, not Techese. Thanks for any and all help

 

[Distraction]

I take it this is a laptop, right? Well, have you tried the options and setting the graphics to low? I might just be the trick.

If that's not it, your video card may be too weak (Civ4 needs 64 Mb). However, it appears to be on-board and you may be able to set it to use 64 megs of RAM. How, I'm not sure, hopefully someone more tech-litterate will come.

And I think you need more RAM. If you're not certain you could install more RAM yourself, try asking the tech support people if you could send the computer to them and have then upgrade the RAM to 512 or so.

...but that's only my guess. I'd wait for someone else who is more tech-oriented to give their thoughts before acting.

 

[picklion]

Ok I have almost the exact same system as you except I have a P4 2.0ghz and I also have 512 MB ram. I think it might have something to do with mobility. I went to the IBM site(I bought it from ibm) and made sure I had the most up to date system drivers, then I went to ATI's website which had absolutely abyssmal support. I couldn't figure out what was what so I tried downloading something that seemed to me the most compatible with my system, but it just screwed up my vid driver... I'm at a loss too. Oh, and the game will play for me, but I just can't see the terrain. Any improvements will show up but no terrain. D3D works just fine, did the diagnostics and everything.

 

[rahidz2003]

Thanks for the replies.

Yeah, it's a Dell Inspiron laptop...got it 2 years ago for 4 successful high-school years

Thanks on the RAM and graphics card suggestion. I guess I'll go to a tech store and see what they can do. Any idea how much an upgrade to 64 MB graphics card and 512 MB RAM could cost?

I'll also try the low graphics mode, see if that helps any.

EDIT : Well, I tried setting all the graphics options to low, and guess what? NADA! Absolutely no difference in the game whatsoever. Still had to go through the painful "And so the world began...yada...blahda" thingy for 5 minutes before it loaded.

 

[Distraction]

Oh... For the movie thing, I take it you've tried clicking the mouse and hitting the keyboard franticly hoping it to skip already? If you didn't, try it.

 

[rahidz2003]

Yeah, I tried hitting Escape, Space bar, Return, Click (I've got a touchpad, btw). Haven't yet tried the "hit-your-head-on-the-keys" method...but I might...in the meanwhile, Civ III Conquests for me.

EDIT # 2: Checked the srtest.com website, gave me a pass on the Minimum, and a Fail on the Recommended.