Civ IV BTS Graphics Problem

[Bahgoon]

I apologize if this is an old concern. I looked back through this forum for several months and didn't see anything that looked like my problem.

I recently got the Civ IV Complete Edition. Based upon my nephew's recommendation, I installed up to BTS (skipped Colonization) and then immediately updated to the latest patch. Trying to learn the game in baby steps, I set up a custom game where I picked the opposing civs, in the hopes I wouldn't be immediately steamrolled. After a few turns I noticed the following glitches. First the display would start 'sparkling' but the game would still run. Then I would get a situation where the game would freeze, after a few moments I would get a solid blue screen, then the game would reappear as normal (Graphic card failing and recovering, I think. The 'sparkling' tended to disappear if it existed before this.) Eventually the screen would go to a fine checkerboard pattern and the computer would be locked hard. The only way out was with a hard reset.

My computer is nearly new and quite a horse. The graphics card is an ATI 5870 and the drivers are dated to within the last month or so. OS in Win 7 x64. Attached is a dxdiag file I did right after the last crash.

Anyone have any ideas? The game is unplayable as it stands and what little I got through seemed rather fun.

 

[Jayrad]

I have this same issue and still haven't found a soulution and it didn't happen until i upgraded my Nvidia 6150SE to a Nvidia 9500gt so i think it might be with certain video cards or drivers.

 

[Bahgoon]

I have this same issue and still haven't found a soulution and it didn't happen until i upgraded my Nvidia 6150SE to a Nvidia 9500gt so i think it might be with certain video cards or drivers.

Somewhat afraid of this as searching this board and my google-fu brought back nothing in the way of a fix. The only troubleshooting step from Firaxis is update your drivers and that helpful advice is dated from 2008 or so.

I've been playing with various game size and graphics setting and getting a 100% failure rate to this point. Oh, well.

 

[bedlamboy]

I have the DVD complete version too and its doing the same sort of thing. Very frustrating. I have a new dell vostro running windows 7. I don't know what kind of vid card it has.

 

[bedlamboy]

Just on a whim, I turned off my Symantec Antivirus before running the game. It seemed to work, but I don't have any real evidence considering the chaotic nature of the crash.

 

[Jayrad]

I finally rememberd to get a few screenshots of my problem in hopes it will be solved.

and

 

[2evster48]

I had a silmilar problem and solved it by re-installing Directx9 - although Win7 users have Directx11 there are some dlls and other stuff from version 9 that are not included but which seem to prevent Civ iv fgraphics rom running properly. If you google for a Microsft end-user runtime web installer this will provide all the missing stuff to enable you to run Civ iv.

 

[commodus78]

I have the same prob, install civ4 complete and its ok then when i install either bug 4 or civmarble the graphics are the same as the above screenies.
Oh and whys it called complete cos my dvd version only gose upto 313?

 

[kiwitt]

This is why if you are planning install new mods as opposed to to the standard ones that come with the game and expansions, that you install into a different folder e.g. C:\GAMES\Civ4 for win7/Vista.
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