Freezing whenever a game loads, help!

[gezuz]

Hello. I've been trying to get Civ4 working, and have succeeded until the game actually loads. If till get passed the % bar and all that, and the screen showing "Your civilization has entrusted you to make these years great" or something, along with the picture of my ruler show up, and the button saying Continue appears. The whole interface is there, with the minimap, all the buttons, and informational things at the bottom. However, in the background, where I should see my city, it is all black, even though on the minimap it is showing I should be looking at something. After this, I press continue, and the beginning screen goes away but my game promptly freezes. After a few seconds, my mouse disappears and I have to restart. I only changed the settings to lower the video quality to Low.

What's weird is when I play internet games it will work fine. Only when I try to do a single player game, or make an internet or LAN game with only myself in it. If anyone has solved this problem, please let me know!

thanks

 

[eagle37k]

I've had exactly the same problem gezuz, detailed a few threads down, but I've not had any replies as yet - either we've missed something really obvious or its unsolvable...