IMPORTANT: Support page & New Fix for Radeon Cards

[JadeDragon87]

Hi,
Yesterday I installed the game and it works perfectly ( and I hope it will stay so).

Graph card : ATI Radeon 9600pro
Processor : AMD Athlon XP 2400+
Memory : 1024 Mb

I had to reinstall windows XP two days ago due to problems, yesterday I installed the newest drivers for my graph card. (cataclyst 5.10, version pilots 8.18.0.0).
I have the DVD version of the game. ( I don't know if it is important to mention ).

I hope for the people who can't play it that a solution will be found.

 

[HannibalMcAlps]

I have the same black terrian/eyes and chompers leaders that some people have reported. The game seems to run fine otherwise, although the opening movies stutter.

I did the unpak fix, and deleted the cache (although it reappeared- will try the game again...)

I'm worried I may be at the lower limit of requirements (having trouble figuring out exactly what my laptop has).

Compaq Presario 2195us
Mobile AMD Athalon 1.86ghz
512mb ram
graphics card (I think) is Radeon IGP 320M. Its running driver 6.14.10.6436

I saw in another thread that this graphics card should be ok? I'm confused about the driver issue- with a laptop can I update the driver?

Thanks for any help or suggestions to get rid of the black terrain.

Maybe I'll wait for the mac version to come out! If they had announced that early enough for me to cancel my pre-order I probably would have...

I have this same laptop. Gamespy has a Civ 4 requirements analyzer from Newegg.com on there site which I ran. My computer failed,but also showed that all the hardware was at or above minimum specs. I downloaded the Catylyst 5.1 driver update at ATI but it couldn't install due to a "lack of standard VGA" which I assume is a video graphics accelerator. One solution I have been told about is a PCMCIA external card to boost the graphics functions. Take2 has a solution but I am hoping they will provide a patch soon as the current solve is a mess for me since I already have the driver update installed. Apolyton's solution I couldn't complete so I'm a little stuck.
Where did you see that list of video cards ? I'll let you know when I get a fix for the Presario 2195US.

 

[erpcon]

I have the same black terrian/eyes and chompers leaders that some people have reported. The game seems to run fine otherwise, although the opening movies stutter.

I did the unpak fix, and deleted the cache (although it reappeared- will try the game again...)

I'm worried I may be at the lower limit of requirements (having trouble figuring out exactly what my laptop has).

Compaq Presario 2195us
Mobile AMD Athalon 1.86ghz
512mb ram
graphics card (I think) is Radeon IGP 320M. Its running driver 6.14.10.6436

I saw in another thread that this graphics card should be ok? I'm confused about the driver issue- with a laptop can I update the driver?

Thanks for any help or suggestions to get rid of the black terrain.

Maybe I'll wait for the mac version to come out! If they had announced that early enough for me to cancel my pre-order I probably would have...

I would be interested if this fixed your problem.

 

[bio_hazard]

@erpcon. Thanks for the message. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me find the thread that had the list of cards[edit- see end of message]. It listed the 300M's as basic but adequate (it was in the second from the bottom hierarchy of cards that theoretically should work). It was probably in the Tech Support or Bugs section... Of course, this wasn't an official page, so it is probably based on what should theoretically work and not what actually does.

I'm not too sure what I should do now. I'm not really a techie (I'm a mac person), and only got the Compaq to run some fragment analysis software for my research. I would think a driver that is 6.14 would be more up to date than driver 5.10? Am I wrong?

I too will continue to play around with this, although I'm doing it from a dial-up from home which is agonizingly slow even to surf around to find the help pages. A single patch would be ideal.

Did you play around with the game any? I found it a little slow on my computer. The intro movies stuttered a lot, and the gameplay seemed a little laggy in the tutorial and in the game. I'm seriously considering returning this/putting it on eBay and waiting till the Aspyr port comes out for the mac.

Anyway, yes, PLEASE PM me if you get a fix for your computer. There's so much traffic/new posts on the boards now I have a hard time sifting through the messages.

Edit: can I say I'm a little pissed that I have what I consider a mid-range laptop that's about 1.5 years old and it can't run a turn-based game? wtf

EDIT AGAIN- I found the "chart" with all the cards.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133278

 

[erpcon]

@erpcon. Thanks for the message. Unfortunately I can't for the life of me find the thread that had the list of cards[edit- see end of message]. It listed the 300M's as basic but adequate (it was in the second from the bottom hierarchy of cards that theoretically should work). It was probably in the Tech Support or Bugs section... Of course, this wasn't an official page, so it is probably based on what should theoretically work and not what actually does.

I'm not too sure what I should do now. I'm not really a techie (I'm a mac person), and only got the Compaq to run some fragment analysis software for my research. I would think a driver that is 6.14 would be more up to date than driver 5.10? Am I wrong?

I too will continue to play around with this, although I'm doing it from a dial-up from home which is agonizingly slow even to surf around to find the help pages. A single patch would be ideal.

Did you play around with the game any? I found it a little slow on my computer. The intro movies stuttered a lot, and the gameplay seemed a little laggy in the tutorial and in the game. I'm seriously considering returning this/putting it on eBay and waiting till the Aspyr port comes out for the mac.

Anyway, yes, PLEASE PM me if you get a fix for your computer. There's so much traffic/new posts on the boards now I have a hard time sifting through the messages.

Edit: can I say I'm a little pissed that I have what I consider a mid-range laptop that's about 1.5 years old and it can't run a turn-based game? wtf

EDIT AGAIN- I found the "chart" with all the cards.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=133278

I will keep you updated.

I'm playing the game "in the dark" just to learn the mechanics. I checked my laptop via some web site just to make sure I could run the game. I met or exceeded the minimum requirements in all areas except the video card. I only have 32M, not 64M.

 

[bio_hazard]

@erpcom,

thanks. is the 320M a 32mb card? I couldn't find any info on it- although I thought i saw somewhere that it was 64bit (which is probably irrelevant to this discussion).

i can't even tell whether its an integrated card or not.

EDIT- Bad news from apolyton site
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=141405
ATI Laptop Cards
Mobility 320/340 IGP (athlon/pentium versions of the same thing): DO NOT support T+L

 

[cecilus]

Just wanted to say i spent hours trying to get this dam radeon card to work with civ 4. this fix mentioned abaove, so far works. i also cleared the cache in case anyone wonders.

I have a saphire radeon 9600 atlantis with 256 megs o ram.

I hope this helps other people! Make sure to send a copy of this to those buttheads at Firaxis! =)



Cec

 

[gabe]

i'm pretty sure that catalyst drivers don't work with mobility radeons. i have a presario 3030 with a mob/rad 9000 IGP and had 2 get different drivers.

I have this same laptop. Gamespy has a Civ 4 requirements analyzer from Newegg.com on there site which I ran. My computer failed,but also showed that all the hardware was at or above minimum specs. I downloaded the Catylyst 5.1 driver update at ATI but it couldn't install due to a "lack of standard VGA" which I assume is a video graphics accelerator. One solution I have been told about is a PCMCIA external card to boost the graphics functions. Take2 has a solution but I am hoping they will provide a patch soon as the current solve is a mess for me since I already have the driver update installed. Apolyton's solution I couldn't complete so I'm a little stuck.
Where did you see that list of video cards ? I'll let you know when I get a fix for the Presario 2195US.

 

[Mad As Hell]

There is nothing in my Art0.FPK file to extract. Can someone help me?

 

[erpcon]

Amazing. While play my game "in the dark" last night, all of a sudden the land graphics appeared. The night before last I started seeing water rendered somewhat OK (except when a ship moved) and a little land on the far right edge of the screen. I could always zoom out and see the land mass, but I could not see the civivilation borders.

While, last night the land became visible and I could see the game as it was meant to be seen. I still have problems with water and some of the unit graphics in the portrait window don't render quite right, but this is an improvement. I wonder what will happen when I start the game tonight!

 

[bio_hazard]

@erpcon
There are a million threads about this so this may not be new info to you, but apparently the black terrain is due to the differential lighting, so if you
a) get world maps from other civs or
b) reveal the whole world map using the world editor,

then you may experience some relief of the black terrain issue.

I played the tutorial a bit last night, and occasionally saw some polar ice caps or blue lakes. Will try a real game tonight.

Question- did you get anything besides bread showing up when the terrain cleared?

 

[erpcon]

@bio_hazard
I don't remember what happening when the terrain became visible.

I can not remember what shows when I clear terrain.

 

[biggusdicus]

Was having similar probs to most of you. After getting game to finally load (after re-install and manual install of direct x off the game cd) game would run very slow, even on lowest graphics...so in a fit of desperation today i finally installed sp2 for xp and guess what....it plays perfectly so far...about 3 hours so far...so try it if you haven't already...i think there must be some updated files that help the situation....

 

[o_owd]

i found something interesting...

on my pc the did not want to start...
so i took the steps described in thid thread...

i had the render error. i unpacked and the game exits to desktop...
i modified in civilization4.ini file the 'in game movies' section. still nothing.
now !!! i moved the movies folder from assets. the game starts !!!
at this point i moved back the movies folder and the game still works.
i put back the file i moved (after unpack) and the game still works...

can you verify this ?

sorry for my poor english.

OJi.

 

[stendec]

Help me please HEEELP, for the last 14h I’m trying to set up the game

I tried everything.

Following the http://www.2kgames.com/civ4/support_ati.htm

Installing ATI (5.10) driver (9/14/2005). PakBulid is extracting only 1 fail CvGameCoreDLL.dll which size is only 3.41 MB(?)

deleting cache…

; Set to 1 for no in-game movies
NoMovies = 1

…downloaded new d3dx9_27.dll

I have reinstalled Windows, and all the drivers (mainboard, sound card…)

I have Athlon 1500+
512MB
ATI 9200 128mb (by gigabyte)
Win XP sp2

I’m getting the “failed rederer” message always…

I tried also with a my old geforce 2 TI 32mb card, same message

[3478.902] DBG: FILE Cat Init
[3491.450] DBG: NOT Using XML cache, failed to find crc.dat file
[3491.490] DBG: Game Init
[3491.490] DBG: Multiplayer Init
[3492.782] DBG: Audio Init
[3495.376] DBG: ArtFileMgr Init
[3495.386] DBG: Python Init
[3511.459] VERSION: CIV Version: 0
[3511.459] VERSION: Save Version: 100
[3511.459] DBG: Input Init
[3511.489] DBG: Engine Init
[3511.709] ERR: Initialize Renderer failed - parameters:
- width = 1024
- height = 768
- flags = 0xc
- hwnd = 0x80554
- adaptrid = 0
- deviceid = 3
[3511.709] DBG: Failed to Initialize Renderer - Check DirectX Version

 

[thompiddock]

the game fails to start up after it says 'check xml' on the loading bar. i tried the crazy pak thing but im pretty hopeless with understanding what any of this is talking about. why wont it just work??!?!

 

[RuggeR29]

Yeah, I've got a Radeon 7500 AIW and I'm in the same boat. I was thinking of upgrading to a newer ATI card (lets face it, the 7500 is old and has limited abilities to handle 3D), but it looks like people are having problems with all the radeon cards, so I'm not gonna blow my money until there's some sure fix.

Incidently, I did find this quite ironic:

http://www.ati.com/buy/promotions/11076/software.asp

ATI has Civ4 listed as an Ultimate Stocking Stuffer on their holiday gift guide. Wow, that's an expensive lump of coal.

 

[robwr]

I was thinking of upgrading to a newer ATI card (lets face it, the 7500 is old and has limited abilities to handle 3D), but it looks like people are having problems with all the radeon cards, so I'm not gonna blow my money until there's some sure fix.

Well, I certainly wouldn't blame ATI for this - I've had ATI cards for years and years, and they've been great for gaming. From everything I've read about this problem, the mistake is entirely in due to Firaxis and I'm sure it will get fixed in their first patch.

Of course, the real blame should be with the fact that Firaxis didn't hold a very wide beta to catch bugs like this. Another of my favorite strategy games from this past year, Supreme Ruler 2010, was in beta for over six months before release, and when it came out the first version was rock-solid stable. (SR2010 did have a few gameplay bugs in their first release that were quickly fixed by patches, and one of the funniest was the fact that you could trick AI players into diplomatically trading all their land for a good money or treaty offer - ironic because Civ4 now has a very similar AI diplomacy bug itself!)

Now that Civ4 is released, the first buyers become the "open beta", and the bugs we find will be fixed in their first patch. ATI is a great company, they shouldn't get a black mark because of something that wasn't their fault.

 

[RichUT]

So um, yeah. My game never had any problems, other than some dragging associated with having a lower end graphics card. So, what did I do? I bought an ATI Radeon 9550, and now I can't play it anymore.

I've done the unpacking, deleted the cache, and switched to the Omega drivers. The unpacking let me start the game up properly, but as soon as the first turn is over the game just shuts down and I am dumped back to the desktop. Every damn time.

Anyone see anything like this and know of a way to fix it?

 

[CivGreece]

My copy arrived today from amazon.co.uk and at first i wasn't really bothered to install it after reading all the problems people have been facing these days. Well i eventually installed it and the damn thing worked fine! Here are my laptop specs, hope they help:

Fujitsu-Siemens AmiloD1840
Proc.: P4-3.2Ghz
Gr.Card: ATI Radeon Mobility 9600 (128Mb)
Mem: 512mb
O/S: Win XP (SP2)

What i did was, install directx 9.0c that comes with the game. Reboot. Then install the game, reboot and play it. Works ok!