Intel graphics display and Civ4: does it work 4 U?

[Max Fisher]

Hey I just wanted to post my findings. I have a 3 month old dell laptop with intel integrated 82852/82855 graphics. I have a 1.8 ghz and 1GB ram. Upon first installation I got the chesire cat and black graphics and I was really dissapointed, but after messing around and reading the forums I did the world builder cheat and the game runs perfectly!

I still get the chesire cat in diplomacy, but this is not essential for gameplay. The intro video skips but the wonder videos are perfect. My chip renders all the terrain perfectly. I would expect a patch/fix for this problem soon because the intel chipset is obviously capable of rendering the terrain graphics, it just doesnt right away for some reason.

Bottom line, people with intel chips, dont rush out today and buy a new card because I think they could find a work around for this. My card is does NOT have T&L and it fails the srttest for civ4, but Im still playing and enjoying the game with only minor issues.

 

[Shadowlord]

your mom's.
(i got an fx5200)

The 5200 is ****. Really, take it back. I have a 5600, it works decently, though I don't have Civ IV yet and haven't tried it. The 5600 shouldn't be THAT expensive now, I hope. None of these are new cards though. I don't know what ATI cards are good, but someone else might be able to name a fairly cheap one which can handle Civ IV.

Edit: Looks like other people did. One person recommended the Radeon 9250 with 128 MB of RAM if you don't have AGP. *keeps reading*

This is rediculous. Anyone who has a clue will NOT expect a game on a 3D engine to run WELL on an FX video card or an INTEL video card.

It's common sense.

No, it isn't, and you're wrong. NOLF2 runs smooth as silk on maximum details on my GeForce FX 5600. Most of the other games I like run great too (Deus Ex, Elite Force 2, Max Payne 2, to name some FPSes). The only ones that don't are fairly new FPSes that I'm not terribly interested in anyhow (FEAR), or ones that have woefully unoptimized engines (DX:IW).

 

[crismac]

Double A You are a game saver no more black ground!!I have intel 82845g graphics controler on my desktop that doesn't have a graphics card slot so I can't buy a new card.You saved me a ton of money from buying a new computer.I owe you big!Thanks again.

 

[controlledchaos]

No...Civ IV did not work right with my Integrated Intel Extreme Graphics chip. I have an HP Pavillion Pentium 4 2.53 GHz 512 MB CPU. I had dark terrain and the ghost leaders (as my son called them). I bought a GeForce FX 5500 128 MB card today for $80 and the game works great now. Not having T&L was clearly my problem.

And, Double A, your quick fix will work but it takes away the exploration part of the game that I truly enjoy. However, if you are on a fixed budget (as I know most are these days) it is a good fix.

 

[hanscats]

Hey I just wanted to post my findings. I have a 3 month old dell laptop with intel integrated 82852/82855 graphics. I have a 1.8 ghz and 1GB ram. Upon first installation I got the chesire cat and black graphics and I was really dissapointed, but after messing around and reading the forums I did the world builder cheat and the game runs perfectly!

Could you make step-by-step guide?

 

[Chronos_4]

Ran the game on a laptop with an Intel 852/855 GM chipset to see what it would do. The leaders were doing the Chesire cat thing, and the terrain was all black. You'll need to upgrade.

I have Intel Extreme Graghics 845GV on my desktop and have the same problem; And the nitwits gave me a French Tech Tree to boot .

 

[Chronos_4]

with the Intel 8XX chipset you can run the game, however you will get the black terrain, the way around this is to revise the XML file located in the game files. doing this will cause you to see the entire map. except enemies. Its like the clear screen cheat in CIV 3. If you are desperate like i was to play this game then its worth it, as it was for me. I probably would have ended up finding and using the cheat code anyway! So, if you wanna be on an equal playing field like AI then you can edit this way

goto: "C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Assets\XML\Technologies

OPEN: CIV4TechInfos with notepad

then goto File | Relpace...
then replace all

<bMapVisible>0</bMapVisible>

with

<bMapVisible>1</bMapVisible>

...this works as i have used it and i have the Intel 8xx

No this kind of fix is not for me. Either they (FireAxis) fix it or I have a new $40 Frisby.

... and a French Tech Tree dart board.

 

[Ybother]

No this kind of fix is not for me. Either they (FireAxis) fix it or I have a new $40 Frisby.

... and a French Tech Tree dart board.

ya, this is not a fix.

how m i going to play multiplayer? ask everyone to play with reveal map on?

 

[Libertarian]

Mine says "AMD Sempron, 220+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.5 GHz"

And "960 MB RAM"

Is it going to work?

 

[gunnerxtr]

bump.....

anyone else running successful intel graphic cards?

 

[CrONoS_QC]

I succeed with my Intel 915 Centrino.

It's a bit slow, but i dont have try to configure anything, i try to make it work on my other computer who have a Ati Radeon 64 meg.

If I dont find anything to do for my other computer I'll try to speed up civ4, by playing in the setting of the game, or in the setting of the video card...

See ya,

Dom

bump.....

anyone else running successful intel graphic cards?

 

[Big Red One]

I have the same configuration; Intel 82865G; and unfortunately the cheshire cat smile and the black background problems are present. After reading numerous messages over the last few days I am going to upgrade tommorrow to either the GeForce FX5500, PCI card with 256 MB DDR, or the Radeon 9250 PCI card with 256 MB DDR; both of which have been highly recommended. I have been able to play the game (using the Mini Map display features) but it would be nice to see the great graphics I saw in the screenshots.

 

[Son of Sid]

If you have a Intel card this is worth reading. I have the black terrain on normal civ games but when I access the Revolutionary War scennario the terrain and game look visually perfect. This leads to me believe that the Intel card is not the problem. Also on page 188 of the manual Soren Johnson thanks the testers and mentions " terrible crash bugs, gaps in communications, system incompatibilities, invisible terrain, and worse." Say that again. Invisible terrain. This reminds me of Pirates when the Dutch captain was invisible in the beginning of the game. Also your character was like a Terminator 2 bronze liquid substance. That was corrected in the patch. I've played 2 games of Civ4 so far by using the map mod to remove the tile blackness. While playing I have no problem except for the leaderheads and dark terrain but basically do the test with the Revolutionary War scenario and see what kind of results you get.
dougpat76@aol.com

 

[Pvblivs]

If you do not want to mess around with Technology-XML-Files (like me, because I do not want to mod my game that much that I have to reinstall it ;-)) here is the World-Builder-Step-By-Step FYI for all Intel 8xx-Chipset-Users with black terrain:

1. Start a game -> You should have black terrain now
2. Open Main Menu/Open World Builder
3. In the World Builder click on the Icon "Reveal Tile Mode"
4. Continue and Click on the Icon "Reveal All Tiles"
5. Exit The World Builder

-> You should see the entire map now, though a little darker. But whether a patch comes or not: you can play this civ of the civs now!

6. Have fun!

Publius

 

[Ybother]

there is another workaround that makes more sense. because the fog is actually unrevealed at the center of the map instead of where your settlers start, i suggest you "move" yours settler or scout to the center of the map(hopefully its not ocean).

if we use the map visible tech, fog of war still does not work correctly.

 

[ulysses_kn]

hi there, I have the same problem, namely using ONLY a laptop (w/o desktop alternative) with an intel 8xx chipset. I bought the game, and did not pay attention to the t&l requirement, so when I found out why the tiles were black, I was a little bit pisxxxx... I know that my machine is not knew (it's 2 years now) and I do not expect things like doom3 or hl2 to run. but civ??? and, btw: I can run ms flightsim 2004 on medium details, and I would think that this needs a lot more graph power than civ4.

@ firaxis: I would expect that most people who spend like €45 for the game are in their late 20s or older, bacause they know and loved the whole civ and ac series. those people start to have the money, so they do not need to care about the €45, while at the same time they are not willing to buy no machines only for the games to run. I need my laptop for other stuff, running mathematica, gauss or things like that, and I believe that those apps will still run in 5 years, while even a chess game will not run anymore.

so: thanks a lot for the "reveal world" idea, I will try it tonight!

 

[LlamaGod]

It's not so much you dont have the power to play, its that your missing a rendering tool in your hardware.

 

[Pvblivs]

It's not so much you dont have the power to play, its that your missing a rendering tool in your hardware.

I think he knows the T&L-stuff. At least he wrote it *g*

He wanted to stress: That we get this game to work thus simply shows that missing T&L can not be such a great deal.

The main problem I see is that Civ, that is attracting a lot of persons that do not play other current state-of-the-graphics-art-games, are excluded just because they miss T&L on their Notebooks that normally would play without complications, just some kind of slowly , almost every game.
That we see a black map is simply because it seems to consist of three layers that are shuffled over one and another via T&L somehow: Unexplored, fog and the "action"-map. Seems do be a great technical deal, eh ?

At least we can disable the unexplored map in some way and play the game, seeing units and all other stuff on a fog-of-war map.

 

[pixelboy411]

You're completely insane. Do you realize that even though you might have bought your laptop in 2003 it might have been built in 2001? Ever think about that? And my computer, which I bought 3 years ago, still runs Civ 4 on the higher settings. It's an AMD processor w/ a Geforce 5 I think.

The reason I was "being rude" was because you were assaulting Firaxis - which is totally unwaranted. It's not Firaxis's fault that your computer sucks. Keep in mind that Civ 4 takes a very slow computer to run anyway EVEN THOUGH IT CAME OUT IN 2005. The Gfx aren't amazing or anything, and that being said, newer games like Quake 4 or Fear take a pc that's ten times faster than Civ 4. Now, if your computer is so outdated that it can't even run Civ 4, I don't know what to tell you.

Go play PS2 or something.

That's all great for you as you seem to be mostly a gamer on your computer. I also bought my laptop within the last year (not a closeout deal either), and granted, I did buy it mostly for work. But I had always been a loyal customer to Firaxis because their games worked with less graphic requirements. In fact, the reason I bought this game was one of the producers noted in an online pre-release video that "we don't want to make games that require all the latest hardware" to be playable. In fact, I think it was one of the pre-release videos linked from this site. Yet here we are.

I do have a desktop to play Civ 4 on and have enjoyed the game, but 80% of the time I am on the road with my laptop, and, well, it sucks that they would not support Intel integrated video older than 1 generation. I went to CompUSA to check on their current stock of laptops, and over 50% are still using Intel 8xx series.

Do you really see it being that "crazy"? High end graphics were never the beauty of any of the Civ games. If I wanted high end graphics, I WOULD play a PS2..... It's a hell of a lot cheaper.

 

[burriad]

I can't stand the people who are just acting wise and teaching everyone how stupid it is to buy a laptop with a poor graphic card! Perhaps you don't realize, but many people buy computers for working purposes mainly and don't give a **** about graphics because it doesn't matter for most applications. So contribute solutions or just stop *****ing!