Laptop Solution! Ati 7500 Mobilty 32mb

[laptopsolution]

First of all, i want to say that it took me a loooong while to read everything and to find the solution but I am finally there, and I hope I can help you guys out with this solution!

Second of all, the art .pak fix didnt work for me!
Neither the XML terrain trick (with notepad)

My system is a IBM t41 LAPTOP with a 32mb ATI radeon 7500 mobility
1.6 pentium M, 512 DDR


1.) Go to http://www.omegadrivers.net/ and download the omni drivers
2.) Install them, and reboot
3.) Go to their settings and go to the SMARTGART tab
4.) Set agp acceleration to nill (OFF), and reboot
5.) now play the game......
6.) for me playing the game was terribly slow without the AGP Acc. BUT.. worked, I had terrain...
7.) I exited the game and turned the acceleration back to 1. , and >rebooted
8.) Played the game again and was... faster.... I exited again.
9.) And I put it to 2 (SMARTGART). and -->rebooted
10.) played again, and excellent speed... so didnt try yet to increase more...


SIDENOTES:

1.)I did do the XML terrain trick... although before I did the above it had no effect !!! (in other words probarly had no effect, I would like to mention here that I did anyway....

2.) All my graphic settings are still at LOW (i was so excited i posted here right away, so didnt try to put these back yet)

3.) I did also tried the latest ATI drivers wich i got via the driversheaven.net/patje software but that DID NOT WORK!


Conclusion,

Playing the game with this card is perfectly possible.. I now simply KNOW, the wait is for a patch from the producers... 32mb 7500 mobility has no problem playing it at great speed.

To really conclude and give my last comment...
yes i think this workaround is REALLY strange... without lowering the SMARTGART to zero, it still didnt work... but when i did, and after that increased the value back (IN STEPS) to 2, it does... what the hell does this have to do with anything and why does it work only after setting it to zero?? I cannot answer that but this fix finally .......... worked!!!

 

[arcanus]

I have a t42 with the same graphics, i tried the install of these omega drivers, and while i could see the terrain, it was not quite right. I did not do this xml terrain trick, and can not find it in the forum. Can anyone please put the xml terrain trick here?

 

[thelaw_won]

so close!!

I tried this solution and have come the closest to getting it to work yet. Still not quite there yet. I'll post every step I took along the way and see if anyone can answer this craziness. I certainly can't make sense of it.

I have a mobility radeon 7500 and was faced with the chesire care/no terrain prob. I tried the pak fix to no avail. However, as with everyone else I COULD SEE terrain in the world editor view. I did the mapvisible=1 thing for a while, but playing while see the entire globe just wasnt doing it for me. So then I tried this solution. I downloaded and installed the omega driver. Before setting the acceleration to 0 (it was preset on 4) i tried loading civ. to my amazement I could see water! still no land though, but I figured this fix was well on its way to working. I switched the acceleration to 0, restarted the comp and reopened civ. This time the leaderheads were there, and i could see land, but it was all white/yellow where grassland was. Also, all of the water was black. It was also horribly slow. Still, something obviously was working, so I set the acceleration to 1x and restarted. No noticeable effect - still could see leaderheads, land was there but pale, couldnt see the water, game was slow. I then set the acceleration to 2x and restarted. This time big things changed. I couldn't see the leaderhead anymore. The terrain in the center of the map was again black, but in the upper left hand corner I had the one spot of clearness - with the right terrain color. The clear spot would stay up in the corner no matter where I scrolled, revealing the land even if I hadn't discovered it. The water was still black though. Also, this time the game speed was back to normal. My frustration was increasing, but I figured I might as well try to up the acceleration to 4X to see what would happen. Basically nothing different than at 2X, only the clear spot in corner was smaller.

Any ideas? Does this remotely make sense to anyone? Man, this is frustrating!

 

[joesf35]

Hell ya buddy!!

I had just turned off AGP and mipmap and was able to play....though slow but now i did as you said and there is no problem with anything!!!!
f'ing right doggie

 

[joesf35]

crap....i tried going all the way back up to 4x on th agp and the 'failed to initialize renderer error came up......i hadn't ever gotten this one.

 

[thelaw_won]

laptopsolution and joesf...a couple questions:

1) when you first dropped AGP to 0 and could see terrain, could you see the water as well?
2)what is mipmap?

 

[laptopsolution]

I did see the water....! but the best results I got when i kicked it up back
to 2x, some idle ships still have a purple glow though :S I guess they shouldnt be like that, do they?
if the game got slow kick up the AGP acc. step by step.. as in my tutorial !

mipmap got nog glue...

 

[joesf35]

I saw the water on 2x.....4x gave me 'failed to initialize renderer'....1x and 0x gave me white/yellow terrain though on one game, after I played for a while, the white terrain eventually turned normal. 3D heads showed up on all.

mipmap is one of the options in the 3D tab, and I am assuming that it has to do with mapping out texture to help speed up the renderer

 

[madphysicist]

I am also having the white/yellow terrain issue. But i have noticed something else, it sometimes switches between this and the correct colors, except that when i see the correct colors, i see too much of the map, and the water apear black, save where the units are supposed to see, there the water is normal.

Also, while everyone here is running the ATI Mobility 7500 with 32mb. what model of laptop do you have, this may help solve problems.
I am on an IBM TP T42

 

[batteryacid]

Hi
I have the same problem with the ATI Mobility 7500

AGP= disabled: yellow whit terrain, ressources OK , Water dark
AGP = on: black terrain
Made all the postet tricks , have newest drivers so no further options left

I could (sort of even when annoying) live till a patch (hope one will appear soon with some many people having these graphic troubles),

BUT there is still the "toast only" city screen bug (no hammers or coins visible), which makes the game unplayable due to impossible city and terrain management and the BIGGER trouble is, that this bug also appears with all the Ge Force 2, the GF 4xx series and some more graphic cards

really annoying- wanted to play with my friends today and 4 out of 5 PCs had this bug !

 

[Peppla]

I'm on a Dell Insprion 5100 with the Mobility 7500 and am having the exact same troubles....Hope this is patchable!?!?!

 

[CrONoS_QC]

Hi!

I have the Ati radeon, but not the Mobility one. And I have the same thing.

Ati Radeon 64 meg VIVO(dont know if this is a 7200 ou 7500, but since the only difference between the two are the clock speed we dont give a d*mn)

I've include a screenshot of my trouble.

See ya,

CrONoS_QC

Edit: Oh yeah i forget to tell, i try many things to fix the error(smartgat, changing option in the control panel of the ATI, change value in bios). DirectX update, driver update.

I am also having the white/yellow terrain issue. But i have noticed something else, it sometimes switches between this and the correct colors, except that when i see the correct colors, i see too much of the map, and the water apear black, save where the units are supposed to see, there the water is normal.

Also, while everyone here is running the ATI Mobility 7500 with 32mb. what model of laptop do you have, this may help solve problems.
I am on an IBM TP T42

 

[adamastor]

I have a Compaq Presario 2800 with 768Mb RAM and a Radeon 7500 32Mb, and I have this black terrain problem, as well as the leaders not showing properly.

When I tried the agp solution proposed here, I did see some terrain but it was too slow to play the game, when I tried to increase it to 2x (I only have 3 choices: 0x 2x and 4x) it was still too slow, and the terrain looked like it didn't have the proper colors. Note that I didn't tried to play the game much, just started it and exited a turn after. It's just not interesting at all to play it that slow and with these kind of graphics.

I sure hope some kind of patch or fix will be available soon!

BTW: I'm using the lastest Omega drivers, and did tried the fixes described on Firaxis site.

 

[HMSVictory]

I tried the fix listed by the OP (Thank you for the effort and hope!) and I got essentially the same results until I upped the AGP to 2x. I then returned to the no terrain and no leaderhead nightmare. Though on lower settings it did work (1x being the max, but with the weird colors everyone else has been getting). I'll keep putzing around. Thanks again for the effort.

 

[CrONoS_QC]

Now i'm asking this to myself.

Maybe our cards will, and will be forever incompatible with the game. It was never supposed to work. But maybe it's just a bug, or something who can be fixed. If anyone find a solution pls post here your clue.

Does someone have sent an email to the support team of Civ4 for this bugs?

 

[DrEvil1996]

I am having similar issues, it just runs too slow on my Inspiron 5100. I have the Radeon 7500 32 MB, and it is just too slow.

I "acquired" the game yesterday to see if the performance would be good enough for me to purchase it (I have no plans to keep the version I have now, I would never pirate a game for profit, just testing).

Here is what I am wondering: assuming the graphics issues can be fixed somehow, would it be a good investment to increase by RAM from 512 to 1 GB?

I am just trying to figure out how much of the choppiness is a result of the Video Card and how much is related to my RAM. If upping the RAM would make a great difference I'd consider it, but right now I wouldn't even be able to play a few turns without getting too frustrated. At first boot I had the darkness issue and then changed the AGP and it helped. Now at least there is no lag on the beginning video, but it is unplayable once I start a game. I have the latest Omega Drivers as well, does anyone else have advice on settings to change either in-game or in Omega to help?

 

[snoopy369]

It sounds to me like y'all are fixing your graphics card settings to the correct ones. AGP should be the setting based on your motherboard ... so either you're (correctly) changing the card to use your motherboard's AGP speed (1x, 2x, 4x, 8x exist), or you're setting it to a lower speed that works. It's not a Firaxis problem, but an ATI problem for not correctly noticing the AGP settings (or an Omega problem, possibly).

For those of you who got this to work, do you know your motherboard's AGP speed - and what are they?

 

[DrEvil1996]

For those of you who got this to work, do you know your motherboard's AGP speed - and what are they?

I didn't even consider this. How do we find out our motherboard's AGP speed?

 

[ThePunisher]

I did see the water....! but the best results I got when i kicked it up back to 2x

Are you seeing the correct terrain colours?