Minor Graphical and Crashing issues (and I mean MINOR!!!)

[Aussie_Lurker]

Hi guys, Well the game installed and loaded like a dream-and looks VERY beautiful. The only problem I have are occasional graphical 'artifacts' moving across the screen (lines of pixelation?) and, on 2 occasions, the screen has frozen completely-both times when I was zoomed in very close.
Now, from the get-go I should point out that I have a Radeon 9550 card, with ATI drivers (Catalyst 5.10), which is almost certainly the source of ALL my problems . That said, do you guys have any suggestions about how I can remove these minor problems? Is it just a matter of disabling my other windows programs and/or defragging my hard-drive, or should I actually install Catalyst 5.7 or 5.8 drivers (as at least one person has suggested to me)?
Any advice would be VERY much appreciated !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[oldStatesman]

If you find out the answer to these issues a lot of people would like to know.

So far there has been no definitive fix. Old drivers work for some, for some they don't. Tweaking the settings work for some, for some they don't. The range of crash issues is across the spectrum of cards - nvidia or ATI.

All indications are that there are bugs in the game...and my guess is that we will have to wait for a patch to have these problems corrected on a Universal scale.

 

[gunnergoz]

Yep, I think that's a correct summation. It will be fixed in time. Meanwhile, a lot of us just have to grin and bear it.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well, I stopped the REAL problem-namely the computer freezing-by simply setting Autosave to 0. The artifacts are so tiny that-after I play for long enough-I barely even notice its there (though disabling uneccessary programs definitely helped a LOT). Man this game is MEGA addictive, btw. All I played was the tutorial but, even with that, I was constantly looking at the time thinking 'its after 11pm, but I will just have ONE....MORE....TURN'. Then 'Its almost Midnight, but I will have just ONE....MORE....TURN'. I finally used an act of will to stop playing after I built the Pyramids !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.