Most of the Background in my screen is black

[eyetoeyembca]

When I played the tutorial, a lot of the screen was black which I assumed was because of the unexplored nature of most of the terrain and "fog-of-war". As I got into the game, though, the darkness receeded, and I was able to see the terrain.

I have since started a new game; I'm already at 1515 and most of the background is still black except for a corner in the upper right. I can see cities and units and resources but I can't see land features like coastlines or mountains. I can't see cultural borders either. If I zoom out far enough, the darkness disapears but it reappears when I zoom back in.

I am playing on a laptop (Compaq Presario) which I understand does not have a sufficiently powerful video card. Compaq says that it cannot be upgraded. I don't know if that is the problem or not. I have tried going to the options menu and changing the various settings in the video tab but that doesn't seem to work.

Does anyone know what I might be able to try to fix this.

 

[Pendle Witch]

Question - Are you playing with the latest patch 1.61 ?? If not, you can download it from the game menu (click "advanced")

Failing that, it could very well be a graphics card issue - there have been many posts on these forums - try searching for your video card in "bugs "

 

[T.A JONES]

Sorry I got ta be the first one to break it to ya, but your onboard G card bites the big one. You have to come clean with a freshly installed 128. Memeory is key to but not when it comes to the specific problem you have.

What you describe are symptoms of using one of the worst available g cards on the market today to try and run the biggest hog and hardware demanding game ever built to date ( there mybe 1 other I forget)

 

[eyetoeyembca]

I've been told by an authorized Compaq dealer that I cannot alter or add to my video card. Do you still think that the 1.61 patch will work? Is it worth a try?

 

[Watiggi]

Off course it's worth a try. It's free to do and try, so why not.

I have noticed though that the patches seem to corrupt the original scenarios more and more with each patch. All though not as extreme as what you have, I wonder if it is scenario dependent. Try playing a normal game and see if the same thing happens. It does sound like a graphic card issue though, but it is worth a try.

Watiggi

 

[Wolfwood]

I had a similar problem with Sid's Pirates! on one of my older laptops and I fixed it with a driver upgrade. Do you have an onboard graphics chip or an actual graphics card, like ATI Radeon etc.?

If it's an ATI, you could try just upgrading the video drivers - Catalyst drivers might do the trick for you, as they did for me.

Failing that, consider getting a new laptop (or a cheaper tabletop designed for gaming). Out of laptops, at least Asus A6Ja runs the game perfectly with its ATI x1600 card...

 

[nameless_one]

drivers. drivers. drivers.

 

[eyetoeyembca]

I downloaded the patch as suggested. However, now when I try to open the game I get an error message as follows "Failed to allocate video memory. Please try reducing your graphics setting." When I press 'OK' I get a Runtime Error which says "This application has requested to runtime to terminate it in an unusual way. Please contact the applications support team for more information."

I then went to the control panel, clicked on the Display icon, then the settings tab and tried altering the resolution less and more. What ever the resolution was I still was not able to open the game without these error messages.

Any ideas now.

 

[King Flevance]

As nameless refers to look up any updates for your video card drivers.

 

[Wolfwood]

Yup, you definitely have to get new video card drivers (as several people have already suggested). Have you been able to figure out which video card the laptop has?