Patched, and now menus/buttons are messed up

[ddblue]

I looked around a bit, but surprisingly didin't see anyone having the same problem (I must've missed something, and if so I'm sorry). My game ran fine a few days ago, and today I checked for updates. I patched, and my game still technically plays ok, but the menus are strange. Instead of saying "Your civilization has reached 100,000 souls!" or something, now it will say something like HK_KEYETC_100_POP. The scores menu was also virtually unreadable because of this. And instead of Yes or No, I get a string of code-like lingo and a big OK and some other equally cryptic option.

What can I do?

 

[Zydor]

Post your dxdiag please

Start Button - click - selecr run - typr dxdiag - press enter - wait a min - select "save all information " - post as a file attachment using the 'go advanced ' button below

Regards
Zy

 

[ddblue]

Here it is!

 

[Zydor]

I presume there were no issues with the game prior to this happening?

Have you loaded any non-Firaxis mods ?

Assuming a no answer, sounds as though somehow some files have been corrupted, difficult to say what. If you have not had previous problems before - and the game installed ok without undue hassles/lots of tweeking initially, then its probably easier to reinstall as its not a long process. Dont forget to move any saved files & downloaded patches out of the civ directories so you do not loose them when de-installing the current setup.

After the initial de-install via add/remove programmes - check that My Games/civ directory has been removed parts can get left behind, particularly old cache files which can cause issues on a re-install, latter not that common, but its happened.

Regards
Zy

 

[tymmail]

I've this problem also. The origin of this problem is the failure to load a xml file. Did you see any pop-ups during initialization saying error in xml file?

I also wonder why no one report this--- for the DVD version of the game, the character encoding in xml files seems problematic, particular the Italian characters. In my game (run on Chinese Traditional WinXP SP2), the end tag of Italian line is like "?/Italian>". missing the "<" cause failure to load the whole file and cause those strange user interface text.

 

[ddblue]

I did have an error while initializing. I also found out the problem. You're running Chinese windows, I'm running Japanese windows. When I switch everything back to English (United States) in Control Panel / Regional Settings, specifically the Standards & Formats menu, and the Langue for Non-Unicode programs under "advanced", everything is fine after a reboot. Kind of annoying, but for now it works.