Played Civ 4; New to Civ 5; Technical Problems

[paintanker]

I've played Civ 4 a lot (although I've never gotten any good at it), and I just bought Civ 5, but I'm having some problems and questions.

1) It says I can play with directx 9, or directx10 &11. What is Directx? I have windows 7, does that come with some directx installed? If so, which one? How do I get directx11 (which I assume is the best)?

2) When I click on play on directx 9, it doesn't open, it just does nothing. I've gotten it to start up twice, and I have no idea how, because I did the same thing 20 other times and nothing happened.

When I click on play on directx 10&11, it opens a window really quickly and then shuts it right away. I have never gotten it to open with this option.

Thanks

 

[Zydor]

It sounds like there is a video card issue. I suggest you copy your OP and post again on the technical forum.

It would help others to help you with this one if you could state what system you have (cpu, video card, system ram etc). You can get a good summary of that by clicking on the windows circle bottom left of the desktop, and in the box at the bottom type "msinfo32" (no quotes), then press the enter button.

The guys over there will then take it from there.

Regards
Zy

 

[charon2112]

I've played Civ 4 a lot (although I've never gotten any good at it), and I just bought Civ 5, but I'm having some problems and questions.

1) It says I can play with directx 9, or directx10 &11. What is Directx? I have windows 7, does that come with some directx installed? If so, which one? How do I get directx11 (which I assume is the best)?

2) When I click on play on directx 9, it doesn't open, it just does nothing. I've gotten it to start up twice, and I have no idea how, because I did the same thing 20 other times and nothing happened.

When I click on play on directx 10&11, it opens a window really quickly and then shuts it right away. I have never gotten it to open with this option.

3) On the few times I have played, I was surrounded by a jaggedy blackness. Watching previews for the game, I saw that the unexplored territory was supposed to be white clouds. Why can't I see the clouds?

Thanks

What kind of videocard do you have? And make sure you have the latest drivers...

 

[Skwink]

We do have a subforum for technical support you know?

 

[CivFart]

1) It says I can play with directx 9, or directx10 &11. What is Directx? I have windows 7, does that come with some directx installed? If so, which one? How do I get directx11 (which I assume is the best)?

You need a directx 11 graphics card for this to work. The game usually ships with the upgraded directx runtime libraries.

DirectX is an api for graphics programming on windows. DirectX 11 Direct3D is considerably smaller compared to DirectX 9 Direct3D, almost 3 1/2 times reduced overall size of the direct3d wrapper, so the api is much more efficient and ofcourse it supports new features, including direct 2d.

But you need a graphics card that have designed their hardware and drivers to support the new api. You cant just install directx 11 and expect it to work.

DirectX works like an automated teller machine. If new machines are designed, the credit card companies also have to adapt their cards for this new machine for it to work mutually. So what you need is to check if you have a dx11 compliant graphics card.

 

[Babri]

3) On the few times I have played, I was surrounded by a jaggedy blackness. Watching previews for the game, I saw that the unexplored territory was supposed to be white clouds. Why can't I see the clouds?

Thanks

In video options set your fog of war quality to high/medium. On low settings it becomes black like in cIV.

 

[The_J]

We do have a subforum for technical support you know?

Moderator Action: Moved to tech support.
Next time, please report missplaced threads, that makes it more likely to get the moved.

@problem: We have to know what graphics card you have, like already pointed out by the others.

 

[paintanker]

I have a RadeonHD 5770 graphics card, which says it supports directx11, so I don't think it's that.

 

[charon2112]

I have a RadeonHD 5770 graphics card, which says it supports directx11, so I don't think it's that.

That's the same card I have, and it works great. I don't think the cards the problem. Do you have the latest version of ATI CCC?

 

[The_J]

Current Radeon drivers can be found here.

 

[paintanker]

downloading those drivers fixed the problem. thanks