GeneralMikeIII said:
I'm not saying the patch will suddenly make the game run perfectly on my machine (a labtop with an 82whatever video card), but there should be one to address the black terrain and the floating eyes.
Yes, there "should" be one, but fact is they made a purposeful decision not to when making the game for certain specs, so it is doubtful they will reverse themselves with a patch.
With regard to the link to the video card list at Apolyton -- and thanks BTW, it is a very useful reference -- but just for the record it claims the Intel 8**** won't run the game, and that's not entirely true. I have that video and I can play the game fine, there are just the following issues:
1. Cheshire cat leaders
2. Black terrain (somewhat solved by the reveal map fix)
3. Stuttering sound on videos
4. Horses and cows appear as little black spots
That's not a huge list. Even with my awful integrated graphics, the game almost runs as intended. So on one hand Firaxis really kept the hardware requirements to a minimum. BUT on the other hand, this is particularly frustrating because while everything else can run on crappy graphics, they decided in just a couple places to splurge on eye candy that left behind a whole generation of laptop users.
This is just a bizarre decision, IMHO. There's already the option to turn off videos. Seems to me they could have provided an option switch to turn off whatever is causing the other three problems (e.g., "3D leaders? yes/no" "3D terrain? yes/no"). Had they done this many hard-core laptop Civ users would not be feeling so disappointed and abandoned, at least they would have a playable version. But I think the Powers That Be felt it better to just not let these people play at all rather than play a watered-down version, even tho most of these users play Civ for its strategy, not graphics.