Water is black

[Lockesdonkey]

Oceans and lakes still have the "flowing" effects, but instead of being blue, they're black, making the planet look rather like it's covered in oil. Not game-threatening, but rather bizarre and uncomfortable (the oceans really brighten up the screen).

EDIT: Rivers are still blue.

 

[ori]

Is this game patched? Are your graphics drivers updated?

 

[Lockesdonkey]

Is this game patched? Are your graphics drivers updated?

I believe it's patched. I have no idea about the drivers. It wasn't doing this last time I played (which was after I installed the patch).

 

[ori]

the most common reason for this in Vanilla were outdated graphics drivers - hence my question.
Could you post your dxdiag results file?
Also please start the game and click advanced then about this build and post a screenshot of that screen

 

[Lockesdonkey]

the most common reason for this in Vanilla were outdated graphics drivers - hence my question.
Could you post your dxdiag results file?
Also please start the game and click advanced then about this build and post a screenshot of that screen

I'll do the second thing, but I don't pretend to know very much about the internal workings of the game (I tried, then gave up). So where would I find the dxdiag file?

 

[ori]

are you using windows xp or vista?

 

[Lockesdonkey]

are you using windows xp or vista?

Vista.

And here's the picture:

 

[ori]

so it is patched to 3.17 - fine.
on the windows desktop
click on the windows button (start button)
click into the search field
type dxdiag
hit enter
if the program does not start automatically double click on the program it finds
click on save results
post the saved file (by default its called dxdiag.txt)

 

[Lockesdonkey]

It's not finding dxdiag.

 

[ori]

that is strange since it is a default windows component...
Vista uses DirectX 10 as its default graphics engine - and that including the diagnosis utility (dxdiag) needs to be present for any kind of 3D graphics to work.
Civ4 and its expansions on the other hand use directx 9c - and some vista versions did not have all the code of that installed so that a manual install of dx9c was necessary. I would recommend doing that:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3&DisplayLang=en
after that try to start dxdiag again.