CIV IV terrain problems...help?

[Triforcer]

I am having very confusing graphical problems with CIV IV.  I have a 32MB Mobility Radeon 7500 in my Dell IBM T42 laptop.  I know the min is 64 but I thought that would just be a speed problem later on. 

Anyway, in normal mode, all my terrain is pure black and I only see the eyeballs and teeth of other leaders (although I see my people, rivers, and jungle squares (wtf?).  I thought this meant my graphics card lacked something crucial and I was totally screwed. 

But, there are a couple scenarios (Desert and American Revolution) that have everything perfectly fine... full color graphics like they should be performing without a hitch.  Every other scenario and attempt at worldbuilding results in black.  If I go in Worldbuilder on any file and click "Reveal all tiles" I get the entire world in a series of semi-grayish hues.  After that point, everything performs normally.

I would like to play in full color and without knowing the layout of the entire world at the beginning of the game.  Is my card in some no man's land between "can run the graphics" and "cannot"?  Anyone have any suggestions to try to get everything in full color?  Thanks. 

[Paelos]

I don't think graphics card issues are all or nothing. I think you are describing exactly what happened to me when my graphics card wasn't above the minimum a while back. Things just went wonky, although not everything. I'd say it's time for an upgrade, and I know you can do it for about $100 or less.

[Triforcer]

I don't think graphics card issues are all or nothing. I think you are describing exactly what happened to me when my graphics card wasn't above the minimum a while back. Things just went wonky, although not everything. I'd say it's time for an upgrade, and I know you can do it for about $100 or less.

Unfortunately my graphics card is integrated and I cannot upgrade :(

[Nija]

For some reason they made Civ4 bleeing edge.

You best bet right now is trying the omega drivers - http://www.omegadrivers.net/

They support your card. If that doesn't work you're pretty much out of luck.

[Alkiera]

I have to agree with Paelos, it sounds exactly like what tends to happen when you don't have enough video memory.  Happened to me in EQ2 with my GF2 with 32MB ram.

Alkiera

[Sky]

Thirded. Not enough VRAM imo.

[Hanzii]

Right now I'm at the opinion that Sid Meier (or more fairly Soren Johnson) should just die in a graphics card fire!

I have two graphic cards at home right now to play with in my new AMD x2 box - they should be basically the same, both from ASUS, both 256 mb 6800 GT cards, but one is the silenced version with all passive cooling. Using the non-silenced civ 4 worked as a charm and I could ignore all the threads popping up everywhere about how the game was a buggy piece of shit.
Then I switched cards and the unrecoverable random crashes started. New ASUS-drivers, no luck. Official nVidia-drivers - great, now I have graphical glitches when I zoom out on top of the crashes. System Restore back to the original drivers (since the cards are based on the same damn chips) - great, now the game won't load and won't uinstall and thusly won't let me reinstall.
Any other game causing me this much grief and I would use my bully pulpit with 500.000+ readers to tell my exact feelings about the issue. but I did manage to play some of the game and really really feel it's the best Civ ever... so I'll really feel bad about hurting their sales, but I do feel obligated to tell everybody I can reach, not to part with any money before the patch is out.

[bhodikhan]

I think the real issue is hardware T&L support. For some idiotic reason the devs just had to use this feature. If your card doesn't support a certain version of hardware T&L ( or just doesn't do it at all ) then you'll have black maps and other odd things happening.

Sucks. I liked playing CIV on a laptop. Guess that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

[Nija]

Yeah, they really forgot what their target audience was.

Luckily it runs on one of my laptops, since Civ is a fucking laptop game.

They could have easily had options to disable all that crap, but of course they didn't. Maybe we'll get lucky and they'll add it with a patch.

[Special J]

Unfortunately my graphics card is integrated and I cannot upgrade :(

Yikes! No AGP slot in it at all?  Even the small form boxes I deal with at work have an option to disable the integrated video and install a card.

Sort of on topic...What's the best bet on a low cost card these days?

[Trippy]

Unfortunately my graphics card is integrated and I cannot upgrade :(

Yikes! No AGP slot in it at all?  Even the small form boxes I deal with at work have an option to disable the integrated video and install a card.

He's trying to play it on a laptop. Most laptops do not have upgradable video boards.

Sort of on topic...What's the best bet on a low cost card these days?

NVIDIA 6800 GS (~$220), 6600 GT (~$150) or the upcoming 6600 DDR2 (~$120).

[Special J]

He's trying to play it on a laptop. Most laptops do not have upgradable video boards.

Reading comprehension is HARD.

I hang my head in shame.

[Pococurante]

I hang my head in shame.