Return the game right away!!!

[beeper917]

Do not let them know that this is ok. If you are having problems getting the game to start then return it to let them know you are dissatisfied. If we don't return it, then this will signal other game companies that they don't need to release the game finished...that they can just give a patch a week later.

I might be more sympathetic if it weren't close to 50% of people who are having problems. We shouldn't be paid beta-testers.

I should have known there were going to be problems when my CD's were mislabeled and my tech-tree in French...give me a break!!!!

[Solver]

50%? Give ME a break.

The other people are playing the game just now.

[beeper917]

ATI = 50% of cards, and I said near 50%.

There is only a minority of players who own ATI cards who can actually play.

I've also read that a lot of people who can actually play are experiencing bugs...chesire cat people, black terrain, etc., so please spare me fanboy

[acratin]

Actually...if your numbers are right, and I don't think they are, that'd be 25%, since about half the ATI people have gotten it working. There are plenty of black terrain issues and such. Most of those seem to be people running the game on a video card without hardware T&L. Not all, but most.

[Inverse Icarus]

The black terrain is not a bug. Their videocards do not support T&L, and do not meet the minimum specs.

By that logic, I can complain that my 386 cannot play the game.

[beeper917]

I've read posts from people who do have cards that support T&L and get black terrain.

Ok, if it's 25% doesn't that seem high?

[jadelith]

well, yes we should return the game as this is simply unacceptable, but I won't because I'm a civ slave.

[Novaya Havoc]

For the love of Shiva, there is a HUGE MARKET OUT THERE THAT HASN'T EVEN PURCHASED/INSTALLED THE GAME YET!

This is the first day, people! Come on. The boards are flooded with bugs and complaints, and these paper-tiger arguments (the people who can play ARE playing!) or the weak "statistical analyses" of who is experiencing problems ("5%" "No, 10%!" "No, it's just 2% -- all whiners!") aren't holding water.

[scot740]

I'm glad people have immediate access to valid marketing information to be able to assertain how much of a market share ATI cards have and then figure out the percentage that are having issues. I've had no issues with any of my machines, all running various Radeon cards. If your life is in that much disarray from having technical problems with your hardware, maybe computer gaming isn't for you.

[warlordship]

Yeah, the people that this works for aren't on this board stating that our computers work.

It's just the nature of tech forums, you get nothing but complaints. That's because the majority (REALLY!) of people that have the game, this works fine for them. They have no reason to come to a tech forum to say "this works great"

I have two computers with ATI cards, and it works flawlessly on one, gets the renderer problem on the other.

[Solver]

ATI card owners may be close to 50%, but it's not like all or even half of them have the problem. Those who don't have these problems don't post much. Half of those who did have the problem now got it fixed.

The Cheshire cat issue, the black terrain issue are because people are running the game on video cards without T&L. Just because you have the same problem as a number of people, don't start saying 50% of everyone has it.

[baktone]

Not true. My card has T&L and I have black screen/cheshire cat problems. In fact, my card is listed on the box (ATI Radeon 7500). An on-line test confirmed that I have T&L.

[beeper917]

This has gone off topic, I am simply saying that if you have a problem with the game you should attempt to return it because we shouldn't be paid beta testers....and by paid i mean paying them. This product obviously was rushed (disc labeling, french tech tree) so I think we should get our money back to show dissatisfaction.

[alva]

...or you could play the game:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=140859

[geneshifter]

Well, I had problems running pirates2 when it came out. I had the same black screen, no animations, etc.., problems that people are having with civ4. I finally found some post on a forum somewhere and I had to delete a sound card .dll file for my aureal3D sound card and replace it with a generic windows driver and the game worked after that!

My point is that this may take just a little time. By the way, I have the ATI9550 with 768MB system RAM and AMD Athlon 2000+ and I run Civ4 perfectly. Check your sound card drivers.