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To start, system specs:
Windows 2000 w/Service Pack 4
AMD Athlon 1 ghz
256 MB RAM
Ati Radeon 9100
When I first installed the game, the version number of my Radeon was 6 something. I installed the new DirectX 9 when the installation prompted it, got things up and started the game. It ran mostly without problems, though occasionally when I started it it'd minimize itself and toss me back to the desktop - but I could still re-click on it in the taskbar and it'd resume that game. Unfortunately resuming it that way only meant that it'd re-minimize within a minute or so, but closing the game and restarting it seemed to help.
Anyway, after quitting and restarting the game got that fixed so I started my first game. Everything went pretty well though the game began to lag towards the industrial age, but my computer's below the minimum recommendations anyway so that was just to be expected.
Then came the turn when I ended up in my first war. The screen went all black and my monitor switched to power-saving mode. Some alt-tabbing and ctrl-alt-deling managed to reveal a pop-up message saying "VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands. Do you wish to send an error report to Ati Technologies?". By that point my system was so laggy I had to reboot to get anything working.
Well, after that I reload an autosave, cross my fingers, and to my relief the game works again. After a while I get that same problem when one of my riflemen engages in combat with an enemy unit, but I manage to restore Civ and continue playing after clicking that error report away. Tokugawa takes my capital city, I retake it after a while, we sign a peace treaty and all seems to be well. When I start rebuilding my war-torn empire, the game again brings up that error report when I try to move a Great Engineer from one city to another. This time it again takes the game with it.
By this point, I decide to try if updating my display drivers would have any effect. I go to Ati's page, download the newest drivers, uninstall the old ones, install the new ones. Device properties tells me I'm now running version 8.18.0.0 on my Radeon's drivers. Then I try playing - only to get a "failed to initialize renderer" error. I go to the forums, try downloading the PakBuild program, it whines about AttachConsole and refuses to work. Then I try the fpk_tool and that one works, only problem being that Civ still brings up that error message when I try to run it. I reboot my computer and try running Civ again, and now it works.
I try several times to reload my old game, each time getting a constant flood of "VPU Recover has resetted..." messages almost as soon as the game loads. I click one away, resume the game, soon the screen goes black and another appears. I figure there might be something wrong with the save at this point and try starting a new game.
Well, no luck. The new game works fine as long as I only move my Warrior around, but as soon as the Settler gets selected I again get that error message. I click it away, resume Civ, Civ might work for a couple of seconds before again going black and bringing up the error. Repeat until I get tired of it and ctrl-alt-del kill Civ.
So, now instead of having a mostly working game that'd occasionally go down with that error message and be mostly resumable after that, I now have a game that gets that error so often that it's unplayable.
Remind me never to update my display drivers to newer ones again.
Windows 2000 w/Service Pack 4
AMD Athlon 1 ghz
256 MB RAM
Ati Radeon 9100
When I first installed the game, the version number of my Radeon was 6 something. I installed the new DirectX 9 when the installation prompted it, got things up and started the game. It ran mostly without problems, though occasionally when I started it it'd minimize itself and toss me back to the desktop - but I could still re-click on it in the taskbar and it'd resume that game. Unfortunately resuming it that way only meant that it'd re-minimize within a minute or so, but closing the game and restarting it seemed to help.
Anyway, after quitting and restarting the game got that fixed so I started my first game. Everything went pretty well though the game began to lag towards the industrial age, but my computer's below the minimum recommendations anyway so that was just to be expected.
Then came the turn when I ended up in my first war. The screen went all black and my monitor switched to power-saving mode. Some alt-tabbing and ctrl-alt-deling managed to reveal a pop-up message saying "VPU Recover has reset your graphics accelerator as it was no longer responding to graphics driver commands. Do you wish to send an error report to Ati Technologies?". By that point my system was so laggy I had to reboot to get anything working.
Well, after that I reload an autosave, cross my fingers, and to my relief the game works again. After a while I get that same problem when one of my riflemen engages in combat with an enemy unit, but I manage to restore Civ and continue playing after clicking that error report away. Tokugawa takes my capital city, I retake it after a while, we sign a peace treaty and all seems to be well. When I start rebuilding my war-torn empire, the game again brings up that error report when I try to move a Great Engineer from one city to another. This time it again takes the game with it.
By this point, I decide to try if updating my display drivers would have any effect. I go to Ati's page, download the newest drivers, uninstall the old ones, install the new ones. Device properties tells me I'm now running version 8.18.0.0 on my Radeon's drivers. Then I try playing - only to get a "failed to initialize renderer" error. I go to the forums, try downloading the PakBuild program, it whines about AttachConsole and refuses to work. Then I try the fpk_tool and that one works, only problem being that Civ still brings up that error message when I try to run it. I reboot my computer and try running Civ again, and now it works.
I try several times to reload my old game, each time getting a constant flood of "VPU Recover has resetted..." messages almost as soon as the game loads. I click one away, resume the game, soon the screen goes black and another appears. I figure there might be something wrong with the save at this point and try starting a new game.
Well, no luck. The new game works fine as long as I only move my Warrior around, but as soon as the Settler gets selected I again get that error message. I click it away, resume Civ, Civ might work for a couple of seconds before again going black and bringing up the error. Repeat until I get tired of it and ctrl-alt-del kill Civ.
So, now instead of having a mostly working game that'd occasionally go down with that error message and be mostly resumable after that, I now have a game that gets that error so often that it's unplayable.
Remind me never to update my display drivers to newer ones again.
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