The Black Terrain

[ikajaste]

Well, Civilization 4 is out. And boy am I excited, it's Civ4 for crying out loud!

But there's this problem... well, everything terrainy is black and all. Plus animals don't show up, only their shadows. And leaders look like they've read Alice in Wonderland a bit too many times. And that's not all...

... read the rest of my rant at http://iki.fi/ilari.kajaste/blackterrain

And if you're having the same problem as me, check out the site as well. I've collected there some hacks from these forums that I've found useful.

[Ramsses]

Use the search option, that why it's there for.

But there is no solution for your problem. You video card doesn't support T&L when you have this problem. The only way out is buying a new video card which supports T&L.

[ElvisMonster]

I don't think that's entirely true. According to the list, my card (Geforce 4mx 420) supports T&L and I still have the same black tile problem. Very frustrating.

Haven't been able to find anybody that can help me troubleshoot it.

I've installed SP2 and the latest drivers.

[ikajaste]

Ramsses: Mobility Radeon 7500 does support T&L, just not pixel shaders (even this same site says so in a sticky thread).

The game is very capable of showing terrain overlaid with fog of war. The problem is that the overlay is always counted from the squares in the center of the map - when it should be counted from the position the player is looking at. To me this does seem quite a lot like something that can be fixed with a patch. I undestand the problem can still very well be caused by the low pixel shader support of the card, but it really does seem very possible to fix. And the card is listed in the minimum requirements as well so Firaxis should fix this.

Besides, discussing this misses the entire point of my rant.

[stravaig]

So, I installed the game fine after it first came out, but had problems with many frequent crashes. Eventually, I couldn't load any saves or even start a new game; it would CTD every time. So, I updated to SP2 and that didn't help. So, I reinstalled the game, and that seemed to help ... except NOW I've got the black tile problem, which I didn't have before.

ARGH!

[ikajaste]

Ouch, from frequent crashes to Black Terrain. Not a choice I'd like to make. Well, at least now you have SP2 installed, which is good for everything else. Hopefully your issue will be fixed with the coming patch.

[vladoche]

Black Terrain

I called tech support, they told me that my card did not handle the game, i had to buy a new card. All i can afford is a ATI Radeon 9200SE, which should work according to most threads i read. Does anyone know if it will?

[alva]

Don't expect miracles from that card though ( all SE cards are ****)

Wait and save a few more $$$ and buy something decent, if you don't, you'll regret you've wasted good money on something **** in the first place and end up waiting and saving again.

[vladoche]

Yeah, i know but i was able to get the Radeon9200SE for $39 on Ubid, not bad so i hope it will at least let me see the map. my cpu runs the game fine except for the fact that i don't see the map

Celeron D 2.93
512 Ram
no video card really (Intel **** that came with CPU)


Will see...