I cannot run Civilization IV for some reason. A real bummer...
The game 'seems' to start alright, but in the end I just get a black screen with the civ-cursor floating there in empty space, and the intro-music playing along happily as if nothing is wrong. No matter how I move and click and whatever, nothing happens. I've also tried alt-tabbing in and out and back again, but that doesn't help either. Drats.
I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 laptop 2GHz Pentium IV with 1024 MB and a Radeon Mobility 9000 graphics card. I've downloaded and installed the latest drivers from ATI. I've played enough of the latest new-fangled games on this system, and never had problems, so I'm fairly confident it is not a limitation of my configuration. Looks like the kind folks at Firaxis didn't test it sufficiently with ATI-cards I suspect.
What gives? I'm truly desparate to play the latest Civilization while on the move but to no avail - very frustrating for a enthusiastic though unfortunate Civ-addict like myself.
Would appreciate any help anyone can give, thanks alot in advance.
I saw that you were having a problem with getting Civ IV to work on your 8200. I have an 8200 and I too had the same problems you experienced. It turns out that the driver that Dell has on its website for the Radeon 9000 is 3 years old. You need to download the current drivers from ATI's website, and then follow the instructions on this page, and use that utility to get the desktop drivers to work on the notebook. The download link is at the bottom of the page. I hope everything works out for you.
This is really great, thanks alot Alex! Tried it by following the instructions on the link, and Civ IV seems to be working now just fine on my good old laptop. At first a bit slow and jittery, but when I turned down the resolution it seems to run alright for now, at least at the start. Thanks.