I was able to use a solution provided on the beta forums and can now successfully run civ!!! I've read through the thread there and many have been able to reslove the problem but some reported no success. Note that I did not do anything with my ATI display/graphics driver as was first suggested (first post in this thread). I only tried the solution below:
sjohnson wrote:
We are looking for some people who are experiencing the failed to initialize rendered problem and would be willing to step through the process with Jesse over the phone. We need to be able to guarantee all the steps are being followed correctly.
If they are being followed correctly, we have a theory for what may be going wrong. The next step is to get that person to run the PAK unpacker and try to run the game without the PAK. We think there is a chance this might solve the problem.
Here are instructions for using the unpacker (can someone post a link to the download?):
double-click pakbuild.exe
This solution was successful for my machine. I followed the link
Select PAK->Unpack from the menu
In the resulting dialog (select input), navigate to civilization4\assets (which contains art0.fpk)
In the next dialog (select output), navigate to civilization4\assets (the same folder as above)
When the unpacking is finished, move art0.fpk from assets to the civilization4 folder to be sure it is not used by the game
Exit pakbuild
at any rate, if there are any volunteers who are having the problem, please let us know (as far as I know the only Frankenstein member running into this is unimatrix, is that correct?) Alternatively, if any of you know people outside the forums who are in the same boat and would be available to volunteer, let us know that as well.
Thanks everyone.
Tough times...
And the link is:
boa.apolyton.net/civ4/files/PakBuild.zipThe Firaxis people ARE ok with releasing this info, so try it out!