darkened terrain

[kateness]

When running c4 even on the lowest visual settings with everything turned off and down, the terrain of the area of my city (not outside the city borders however) is really dark, almost black.

This happens all the time, zoomed in or out. I also have the flickering trees/bushes problem, but that doesnt bother me nearly as much so i can deal if that cant be fixed.

Also i know my vid card isnt really good enough, all i really want to know is if i have any options other than buying a new card, which cant happen unfortunatly.

I have (hopefully) attatched my dxdiag.

Thanks for any help you can give!

[Keith]

The Radeon 9250 is a DX8.1 card, and while it can play the game you may experience some performance issues such as the dark ground you are seeing, because it doesn't support the DX9 graphic features. It is recommended that the DX8.1 cards running the game turn shadows off.

Your best best is to get a newer card. If you get another ATI you want one from their X1xxx series (X1300 through X1950.) If you decide to go with Nvidia you want something no lower than a Geforce 6800. The devs recommend cards from Nvidia 7xxx series.