Why can't i open civilisation 4 on my windows 11?

[sasha.jusic]

perhaps two years ago I've purchased a civilisation 4 package - including 4 games. All 4 were running just fine until recent. I can't open a single one anymore?
How do i fix this problem and how to complain to Steam about this?
Any help is appreciated!

[nifer022]

OH MY WORD after two days of digging through forums and trying any number of things that didn't work I tried turning OFF "run in compatibility mode" and that worked like a charm. I think that setting may have been required for Windows 10 and it looks like Steam applies compatibility mode to the .exe when it installs the game. If you "browse to local files" and right-click on Civilization4.exe and go to "compatibility" try turning OFF the checkbox for "Run this program in compatibility mode" and see if that helps.

[WayWalker]

@nifer022 - I love you... I've been fliddling around with this for 2 days trying to get it to work. Finally made some progress and got it to start loading, but then it would just crash after getting to 'Init Engine'... After turning off compatibility mode... BOOM loaded right up. Thank you!

[PEACEOFWAR]

Originally posted by nifer022:

OH MY WORD after two days of digging through forums and trying any number of things that didn't work I tried turning OFF "run in compatibility mode" and that worked like a charm. I think that setting may have been required for Windows 10 and it looks like Steam applies compatibility mode to the .exe when it installs the game. If you "browse to local files" and right-click on Civilization4.exe and go to "compatibility" try turning OFF the checkbox for "Run this program in compatibility mode" and see if that helps.

===>>>> You beat me to writing this I discovered same thing, it appears windows 11 Compatibility mode is borked, I am guessing they forgot to include the needed Windows 7/8 etc. dependent files somehow, and thus cause really weird behavior on some games when you try to use those modes.
===++ The main reason I even tried compatibility mode was a laptop we picked up for our hotel stay while moving, some reason the laptop doesn't play well with this game even though the game detects the resolution of the laptop fine, and I have weird graphical freezing and maximize window type of artifacts after a few minutes playing it, so was hoping compatibility mode would somehow help. Resolution adjustments do not help either from laptop desktop resolution or the game resolution, but turns out playing it in "windowed" mode "fixes" the issue, of course the stupidity of having to run Colonization on a laptop in windowed mode means I can't read almost any text lol. Let us just say I can't wait to have my full desktop computer at the house we are buying it will simply be better :-)