Everything, Everything

I finally got around to installing the new Civilization game after receiving it as a present over Christmas. Instead of installing from the DVD, I entered the code straight into Steam and installed the latest version. Then I tried playing it. It was all looking good until it tried to display the world map. This resulted in an APPCRASH in civilizationbe_dx11.exe due to a fault in the d3d11.dll module. I was pretty sure that Microsoft weren't at fault, as DirectX is pretty robust nowadays. I searched the Internet and spotted a few other people had this problem. They all have similar graphics cards too. Specifically, cards that are DX10.1 that can run DX11 but obviously without all the features. My assumption is that the Fall Update uses something that requires DX11 capabilities without checking that it'll actually work on DX10.1 cards that run DX11 (it's possible it may be something specific to NVIDIA's driver v340.52, which appears to be the last version released for DX10.1 cards, but I've not tested the latest version with an older driver and there aren't any newer beta drivers to try).

This appears to be confirmed by a post on the 2K forum, stating:

there is a problem affecting even above-minimum systems where they have nVidia GPUs of 300-series and older (and the 405), so it's possible that when it's fixed for them, it will work for you again

Thankfully it finishes with a link that tells you how to run the pre-patched version using Steam's beta option. That seems to have done the trick, and I was able to play it for a few hours yesterday with no problem:

1. Right-click on the game, select "Properties".
2. Select the "Betas" tab.
3. Type in the password "legacyplease" and click "Check Code".
4. Select the "legacy" beta from the pull-down.

NOTE: This is only available for the PC version of Civilization: Beyond Earth, and playing the legacy version of the game will prevent you from seeing/playing with players using the current version.