I’ve been playing quite a bit of AOE2 of late; and one recurrent problem while running the (now dated, but still going strong) game on Windows 7 (or Vista) has been an issue with map colors. The colors on the map look muddled, grainy and ugly on 7 and Vista, kind of as if they have been inverted. After a bit of research into the issue, I finally arrived at a working solution.
No, updating the graphics driver or Direct X does not work. First, what you need to do is navigate to the ‘age2_x1.exe’ or whichever exe file is associated with the game for you, right click on it, go to the ‘Compatibility’ tab and select ‘Run in compatibility mode for Windows XP (SP2), ‘Disable Visual Themes’, ‘Disable Desktop Composition’ and ‘Disable Display Scaling on High DPI Settings’. This might just do the trick, if you’re lucky. But if you’re not, like me (which is quite a high possibility), read on.
For some people, minimizing the game just after it starts up and then maximizing it again sets the colors straight. But it didn’t for me; what worked for me instead was to open up Process Explorer with Ctrl+Alt+Del after starting the game up, ending the process ‘explorer.exe’ and switching back to the game with Alt+Tab. This did the trick, and should work for most people.
This solution can also be automated without the need for having to go through the process of terminating explorer.exe before starting the game and rerunning it each time the game ends; this can be done by creating a batch file with the instructions fed to it. To do so, create a new notepad file with the following content:
taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
EMPIRES2.EXE
Start explorer.exe
{if you have the regular AOE2, or)
taskkill /F /IM Explorer.exe
age2_x1.exe
Start explorer.exe
{for AOE2 Expansion}
Then save it as a batch file, say ‘AOE_fixed.bat’ and then copy it to the folder where the EMPIRES2.exe or age2_x1.exe file exists. Then you may create a shortcut for the batch file on the desktop or elsewhere and then double click on it to launch the game whenever you want. Cheers :)
