Well let me give you the technical issue in a nutshell:
We use Texture and Lighting in the game very heavily. This is a "3D" function but we use is so that we can do things like zoom in on the map and change the color of things very quickly. The result is very smooth game play for most people.
It appears that the older Intel chipset drivers don't support even the software mode (Which they're supposed to in order to be certified by MS) which causes the game to fail.
When someone suggests updating the drivers they mean to go here:
http://www.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/810.htm?iid=ipp_810echpst+body_drivers&
Install these drivers and hopefully it'll resolve your problem. If it doesn't, it's not likely we'll be able to fix it either. *Someone* has to provide a software rendering equivalent and that's supposed to be the driver maker. For us to do it would take weeks and it would be slow and chunky.
Our last game, Galactic Civilizations, didn't have zooming in or on the fly colorization or lighting effects or scaling and so forth because of the performance hit. That's why we went this path with The Political Machine and the nice thing is that if you have a video card that has proper drivers, you can run the game on incredibly low end hardware (think Pentium II level machine).
So the standard answer is:
1) Make sure you use those drivers listed above
2) Makes ure you have the latest DirectX (www.microsoft.com/directx)
