Sadly I had the same experience on three older computers. So I borrowed a new HP Elitebook and it worked.
To get the older computers to work, I tried updating all device drivers and read a lot of the posts; this made minor symptom changes, but net is that older equipment just didn't work enough to actually see the sovereign on the cloth map for more than 1/2 second. Note these older computers do function with DX9 and have more than minimums listed for RAM. The video card in one was a Radeon 9600 w/256 mb and the CPU an Athlon 2400+. Yeah, old, but I thought it would just run slowly. I also tried it on a Pavilion zv6000 with 128 mb Radeon mobility 200 with CPU of AMD 64 3200, same result.
If the updates don't fix it eventually I'll buy another machine rather than wasting my time on more/different drivers...spent enough time already.
the problem is my computer is new a dual proc... there shouldn't be any bottlenecks with the hardware... the difference between say FPS games and strategy games has always resided in the fact that graphics aren't the overall factor in strat games and thus video req. are not a priority... I've noticed that Elemental has been marketed to this same effect. What is troubling though, is the claim that most comps a couple of years of should be able to run this game but its still dependent on the video req. of dx 9c cards and 9b cards 'should' be able to run them but aren't 'supported'...
that imo is against the general claim that most comps should be able to run elemental/general vid req. of strat games... one of the main reasons i haven't upped my vid cards is because i dont play graphically intensive games that req. sm3 for example... in saying that, a lot of graphically intensive games out there play fine on my card...
I suppose it would be good to know, for im assuming its a video based problem, whether or not i am going to able to play the beta at all and have some input in the short to medium term or if its a problem that will get fixed in the long term or not at all (i.e. req. buying a new card)...?? devs??