This problem is also happening with the awesome city-builder game that is SimCity 4, not just on Windows 8.1, but also with older versions of Windows with your graphics chips. SC4 may be an 11 year-old game but is still very much played and loved, and is still being sold even on Steam. Many people in the SC4 community consider it to be much better than the new version of SimCity, released in 2013, mainly because SC4 still has a vibrant modding community which has been keeping the game alive after all these years. So don't try and give me the knee-jerk response of "this is an old game; why should we care, and why are you playing something so old?".
To whoever is reading this at Intel, I'd like to direct your attention to Simtropolis.com, the largest site for the SC4 and SimCity 2013 community. Please take a look at this thread in particular which someone goes into great detail about all the problems SimCity 4 has with your series of integrated graphics chips. I'm having the same problem as he is, so it is by no means an isolated problem. Look through the SC4 Bugs and Tech issues board on that forum and you will find tons of threads about people having graphics problems with Windows 8.1 and/or your integrated graphics. Could you please help us solve the problem? It really harms the playability of this great game.
I'd really appreciate your help in solving this graphics issue. Thanks!