Here is a tip for all those who applied the patch and are getting the "Please insert Civilization 3 Disc into the CD Drive" error.

1. Open up your registry
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Infrogrames Interactive\Civilazation III\
3. Find the key CD_PATH
4. Change it to the path of your CD-ROM drive

After waiting on Infrogrames to send me their "Safedisk recovery" patch I decided to do some reg hacking. My CD_PATH key was set to H: and I changed it back to the correct drive letter and it worked :)

Enjoy

I didn't think I was computer incompetent until now. ;)

In five year old terms, how does one open the registry?

Be sure to back up your registry first. One little mistake can befoul thy whole system. I repeat, be very careful when editing your registry, it is sensitive and if something is incorrect or out of place, you may have to reinstall Windows.

1.Go to Start in the bottom left corner of your Windows desktop.
2.Click it, and select Run from the menu.
3.Type in “regedit” and the Registry editing program will run. Then follow the steps written above.

I tried the RegEdit. Doesn't work -- My CD Path was already set correctly (no changes required). I still get the CD-ROM error.