This is a problem that has been posted, but I didn't see any follow up with a solution, so i figured i would repost.
I am having a problem loading my games. It will load up to the 57% marker, and stall, then a pop up screen says DataIO system error: CITY
If i am already running another game, then after I click OK on the popup, the loaded game will come up, but none of my cities are visible, nor is the map, etc. And if I continue to play, another error message comes up and Civ3 shuts down.
Someone please help.

Hello

Welcome to the "DataIO system error" Club! :) I have nearly the same problem. Unfortunately I couldn't solve it. Others gave lot of good advices , but none of them worked.
First which version of civ3 do you use? When do you receive this error message(game date)? For example I get this error around 270 BC. Try to make screeshoots, and run dxdiag, and upload them to Civfanatics server. And also send your save files.
I hope we get a patch in the near future.

I sent an e-mail to Atari, I wrote down my problem ,sent them dxdiag log file, screenshots, and they haven't answered my email yet. Oh I forgot to write it down , that I sent the e-mail on Nov 23 or 24. Hopefully they are working on the patch and that is why they have no time to answer. :)

Marc

I am in 1862AD on a huge world--which is really unfortunate because my game is extremely well developed. I mean--this could potentially ruin my life :)
Seriously though, I am playing on version 1.07f and have never downloaded a patch or tried editing or anything, so its nothing that I messed up. It was working fine, and then all of a sudden it just stopped working. I am not the most computer oriented person (don't know how that happened... because I used to be), so I may need detailed instructions on how to fix this problem/help to fix it. I can't believe this hasn't been addressed yet.

If you are using civ3 1.07f, then you should download the latest patch from this site. It is v1.29f.

If you are using civ3 Play The World then download v1.27f.
http://civfanatics.com/civ3patches.shtml

Hopefully it will help you, but to tell the truth I had the same errors with civ3ptw with the latest patch around the modern age:).

Marc

Today I got this e-mail from Atari customer support, I wrote them last week about my problem.This is their answer. Maybe it will help you.


It's got something to do with settlers on transports. In one case, Japan's last settler was on a galley that was destroyed. This caused another unit on the transport to be killed twice and the game thought Japan had -1 units.
The bug doesn't occur everytime this situation happens and is actually quite
rare.

Users with the newer (1400+) Ahtlon processors and Asus motherboards may be
able to fix the problem by updating their motherboard BIOS or motherboard
drivers. Some of the older BIOS versions do not fully support the faster
processors, and the newer BIOS has fixed the problem for at least one
customer.

Also if you're running any sort of virus scanner while running the game make
sure to disable it.