When I load up vanilla civIII it on a machine running Windows XP the opening video runs fine, but when the main menu appears, it is shifted about an inch and a half to the right (on a 17" monitor, with 1024*768 screen resolution) and the right side of the screen, about half the words are cut off, and this continues on to the game. Any solutions?

Play with your monitor horizontal shift. If you have a reasonably new monitor, then you might have application-specific screen settings. Ie - if you can fix it by using the monitor horizontal shift, it should fix it for civ and not stuff it up for other apps. :)

You might want to force VC3 into a certain refresh rate. Find your civ3.ini file, it'll be in the C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III\ directory, assuming default installation. In that file, put Refresh=XX, where XX = the refresh rate of your monitor. To find this out, right click on your desktop, click on 'Properties'. Find the 'Settings' Tab, and click on 'Advanced'. A new window will open. Click on 'Monitor', and you should find a spot for the refresh rate.

I have noticed that when you change res and refresh, it can cause the picture on the monitor to jump around.