Civilization III Fixes (PLEASE READ)

Pdama
Congrats on your Promotion.
I have a new major problem.
I just had a major crash on Civ III Vanilla patched with v1.29f.
After the patch went in, I started getting random crashes that threw me out of the game.

I tried this:

Sampdoria said:

Ciao mate,

I had to uninstall Civ3 (Patched Version)
Then remove all registry inputs by using Registry Cleaner
Reinstall Civ 3 (Patched Version)
Load my saved game again - this time it worked perfect and did not
crash at *that* specific moment.

and I uninstalled the game and then reinstalled it.
The game seemed to load fine. It got to the main title page but never loaded the main menu.
I uninstalled the patch, which was separate, and then the game and then reinstalled the game but no luck. Same result
Where can I find this Register Cleaner? I have CCleaner loaded. Will that do the job?
Have I now corrupted my game disc???

How can I do the great ID things everyone seems to have as part of their posts?

Click to expand...

Jernmim said:

How can I do the great ID things everyone seems to have as part of their posts?

Click to expand...

Click on the My Account link that's just below the thread title. This will take you to your UserCP/My Account page. From there you can edit your avatar, signature, options, and profile information. Be advised that to use a custom avatar you'll need 30 posts and be here for 30 days.

As for the rest of the problem, is that the same problem you're having over in the Fighters Won't Defend thread? If so, we should probably keep the discussion to that thread.

Turner said:

Click on the My Account link that's just below the thread title. This will take you to your UserCP/My Account page. From there you can edit your avatar, signature, options, and profile information. Be advised that to use a custom avatar you'll need 30 posts and be here for 30 days.

As for the rest of the problem, is that the same problem you're having over in the Fighters Won't Defend thread? If so, we should probably keep the discussion to that thread.

Click to expand...

Thanks Turner,
No this is a new issue.
I down loaded the v1.29f patch for Vanilla Civ III.
That fixed the Air Superiority problem but initiated this new problem.
To date I have uninstalled the game and the patch.
Reloaded the game only to find out that it loaded the main title page but never loaded the main menu.
Based on and input from "Sampdoria"
I ran CCleaner for the Register and cleared out a lot of garbage.
I reloaded the game and it came up with the Menu.
That is where I am now.
I am debating down loading 1.29 now. Any thoughts??

Ive got an issue. I play on vista, and I have some of the older ( late 07 early 08 ) Drivers and sound cards. I can get into a game just fine, and then BLAM it crahes. And by crash, I mean it fails completley. It won't let me touch anything, the sound keeps playing but I get a loading mouse picture.. And it keeps like that till I have to re - boot my computer. Any suggestions?

P.S. I also run it as the admin and I use windows compadibility packages ( ALL of the avaiable ones )

Jernmim said:

2) I recently bought a new Laptop (Toshiba) with Windows Vista. The games plays even though it was made for earlier versions of Windows but I can not find the saves folder to erase old, unwanted games. Does anyone have any idea where to look?

jernmim
Lt Coll USAF (Ret)

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I got a Vista laptop yesterday (and of course first thing was to install CivIII and CivAssist and check whether it still works... ) and I found out:

C:\Users\<your user name>\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\Infogrames\CivilizationIII\Saves

(And similar for PTW & Conquests)

Apparently the problem is that the "Program Files" folder is a protected system folder and ordinary programs can't create files in it?! So what I did is: in the properties of the "CivilizationIII" folder I added "full control for everyone" (make sure it's recursive for the subfolders) and then I copied the entire CivilizationIII folder from the "VirtualStore" directory back into Program Files. (I also set the WinXP compatibility mode and "Run as Administrator" for all executables. Don't know, whether that makes a difference.)
From then on all save files were created in the expected location (C:\Program Files\etc)

So I got everything working just fine now, but I'll probably kick Vista out and revert to XP anyway...

BTW Padma: "I haven't put Civ3 on anything 'newer' than Win2000, myself. (I won't buy XP, Vista, or 'Windows 7' for personal, philosophical reasons.)"
You should really try XP (it's available on eBay now for 20 bucks). XP was the OS that converted me from an ardent Linux fan to a Windows fan... (I'm not ashamed to admit... ) When I got a new AMD64 dualcore with SATA harddrive in 2006, the latest Linux distribution at that time just staled when trying to install, even though it supposedly supported amd64 and SATA drives! I tried several evenings to get it to work, but invane... But my old XP SP2 CD from 2004 installed like a charm all by itself (of course only in 32bit mode).

Lanzelot

Lanzelot said:

BTW Padma: "I haven't put Civ3 on anything 'newer' than Win2000, myself. (I won't buy XP, Vista, or 'Windows 7' for personal, philosophical reasons.)"
You should really try XP (it's available on eBay now for 20 bucks). XP was the OS that converted me from an ardent Linux fan to a Windows fan... (I'm not ashamed to admit... ) When I got a new AMD64 dualcore with SATA harddrive in 2006, the latest Linux distribution at that time just staled when trying to install, even though it supposedly supported amd64 and SATA drives! I tried several evenings to get it to work, but invane... But my old XP SP2 CD from 2004 installed like a charm all by itself (of course only in 32bit mode).

Lanzelot

Click to expand...

Just because I won't buy/install Windows doesn't mean I haven't used it. Even where I work, while our "product" is all on *nix servers, the "corporate desktop" is Windows XP.

XP is what actually drove me to wipe Windows from my system. Vista was/is worse. Win7 isn't really out yet, so I won't comment on that, other than to say from what I've seen and heard, even from Windows fanbois, is that '7' is really just the Vista "pig", with lipstick.

And this is all off-topic, so I'm going to stop there.

Hey could you help me with Civ? It loads and everything, but is laggy (too much) and all animations are slow.
Processor Speed: 1.2 GHz
960MB RAM
Graphics Card: GeForce FX 5200
Operating System: Windows XP
DirectX 9.0

Hi, I'm a old-time CIVIII until last year, when I had to give it up due to huge piles of work I had to do.

Now, after buying a new computer, I decided to re-install it, but to my surprise, found out that it wouldnt work.

After turing it on, the screen would turn 256 color & 640*860, but nothing will show up. Just the tiny hourglass shows up for a while, then disappears.

When I checked TASKMGR.EXE, its' list of operating programs showed that Civilizations3Conquests.exe was operating, occupying 10,256 of memory. Why cant it work? Iam really lost as to why...

Sorry I missed this one, but are you on Vista? Have you looked at some of the issues post regarding fonts?

Anybody got a fix for this?
Running new sony vaio NS-330J laptop. 4Gb Mem 320GB HD.
Civ 3 Complete loads and runs as it should, except for the text boxes.
Diplomatic text is outside the text box and has extra blank line spacing.
The build lists for cities also have this spacing, and I have to Go To The City to see all of the possible build orders.
Other than this text problem the game runs fine.
I am running Vista Home Premium 64

**** Neither I ,nor any of my techie friends could fix this text problem, however, I just upgraded to Win 7 Home Premium 64bit. The text now shows up perfectly, and everything else in the game displays perfectly (running compatability mode XP-SP3), except that the game animation and scroll are yawningly sloooooow. Can't use intel's newest drivers because Sony modifies the video for their own specs. Sony doesn't have a newer driver, so that only leaves possible "in-SW" tweaking. Anybody have any suggestions?

PanamaStone said:

Anybody got a fix for this?
Running new sony vaio NS-330J laptop. 4Gb Mem 320GB HD.
Civ 3 Complete loads and runs as it should, except for the text boxes.
Diplomatic text is outside the text box and has extra blank line spacing.
The build lists for cities also have this spacing, and I have to Go To The City to see all of the possible build orders.
Other than this text problem the game runs fine.
I am running Vista Home Premium 64

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I am experiencing as well. I have an Acer Aspire 5738zg and CivIII Gold (downloaded from Direct2Drive (totally legit)). The game runs fine except that the text is somehow misaligned and also often doesn't show all of it. Like civilizations have different strengths, and in the window I get on my comp, it doesn't list all of them - like there should be a scroll bar, except there isn't one. Things like that.

Vista Home Premium 32 btw. Probably a graphics driver problem. Anyone?

-Al

Hi, I am new to this forum but I have loved civ since I was a little baby...by that I mean I am 23 now, so you do the math since I am far too lazy to.

Anyways, I have a rather special computer here. It's special, of course, because of Vista. Anyways, I think a list of things I've gone through might help solve this:

1. Had Civ3 original working, no issues, on this computer.
2. Uninstalled Civ3 original, upgraded to Civ3 Gold, had it working with no issues.
3. Installed Civ4 to try it, found it to be atrocious, uninstalled it (don't know if it's related)
4. Uninstalled civ3 gold (vista did a job of uninstalling it) and Upgraded to Civ3 complete and had it working fine.
5. Did a system cleanup, purged all the old civ stuff but didn't touch civ3 complete stuff.
6. Civ3 complete stops working, citing error code 28- easy fix . Then Error code 13 not easy fix. Apparently civ3 complete liked civ3 gold complete install.
7. Tried intalling the specific lucida sans font to my font folder, no avail. Tried uninstalling other lucida sans fonts, no avail.
8. Uninstalled civ3 complete, reinstalled it and fixed error code 28. NO ERROR CODE 13!!
9. Game enters, no text appears on menu and game crashes.
10. Uninstalled game, reinstalled. Now I'm back at Error code 13.

Any help would be amazing, I adore this game so very much.

I have found that error code 13 is actually related specifically to the notorious LSANS font, but this time from PTW. That's what the internets keeps telling me. It'd be very odd indeed if Civ3 gold would work but Civ3 complete won't, if that holds up...especially considering that civ3 complete worked when civ3 gold didn't uninstall properly and yeah.

Apologies for double post, but I do feel that this is in a way a seperate thing given the main topic of the post being about LSANS, error code 13 and PTW. Sorry if it's unacceptable here, every forum is different and I'm new to this one .

Sorry i know this is getting to the point where its old.. i Have the first civilization 3 "vanilla". I went to patch it with the new v1.29f. After doing so, when i tried to start the game it says that i need to insert the disk. This is not a piracy issue, i have a real copy and it is in the drive but it wont recognize it when i have the patch on, but it works fine without the patch. I want the new patch for the editing option, please reply back thank you

This is a known problem.

Unfortunately, about all I can do is point you to this thread.

I am running Windows Vista, The game runs fine except the in game video's. I get the sound but only a black screen, this includes the opening video. Any ideas ?

Hey Branchflower,
I found the solution to your problem.
Check it out on this page: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=354293

Primel91.
I had a similar problem. I purchased a legitimate no-cd version of Civ III Gold. When I installed the PTW1.27f patch, the game would look for the cd, which I did not have. I tried both the US and the British version of the patch, but both led to this complication.

What worked for me was to go to add/remove programs (after installing the patch) and choose the Civ III Gold installation. Then choose "repair" when the option presented itself. This seemed to fix the problem while keeping the patch (at least it now says "1.27f" in the bottom left).

I did not try this with BOTH the US and the British versions of the patch once I got it working.

Gold versions should already have the last patch.

Civ3:Gold has it's own copy protection scheme. Patching it with the regular PTW patch will break the install. However, as vmxa says, it should already be patched to 1.27f.

Oh, and eriag64, I've deleted your other post, as it's a duplicate of this one. We'd prefer you not multi post like that.