Civilization III Fixes (PLEASE READ)

Your advice on troubleshootings are really very very basic ones. They won't be any help for most cases. The best thing Firiax can do is give a really useful patch as soon as possible!!

Anyway, thanks for your effort.

Mentioned above, The first turns very quickly to a very low pace, now 90 bc, it takes op to 3-4 minutes for a turn to finish after enter. And it's noway mine system!
duron(800@1000)
768 mb
45 GB harddisk
geforce MX 2(210/220)
everything is updated
nvidia 23.1
via 4.36
altered page-file sizes
everything!

it doesn't help
i hope soon i and the other ones get some answers overhere

I’m having the same problem as Blackjack, I can’t assign certain colors to any civilization, or Civ3 causes an error in <Unknown>.:arrow:

Until now I was just about convinced that I was the only one having the color-related crash problem, though that has quickly become the least of my concerns now that I too have fallen victim to the faulty copy protetection and can't run the game with the patch, which I had hoped would fix this little bug of ours. Still, prior to the patch, I did my best to notify Firaxis via Infogrames tech support. I was quite underwhelmed by the response I got. Their advice (upgrade my drivers, have fewer than 256 fonts, ect.) seemed to me like it would apply more to if the game weren't running at all, which makes me wonder if they even read what I had written and not just sent me some sort of response-to-error-message-report form letter.

Are you playing under 1.16f when you're having the color crash, zbear?

And you don't just happen to be using an ATI Rage Pro, do you?

My Civ3 is patched. My vid card is a GeForce.

The reason no one else has reported this problem might be that no one else has experimented with all the colors. I’ll try them to see which are bogus, and report the results, if I can do it easily enough. There are about thirty colors. Since their sequence is the same in everyone’s Civ3Edit, I’ll number them one through thirty.

The only colors safe to use for civilizations are the first seventeen on the drop-down menu under Civ3Edit’s tab Civilizations, the same colors that are already assigned to the seventeen pre-made default civs.

ZBear,

Sorry I didn't catch this earlier or I could have saved you some effort. We are aware of this bug and it's in the bug DB, but I imagine it's a rather low priority.


Dan

I'm so very glad to know that they're on the color bug, even if it is (understandably) a low priority. Especially since its low priority status implies that other bugs are being addressed (hopefully that blasted SafeDisk fault! Aaaargh! Easily the most aggravating problem I've had with any game in recent history...) Hopefully I'll be back up and running after the next patch.

Hey Dan -

Are you guys aware of the declaration of war crashing bug? See the threads "I have little hope of finding a solution here" and "Consistent, reproduceable crashing bug in 1.16f". I just want to make sure this is fixed in the next patch, this bug ended my last game rather early.

Thanks for the awesome game!
Jim Faulkner

Okay, here's my problem

1)Game ran fine until I installed XP-then it wouldn't even boot up until the patch. With the patch, runs, but all the units move and animate like they're in slow motion, which makes gameplay impossible (unless you want a turn to take 30 minutes).
2)I have all updated directx and drivers, the 23.11 geforce ones actually allowed the game to run with the patch (albeit slowly)-the 21.11(?) drivers =no bootup
3)I have had NO response from tech support in 3 weeks, even though, at their request, I attached my directx diagnostic file to the return email I sent to them.
4)I am absolutely fed up, and if I could return the game I would. This is why I never buy games when they come out, because of bugs like this. This game was an exception, because I was so excited about it. Looks like I learned my lesson...

What you described in that thread sounds like a corrupted save file to me. Unfortunately, if so, the only thing you can do then is go further and further back into your autosaves until you get to a point before it went wrong. It wouldn't really be a bug unless it does that in every game you start using the same setup, not just this one you've been playing.

Unfortunately, it does that when I start a new game, too. It's not just one saved game-it's all of them, and new games too.

The game runs fine on my friend's computer-the difference? He runs Windoze '98 and does not have a Geforce video card...

Hey Blackjack:

I haven't heard about this corrupted savegame problem. Does this happen even after you install the patch? And would this effect games, say 4 or 5 turns after the savegame turn?

From what I understand the savegame bug crashed the game immediately. The bug reported by Scrote and I (see the other threads referred to in my earlier post) only happened after 1.16f was installed, and could happen immediately or after a few turns.

If you still think this is my problem, and if you have time, please explain why you think this savegame bug is my problem (or point me to the posts that explain it).

thanks,
Jim

Weird things happen to save game files sometimes. But, if you start a new whole new game and it ends up doing the exact same thing, then that's probably a bug like you said.

Look familiar folks? but it's a new game. you change the object of the game to get as far as you can. I made it all the way up to 1995 AD!

CIVILIZATION3 caused an invalid page fault in
module CIVILIZATION3.EXE at 018f:0046046e.
Registers:
EAX=078e9fd4 CS=018f EIP=0046046e EFLGS=00210202
EBX=00000004 SS=0197 ESP=00abfa48 EBP=00000000
ECX=00000000 DS=0197 ESI=0000002f FS=0d8f
EDX=00000001 ES=0197 EDI=ffffffff GS=0000
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 01 52 ff 90 80 00 00 00 50 56 57 b9 c8 b0 5e
Stack dump:
00000000 078e9fd4 0bf80032 078e9fd4 00467196 00000001 ffffffff 0000002f 00000008 00609970 005dc980 078e9fd4 004835f0 00000000 00000008 078e9fd4

this game really is a pile of crap. Shoddy programming, ridiculous compatibility issues with so many different things-this pales only to Pool of Radiance. I thought the Civ team was better than this, makes me wonder what they spent the four years doing, because it sure as hell wasn't troubleshooting this poorly programmed game. I'm tired of spending hours trying to get this to work-this is why I prefer consoles, personally...

I have had this game about 2 months now, and I have never had such a nightmare just trying to get ANY program to run.

It is just one bug after another - and the 116f patch broke it again, after I had spent almost 2 weeks FINALLY getting it run mostly run by uninstalling over half the programs on the computer.

Like some others - it seems my best option now is to try and get a refund from publisher.

Civ 3 is the only game I've had severe problems with in at least five years. Every time I hear anything from either Infogrames or Firaxis, they make it sound like it's your fault if you can't get it to run right (or can't get it to run at all, as the case may be.) Never mind the fact that every other game is working fine on the exact same system. Or that something that worked with the original version out of the box doesn't work anymore once the patch is installed. No, it's got nothing to do with the patch, it's obviously your hardware and your drivers. (I finally got a response to my request for the non-safedisc exe file, and they said they wouldn't send it until all other possibilities were exhausted. Hey, better than nothing, but it's silly how they want you to jump through all these hoops before they'll send you the file when the fact that the game ran before the patch should make it obvious that it's the patch and not your computer that's messed up.)

I would have said "forget it" and got a refund by now if that were possible. But, as usual with PC games, it's not, so I'll just hold out and hope the next patch puts things right while I see if I can get a legally cracked version of the exe file. Still, I can't believe that there are so many other would-be players out there who are having even worse problems than I am. In any other industry, this would have constituted a public-relations disaster. But gamers have learned the hard way that there's a certain amount of risk involved in buying PC titles, which is probably part of the reason why PC games are losing so much ground to consoles. I'm sure it's by pure luck alone that Civ 3 is the only game in recent history that will not cooperate on my current system, I know that many are not nearly so fortunate. Mindless as most console games are, you never have problems with hardware conflicts, bugs, or paranoid copy protection that stops legitimate buyers from playing what they paid money for.

It seems obvious to me that the problems we're all experiencing constitute the justification required in the EULA for seeking a refund from the company. They have said it will run on these operating systems, and it does not run when certain things happen.

Anyone who wants to can get a refund, if they honor the EULA. As I recall, you basically have to package up the CD and send it back to them to get a refund. But check your EULA to get the details.

I'm going to hold on a while longer and see if they fix the major issue that I'm encountering.

Yes, I’m sorry that some people will miss out on this game, but the company can’t refuse a reasonable request for a refund.