I've experienced the strange font problems that several other people have mentioned. After seeing the posts by sk0tie (Thanks for the extra help, sk0tie!) and others I went to remove some fonts figuring I had lots more than 256. I only had 111 fonts so that wasn't the problem. Just to test I removed all of my fonts with "Lucida" contained in the name. I started Civ 3 and it fixed the problem - no messed up fonts - everything was readable. So the fix was a little crude, it worked. Trying to find a little more refined solution I added the fonts back and started removing one at a time. The first one I removed was "Lucida Sans Oblique" (or something similar) and started the game and it worked. I thought I got lucky. Just to be sure I got out of the game and rebooted and started again - the problem was back again. So I removed just the fonts with "Lucida Sans" in the name and ran Civ 3 again and the problem was gone again. Rebooted and the fonts were still fine. I added back in the Lucida Sans font located in the Civ 3 directory and rebooted and started the game and everything still is fine. It's still a crude fix but at least I can read the text in the game. I don't know if I've messed up another application but, at this point, I don't care - It's time to play. Hope it can help someone else.