Civ 3 on Windows 7

[geminisama]

Hello fellow Civ Fanatics. A few months back, I decided to upgrade my OS to Windows 7, as I needed to reformat anyway. Well, I installed it, and found it quick fast, and streamlined, like people said. I was happy, and then I discovered my beloved Civ 3 runs like crap on it. I'm stuck with Windows 7, until I can find an external HDD somewhere, and this depresses me.

Does anyone know how to get Civ 3 running fine on this otherwise decent OS? I've tried setting it to XP/Vista compatibility, but I still get lag and stuff. When I first load a save file, it runs INCREDIBLY slow, like 40 seconds to complete the firework animation. After ending the initial turn, it gets somewhat better; but scrolling the map is slow and laggy, and when moving, at the end of the movement, there is an annoying pause. Any optimizations, fixes, anything to help me fix my favorite game? :/

Edit: Oh god, I tried taking it off windows mode, to see if maybe it would run better fullscreen; it was taking about 30 seconds for a unit to move a single square, it was crawling so bad. Amazing how hard it can be running a game this simple, when Vista did it just fine.

 

[Chieftess]

Download Virtual PC from Microsoft. You can set up a virtual Windows XP hard drive with it. (Bonus is that you will get Windowed mode!)

 

[Turner]

There's a stickied thread for installing under Win7.

 

[geminisama]

I appreciate the help, but I had no difficulty installing it, and my post clearly shows it's a performance issue. I wish it was just an issue installing it, but the actual game runs like crap.