CIV III Crashes need help!!

[vawils]

After using my Civ III, Version 1.29f, for about 4 years it now crashes after about 20 turns. It does this on both the older desktop computer and my much newer laptop with Vista. It always had worked fine but it all of sudden crashes and I get an error message that says:

Civ 3.exe has encountered a problem and has to shut down and asks if i want an error report sent to me which i haven't done because probably wouldn't understand.

I am wondering if this could just be a bad disk particularly since it does the same thing on both computers where it previously had worked fine for years. I was thinking about just buying a new game disk which may be easier than trying to diagnose and fix this but then of course not sure the new one would work.

Any advice suggestions welcome - is it fixable should i buy a new game disk? I have done any patching and not exactly sure how but willing to try anything. Thanks for any help suggestions..

 

[CommandoBob]

I would go ahead and upgrade to Civ III Complete. It runs about $20 retail, while Civ III vanilla (what you have) is about $10. Civ III Complete comes already patched to 1.29 (vanilla), 1.27 (PTW) and 1.22 (Conquests); all three games in one install.

It does sound like a bad disk. One further check would be install the game on a friend's computer and see if it still crashes after 20 turns.

 

[Turner]

There's another problem. Assuming a full install, the only time the disc is used is to verify the copy protection. After that, it isn't checked.

More information would be useful, such as are you learning a tech, founding a city, that sort of thing. Have you made any mods to the game? You could also upload a save and we could check it on our installs and see if we have the same problem at the same time. I would upload the 4000bc save, the save before the crash, and a couple turns before.