Civilization 1 DOS in DOSBox freezing!

[NEOBassDUDE]

Hey everyone,

I love Civilization 1 for DOS. Its totally awesome and all that jargon, but I have an issue.

I cannot play the game in native windows.. (windows x64) so I use DOSBox.

Randomly when I try to choose a city improvement the game will not draw the improvement screen and will just lockup.

It does this when I'm using dosbox in win x64 or if I'm using dosbox in suse linux.

Does anyone else have this locking up weirdness and is there anyway to fix it? I'd love to play the game to the end, but I can't... well sometimes it doesn't lockup, so I can... but I've gotten so far and have to have it lockup is very frustrating...

Thanks a lot

 

[Pyrodoom]

This happens for me too. It's been happening ever since I started playing, but it was so rare I would forget that it ever happens. However, the more I played the more it occured, until now it happens maybe 25% of the time I try to change what the city is producing. It's very game-breaking. I use a windows Vista with DOSBox. I find that the best way around it for now it to just:

1: Save the game every time just before changing a what a city's producing.

2: After saving, try changing the production.

3: If it freezes, you have to open a previous save (not the one you just made, and an even older one than the one you just tried if you're repeating this step.) and just try to get back to where you were.

4:Repeat steps 1-2. If it freezes again, load an even older save than the last one you tried, get back to where it froze last time, and repeat steps 1-4.

I hope that's clear enough for you. Basically, save all the time and if it freezes, load previous saves.

It's very annoying and until I find a way to stop it from happening I've stopped playing, despite Civ1 being the only thing I have to do all day. It is that bad in my case.

It may not be a solution, but I hope I've helped you at least a little.

 

[Schweet]

Have you tried running dosbox in a 32bit OS virtual machine?

I haven't tried playing civ1 in dosbox, and probably haven't touched the game since civ2 came out but would like to give it a go. I've long since lost my disks and don't have a floppy anyway, how do I go about finding a copy?

 

[Schweet]

Not sure what I was thinking above, too enterprisey. I managed to get a copy of civ and tried running in dosbox but kept getting the error "run-time error R6003 - integer divide by 0" when starting.

I went to all the hassle of installing DOS to a virtual machine, mounting the VHD, copying the CIV files across and viola, the game worked perfectly... until I tried restarting and loading a saved game at which point I got the same error. A quick google suggests its something to do with doublespace, but that isn't running, but the implication is its some kind of file corruption bug.

Anyway, the bit that I did play shows this game can still pull you in despite the hideously old graphics.

 

[Whelkman]

The situation in the first two posts sounds like the Instant Advice bug to me, circumvented by disabling the option of the same name.

 

[jordissim]

I remember having exactly the same problem quite a few years ago. The way I remember circumventing it was to substitute the graph file for another one (they are independent, I don't remember their extensions, but you can switch one for another and the game just runs the graphical file you've just renamed). I'll try and do a little research, I've long forgotten how I made it work...

 

[da dick]

meh. i too couldn't get it t run in dosbox on winXP... so i played the snes version which was quite bad.

 

[Atreju]

For me it sounds like the instand advice bug too...you just have to change it in options always after beginning a game like its written in one of the texts in the file of civ 1.You dont have to be paranoid and save every turn man...