dataIO operation system error: CITY

[CrimsonFlare]

so i saved my game as usual, and i made a backup also as usual and i exited and everything was fine. and then i loaded my saved game and it loaded to 60% and then i got a little box saying "dataIO operation system error: CITY" and then it brought me back the the first screen after the game loads. and i tried my backup save and the same thing. so i try some of the auto-saves for it. and they're all corrupted. every last auto-save for my current game. its on the largest map under emperor difficulty, and its the year 430ad. and ive poured a lot of time into it and i really dont want to lose it.

is there a known issue or is there any way i can fix it????

Civ III
version 1.07f
Running on windows XP sp2 2.66ghz intel p4, 256mg ram, and an integrated intel graphics card ( but the computer does meet the minimum requirements)
about to run a diskcheck but thats all that i can think of that would help.

 

[ainwood]

I doubt that its recoverable - looks like a corrupted save. You didn't by any chance try to load a save from a different patch version? That can give errors like this.

BTW - I recommend upating to patch version 1.29f. You can download it here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=20

 

[Quintillus]

It does indeed look like a corrupted save. I was burned by that one time, too. There's no real way to recover from it - it's more or less, if there's one error in a bad place, your savegame is toast. I'd be interested in seeing the savegame file if you don't mind uploading it (or linking to it if you can't upload files with 1 post at CFC), though. Theoretically, if there's just one little bit off, the savegame could be manually edited to restore it to workable status. But there's no way to know if that's possible without seeing the file, and I no longer have my corrupted savegame file from several years ago. Chances are, your game is toast, but there's a small chance if you post it I may be able to look at the guts of it, see an obvious error, make a small change, and return it to a workable state.

(note that you may have to compress it to get it to fit within CFC size limits, as Civ III 1.07 savegames are uncompressed. Go to the savegame folder, right-click on the file, and choose Send To-> Compressed (zipped) folder. Then upload that zipped folder.

BTW - I recommend updating XP to Service Pack Three through Windows Update. It won't have any effect on Civ3, but will give you better security in the long term.