I can only play 2 turns until the game stops.

[C.J]

Every time I try to play, it only lets me play two turns. No matter what rules I change, what leader I am, if I build a city or not, what I have the city produce, what I have my workers do, what I have my scientific team research, or what difficulty I'm on. Even when I play tutorial the same thing happens. I've played it on this and other computers before and it's worked fine. I've tried reinstalling it several times. I've tried patches and when I do, it won't even let me start the game. I've registered it as well. I've disabled sound and video too. I asked this on Yahoo! Answers and the only answer I've got so far is:
"Well... the only possible explanation I can think of is that you haven't entered a CD key."
What's a CD key? Is it the serial number?
No matter what I do, I can only play 2 tuns until it says something like, "Game Over" and gives me the option to either play by myself, with no other countries or data recorded, or to stop playing. I'm playing the classic/regular version on a Dell Inspron 1150 with XP. Also, it's the CD, do demo or Limwire action goin' on here.

Anyone know what's wrong?!

 

[Quintillus]

Whom do you have selected as Rivals on the screen where you select your civ? If every box is "none", the game will end almost right away.

Your current Civ3 version will be in the lower-left part of the main menu. If it's up-to-date already it will say "1.29", possibly "1.29f", and you already have all the patches.

Also make sure your video card drivers are up to date. Though it shouldn't cause the "Game over" dialog, it can cause Civ3 to work incorrectly if they aren't. And even though you computer is newer than Civ3, it's possible that early drivers weren't 100% compatible.

My only other guess it that your default Civ3 map file is somehow messed up. Reinstalling should fix that, but you may need to delete the entire Infogrames Interactive folder for it to be overwritten. Not sure what the root cause of the problem is though.