Issues with Civ III Complete on Impulse

[TxCraig]

Recently I purchased Civ III Complete via Impulse. It does not contain vanilla Civ3 or Play the World, only Conquests is there. So it isn't really Complete. Does the distribution sold on, for example, Steam have all three games?

When I reported the problem, Stardock tech support said:

Do you have a Multiplayer option in the in-game menu? If so, Play the World is installed.

Evidently they think "Play the World" is the same as "Multiplayer". When I asked how to start a game of Play the World, tech support said:

There is no standalone .exe for Play the World, as it's [sic] features have simply been incorporated.

And they closed my ticket. I asked for a refund and received no response.

So while I ponder whether to initiate class-action deceptive trade practices litigation, can somebody tell me whether the Civ3 Complete sold on direct2drive or Steam is really Complete?

 

[vmxa]

Complete has all three pieces. You should be able to find a Civilization3.exe for vanilla. You may have to make a short cut for it, not sure.

There is either a Civilation3x.exe for PTW or the Civ3Conquest.exe can launch PTW and C3C, not sure how they did it. In any event you can play all three games. The C3C exe can play PTW and C3C game for sure. I just do not know, if it can launch PTW.

I doubt direct2drive messed with that, it would be work for them.

 

[TxCraig]

And yet you did not bother to check and find the path to the executables yourself before posting. Strong assertions require strong substantiation. You also did not say which distribution you were referring to, steam, impulse, direct2drive, or were you just making things up with the power of your mind.

In the impulse distribution, a vanilla Civ3 executable is present, but it has not been converted to the electronic distribution format. It says, "No Civilization III Installation Detected." The PtW executable is missing. The PtW map editor is there. The PtW game executable has been removed.

PtW and C3C are not the same. You may have heard of the Classic GOTM, in which the rules state, "This game is supported only in Civ3 Play the World v 1.27f for Windows or Macintosh. Please do not attempt to play this game in any other version of Civ3, or in Civ3 Conquests."

Exactly the same garbage I got from Stardock support.

 

[Furiey]

I have the D2D version of Complete (also have the disc version).

I had always assumed that all the executables were there as vmxa suggested, but following your comments I have looked at the D2D complete installation. To my surprise I also have no Civilization3x.exe for PTW and only have .exe for Vanilla and Conquests.

The readme for complete even states:

GAME SELECTION:
Civilization III, Play the World, and Conquests are all installed when you
install Civilization III: Complete Edition, however, clicking "Civilization III:
Complete Edition" from the Start Menu will launch the Conquests executable. In general, we
recommend launching the product using this method. However, if you wish to play
Civilization III Classic or Play the World, you must navigate to those folders directly and
launch the appropriate executable.

so I'm not sure how you are meant to play PTW without a .exe. I'll compare to my disc installation at some point and see what files are missing out of curiosity.

I don't know about the Steam version, but it sounds like the D2D and Impulse versions are the same.

 

[CommandoBob]

When I installed C3C on my old box I had to create seperate shortcuts for vanilla and Play The World. And then I never used them.

C3C does default to Conquests.

I have C3C as three seperate yellow discs, but I do not remember if I got it from eBay or Target. It did come in a box.