Multiplayer Tool - Play scenarios up to 31 players!

[Kirejara]

I also have CivIII complete on CD but was unable to get this utility to work. What a shame since I would love to try playing a 31 player game hotseat. The error I received when trying to run the exe was "Unable to find C3C process"

I have Civ III Complete on CD too and I am able to use this utility both under WinXP and Win7.

My steps are:
- starting CivIII
- load savegame or start a new game in CivIII
- After complete loading of game (world view) use "ALT + TAB" to switch back to desktop and then start the mp-gui.exe.
- return into the game and it is in multiplayer mode.

I hope this is helpful.

 

[Blake00]

Maybe Moff is using Windows 10 as I've seen people having troubes in prev posts on Win 10. I'm still using Windows 7 which hopefully means I'll be okay then, so I guess I'm gonna have to go dig out that old CD! Would rather stick with my steam version though.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Maybe Moff is using Windows 10 as I've seen people having troubes in prev posts on Win 10. I'm still using Windows 7 which hopefully means I'll be okay then, so I guess I'm gonna have to go dig out that old CD! Would rather stick with my steam version though.

I do indeed have Windows 10. The good news is that I managed to get this tool to work. What I had to do was uninstall my Civ Complete which was on drive D. I reinstalled it under drive C. I did nothing else and when I ran my test game I was able to use the MP tool and select as many players to be human and hotseat as I wanted! Maybe the issue was that my game was installed on the D drive and the MP tool is hardcoded to look only on the C drive?

 

[Kirejara]

I do not think, that the MP tool is hardcoded to the C: drive.

My CivIII is at I: (WinXP) and D: (Win7). Only my very old laptop has CivIII at C: (Win2000).

But I am glad to read, that it is working for you now.

 

[Moff Jerjerrod]

Actually it stopped working for me. I think I figured out why however. I did not have read/write privileges set on my Civ3 Complete folder for all users. Using Win10 security settings I edited all users to have read/write access to Civ3 Complete folder. After doing this the mp tool stopped working.

It took me a while to figure out why but if I run the mp tool as an administrator it all of the sudden recognizes where my C3C conquests exe is and I was able to use the tool to add human hotseat players. Now all should be fine.

 

[Blake00]

After some research, it appears there was an update via the Steam platform in October 2018 to their Civ3 Complete that moved some stuff around in memory. Looks like mostly text file changes, with a few dll changes. The dll changes probably caused some stuff to move around. I've managed to get something written that can modify human/CPU control, and morph a game from SP to MP and back. I haven't tried to hunt down the play by email flag yet. Instead I've been distracted by the juicy units memory address, and trying to figure out where that moved to.

Any news @NiteKat on your modified 'steam version friendly' version of @Sima Qian 's tool?

 

[Blake00]

Some good news is I managed to find my old CD's, installed them on my Win7 machine, ran Sima's tool, still couldn't find the process so I gave full read/write access to the Civ 3 folder, then it saw my game and worked. I then created a map in the editor and gave the Barbarians settlers and military units. I was able to successfully take control of those settlers using Simas tool and build Barbarian cities with them! So things are looking good for a another episode in my Civ Barbarian games video series which I'll be posting soon.

 

[Civinator]

Blake00, thank you very much for posting your way to receive a Barbarian city on the map.

I made a thread about this, that you can find here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-cities-in-civ-3.646253/#post-15460221
Unfortunately in my eyes, such a C3C game as the Barbarians will not be much fun, as there is no production and culture in this city and no research in the Barbarian civ - but it could be a first step in creating much better Civ 3 maps, if we find a way to convert the save files of the game with the Barbarian cities into biqs, that are able to hold maps with Barbarian cities.

 

[Blake00]

Blake00, thank you very much for posting your way to receive a Barbarian city on the map.

No worries mate, I've posted more details in your thread about my experiments. Looks like you're already way ahead of me though haha

 

[Flvffi]

Blake00, thank you very much for posting your way to receive a Barbarian city on the map.

I made a thread about this, that you can find here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/barbarian-cities-in-civ-3.646253/#post-15460221
Unfortunately in my eyes, such a C3C game as the Barbarians will not be much fun, as there is no production and culture in this city and no research in the Barbarian civ - but it could be a first step in creating much better Civ 3 maps, if we find a way to convert the save files of the game with the Barbarian cities into biqs, that are able to hold maps with Barbarian cities.

There's actually a thread somewhere on this forum from back in 2010, called revenge of the ronin, where a player strategizes and plays through a scenario trying to kill all the Daimyo. Never finished, sadly.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Has anyone gotten this to work for Civ III Conquests Complete? I just get:

"Unable to find C3C process. Please check if C3C is running."

 

[Stew Pid]

Has anyone gotten this to work for Civ III Conquests Complete? I just get:

"Unable to find C3C process. Please check if C3C is running."

Run it as administrator

 

[MeteorPunch]

Tried with each - the game and the program. doesn't seem to make a difference.

Edit: I'm using the Steam version

 

[Stew Pid]

Tried with each - the game and the program. doesn't seem to make a difference.

Edit: I'm using the Steam version

Did you do the steam fix where you update the labels.txt file?

 

[MeteorPunch]

No, haven't seen that anywhere

 

[Stew Pid]

No, haven't seen that anywhere

Are you playing a mod or scenario, if so this may fix that?
How to fix jumbled text in mods :: Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete General Discussions (steamcommunity.com)

If you are playing the Steam version of Civilization III, you must also change the labels.txt file located in the MOD/Text folder. Inside the Text folder, you will see a file named Labels and a file named labels-STEAM. Simply rename, delete, or move the original labels file, and rename the labels-STEAM to Labels.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Just playing a regular game so there's no extra issues. This is, on top the GUI version, and lower pic is a MP version. I've tried 3 different versions of the MP.exe

 

[MeteorPunch]

Have to try again tomorrow or this weekend. Thanks for the assistance so far.

 

[Stew Pid]

Have to try again tomorrow or this weekend. Thanks for the assistance so far.

Run the MP.gui exe as admin and make sure that when you downloaded the file that its all together in the same folder with the dll and other files it came with.

 

[Civinator]

I can confirm, that this tool is working well with Civ 3 Complete and Win 10. I receive that error message only, when that tool is started before the start of the epic game, a scenario or a save file.

Civ 3 Complete (not the steam version) is on drive C and the tool is located in the C3C mainfolder. I do the steps exactly as Kirejara is describing them in post 41 of this thread. To have a good access to the exe of this tool for the later ALT + TAB operation, I open the folder of this tool (not the exe) before starting C3C. I always start the C3C game as a single player, because when starting it as a multiplayer game, one is running into the Firaxis limitations for multiplayers. The C3C game must be loaded, so the tool can recognize that C3C is running.

Spoiler :