Original Civ III + Windows 10 Instalation

[Kuzman1984]

Guys I need your help, I got the love of my life, the CD of the original Civ III you know where you can cheat the amount you want, so no conquest, complete or gold version plain old version, the problem is I cant Install it on my windows 10, while clicking on the install exe file it gives me this bs:/ Error extracting support files:catsatrophic failures, can anyone help ?

 

[tjs282]

I can think of at least 2 possibilities:

(1) Your CD-ROM has degraded over time, and the data it holds has become corrupted. While this would indeed suck, unfortunately nothing lasts forever.

(2) You may be running up against a problem initiated in late 2015, when a Microsoft update disabled the secdrv.sys driver on all current versions of Windows (Vista and up): although this update could be rolled back and then blocked from re-installing on Vista to Win8.1, this is not possible on Win10.

That driver was used to run copy-protection/ DRM (ownership-verification/CD checks), and ever since the update, CD-based versions of many games published around 1995-2010 (including Civ3) can no longer be installed/run. See this thread for more details.

The simplest/easiest way to get around both the above problems is also detailed in the linked thread. The TLDR version:

Re-purchase a download-version of Civ3(Complete), e.g. from GOG or Steam (for around 5 local currency units, and less during sales). Having done so, if you really only want to play the original 16-Civ vanilla version of Civ3, you can patch your installation with a NoCD-version of the vanilla civilization3.exe v.1.29 executable (Firaxis supplied a legitimate version, which is still available online at the German PCGames magazine website).

 

[Kuzman1984]

Thx for replying, its a bummer but what the heck, I gotta go steam then

 

[Civinator]

Much better to buy the GOG version. At present it is on sale for € 1,39 and it doesn´t have the buged labels text file, that confuses the text of mods and scenarios and is also responsible for some crashes on them.

 

[tjs282]

Much better to buy the GOG version.

Yes. I've edited my post slightly...

 

[Puppeteer]

tjs282 is right about DRM'ed CDs like Civ3 not working in Win10 anymore, and the German magazine nocd workaround. However, OP specifically mentioned being able to edit gold. The vanilla nocd exe's are patched to v1.29 which presumably has the gold encryption protection in it. You can get vanilla or PTW going, but I think you have to be at the latest patch (v1.29 and v1.26, respectively).

My old "CD" install method was that I had copied the CD files to my hard drive somewhere, ran the installer from there (and chose a custom install location; see win7/win8 install vid in my sig), then ran the appropriate patches, then applied the no-cd exe's. Installing from copied files worked fine, but of course the game wouldn't run without the CD copy protection until the nocd exe's were substituted.

I think I still haven't tried the vanilla and ptw nocd exe's with Steam or GoG (I have both, plus all three CDs)...I should finally try that. I haven't done PTW in a while. (Personally I see no reason to use vanilla over PTW, but PTW has different corruption mechanics which are a fun diversion from Conquests even though I like Conquests better overall.)

Edit: Aw, that German site only seems to have exe's for vanilla and Conquests, not PTW.