"Trivial" query...

I've been playing Civ III (Complete), now, for many years, but there is a small annoyance that has cropped up. Whenever I start up (new OR exixting) a small window pops up advising me to reset SCREEN RESOLUTION to 1980 x 1020. It's already at that, and I cannot access the window to say so, or tell it not to adsk me that again. Is there a solution to this?

 

I'm curious, because in >5 years of playing Civ3Complete, I've never seen this: Is this pop-up generated by Windows, or by the game itself?

If it's a Windows(10?) notification, you may need to go into your "display-settings" menu to check that Windows is actually still using the correct resolution for your monitor (because it's possible that e.g. a recent update may have reset it without notifying you). If it's a Civ3 pop-up, then the following information about my setup may help you narrow down/solve your problem:

I have a download-version of C3C from GamersGate, first installed on an old WinXP laptop with a 1280*800 screen, and later also on a Win8.1 desktop using (initially) a 1920*1080 monitor, and (now) a 1600*1200 monitor (with the widescreen-monitor demoted to secondary).

For WinXP, the game is in the default installation location in C:/ProgramFiles/Firaxis/...

When I installed under Win8.1, I deliberately set an alternative installation path, D:/Games/Civ3/, both to avoid problems with VirtualStorage (of save-files etc.), and also because my D-drive is substantially larger (HDD, 1 TB) than than my C-drive (SSD, 250 GB).

To prevent distortion of the preset 4:3 screens (for game-setup, advisors, etc.) while playing on widescreen, I inserted the line 'KeepRes=1' at the end of the conquests.ini file (in both installations).

When I switched to using the 1600*1200 monitor as my primary on the Win8.1 box, I replaced the 'KeepRes' line with 'VideoMode=1600' (this appeared to be necessary, because otherwise the game-screen spilled over onto the secondary).

 

Guess I should've mentioned, right up front, that I'm running Win 7 Home Premium, 64-bit OS, with screen Res set at 1920 x 1080. I've tried the "Keep Res = 1" approach, but the display goes to about ½-screen. I'm curious, though. If I insert "Video Mode=1920", what, do you think, would happen?

 

Well, yeah, since the City- and Advisor-screen (etc.) graphic-files are all drawn at 1024*768 pixels, they'll look pretty small on a monitor with nearly double that (horizontal) resolution.

But you should at least be seeing the main map filling the entire screen, without distortion (although the unit-animations will probably be pretty tiny, too)...?

The VideoMode switch (1) assumes a monitor with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and (2) only has a limited number of possible settings, the highest of which is "VideoMode=1792" (see this post for all the .ini file settings).

So setting "VideoMode=1920" (= 1920*1344), an invalid setting, would most likely either be ignored, or it might prevent the game from loading altogether.