Workarounds and suggestions for making Civ III run well in 2023

[Civinator]

GOG provides a separate launcher EXE instead of just running the Conquests.EXE directly. The launcher doesn't appear to do anything useful and can be ignored.

The GOG launcher of Civ 3 Complete seems to hold a "Clear Type" function. When a C3C game is started with that launcher, the magenta letters in some of the Civ 3 menus (per example the domestic advisor) are replaced by black, but thinner, letters.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Huh you're right, it does change the font. Can't believe I never noticed that before! Does anyone have a screenshot of the disc release running on XP? If it's closer to that maybe I should suggest using it...

I don't think it's related to gog galaxy as tjs suggested because I don't have Galaxy installed at all and it doesn't seem care.

 

[Civinator]

I don't think it's related to gog galaxy as tjs suggested because I don't have Galaxy installed at all and it doesn't seem care.

The clear type function is not connected with GOG Galaxy. It is in the launcher of GOG Civ 3 Complete. I don´t use GOG Galaxy and I am playing with an offline version of the GOG version of Civ 3 Complete, but that function in the launcher is working.

 

[Blake00]

Excellent work!

Another fun issue that's coming soon on Dec 31st is Steam no longer working on Windows 7.. so that'll be the end of me running Steam Civ3 until I setup a Win 10 partition on my computer (not ready yet to get a new PC with Win 11). Unless I swap the exe out I guess. Still got my disc version installed though so all good.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Oh dear, sounds like discs is the way to go for you. Civ 3 is in that awkward spot for compatibility, it just keeps collecting niggling little issues. If I wrote a Civ 1 version it'd be much shorter, get dosbox, get latest patch, fix a few additional bugs with jcived, done

 

[WildWeazel]

Someone on Discord reported that they have had no issues running the GOG version through Proton on multiple Linux distros. It's possible that the GOG version has already replaced the troublesome system calls. Has anyone else tried that?

@Blake00 when I launch Civ3 directly in my VM it complains about Steam not running but works fine. So I think it will continue to work if it's already installed, except for probably Steam multiplayer.

 

[Lord_Hill]

@WildWeazel I'd ask that person to check their diplomacy lines once they're sufficiently far into a game for war and alliances. You can use an old proton version to work around black screen, but not those lines. Would love to be proved wrong of course!

 

[Blake00]

@Blake00 when I launch Civ3 directly in my VM it complains about Steam not running but works fine. So I think it will continue to work if it's already installed, except for probably Steam multiplayer.

Yeah I had a feeling I've accidentally done that a few times where steam wasn't open so I got an error and then Civ3 started anyway.. but wasn't sure as it's been a while. That's good to know!

Oh and I forgot to say I never suffered the SecuRom issue with Civ3 CD copy, so presumably my Australian copy is one of the lucky ones that doesn't have it. However I did suffer it with my disc copies of Civ4 but thankfully when I contacted 2K support they gave me a free steam copy of Civ4 lol.

 

[Kyriakos]

I can't get Civ3 (Complete) to run with my screen resolution. Because there is no ini file. I tried starting a game and quiting - still no ini file. I even tried to manually create the ini file (saved as such, not as simple text) but the exe doesn't pay any attention to it (which can be also gathered by the fact the intro still runs despite the PlayIntro=0 command).
I have Windows11. Pls help Maybe the stupid files have to be saved as some other path? [they are at the usual (...)/Program Files 86 folder]
I also can't locate the save game folder (again it's not in the expected places).

 

[tjs282]

Did you actually read the OP...? Because if you had, you might have found this link...

Civ3 and Windows 11

I have a new WIndows 11 laptop and have been playing Civ3 via Steam on my old WIndows 10 machine with no issues whatsoever. However when I try to launch the app on my WIndows 11 the game locks into 640-480 mode and I can never get it to display full screen. I have tried running it as an...

forums.civfanatics.com

And yeah, installing Civ3 somewhere outside Program Files would also have been sensible, to avoid any VirtualStore-induced problems (like your disappearing .ini file). That's been the case since, erm... WinVista (? IIRC?).

 

[Kyriakos]

I did.
It still did not work.
But I then tried running at compatibility mode, and at least the resolution is livable now

 

[Lord_Hill]

It's weird, I did note that I had to enable XP compatibility mode on first run (this was on Windows 11 as well), but found after that I could switch it off again and it was fine. Good point re not installing in program files, I'll add that in.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am always nervous about installing windows packs, because windows is extremely volatile regardless :S
I did need to do so, though, to get rid of the horrible diplo music bug.

 

[DragonPLP]

To fix the quarter screen issue for CIC3PTW in Windows 11 I had to open Infogrames Interactive>Civilization III>CIV3PTW>ptw file and add the following:
Video Mode=1024
keepres=1
PlayIntro=0

I had to change my screen resolution to 1024 x 768 and the game opened full screen.

 

[Nicknine]

Not easily. All retail releases of Civ III contain a particularly nasty copy protection scheme called SecuRom. This scheme was considered sufficiently unsafe by Microsoft that it was globally disabled in a Windows 7 patch and all subsequent Windows versions. This means that your Civ III CDs will NOT work on a modern OS.

Ok, this is just incorrect on several levels.
- Most Civ3 releases use SafeDisc not SecuROM. The only exception is US release of Play The World which does use SecuROM.
- SecuROM still works fine on modern systems despite the annoyingly persistent myth claiming the contrary.
- SecuROM is actually the least intrusive of the popular DRM trio from back then (SecuROM, SafeDisc, StarForce). It doesn't even have a driver unlike the other two, it's just a dll. There have been no statements from Microsoft regarding SecuROM security that I know of.

On a related note, a tool was recently released that bypasses secdrv.sys driver requirement for SafeDisc games that use it allowing them to work on Windows 10: https://github.com/RibShark/SafeDiscShim
I tested vanilla Civ3 with this and it works fine.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Indeed, at some point safedisc and securom have merged into one thing in my head! Great news about a workaround for safedisc though, that could help loads of games

 

[Lord_Hill]

@Nicknine I have updated the wording in the first post to sort out the safedisc / securom mixup, thanks for pointing it out. I haven't recommended the shim in the first post yet as it sits in that awkward grey area where even though it technically isn't circumventing copy protection, it could be interpreted as doing so. Even though I don't think there's any problem with it, it's easier just to point people towards the pcgames.de patched EXE (which has the benefit of also being supported by the C3X unofficial patch).

 

[Nicknine]

Retail releases of PTW and C3C use GameSpy for online multiplayer. While GameSpy was shut down in 2014, you can use OpenSpy as a replacement server if you really want to play retail version online: http://beta.openspy.net/en/
The primary method of using OpenSpy involves patching the executable as detailed here: http://beta.openspy.net/en/howto/generic/generic
But if that's not an option for you for one reason or another, you can edit Windows hosts file. Civ3 needs these three entries:

157.245.212.59  master.gamespy.com
64.225.4.169    motd.gamespy.com
64.225.19.20    peerchat.gamespy.com

 

[MrSweetchuck]

The GOG launcher of Civ 3 Complete seems to hold a "Clear Type" function. When a C3C game is started with that launcher, the magenta letters in some of the Civ 3 menus (per example the domestic advisor) are replaced by black, but thinner, letters.

The GOG launcher is actually just a compiled AutoHotKey script that disables ClearType and then launches the Civ3Conquests.exe. It would be trivially easy to make your own, for example:

#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%
ToggleClearType() {
VarSetCapacity( fSm, 1 )
DllCall( "SystemParametersInfo", uInt, 0x4A, uInt, 0, uInt, &fSm, uInt, 0 )
DllCall( "SystemParametersInfo", uInt, 0x4B, uInt, !NumGet( &fSm, 0 ), uInt, 0, uInt, 0x2 )
}
ToggleClearType()
RunWait, Civ3Conquests.exe, Conquests
ToggleClearType()
exit

 

[Lord_Hill]

Thank you! The mystery of what the point of that was, has bothered me pretty much since the gog version was released! Sorts out the pink text, that's all.