Workarounds and suggestions for making Civ III run well in 2023

[MrSweetchuck]

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.

Yep, and makes sense too. GOG probably got tired of answering all those support threads complaining about pink text and trying to explain how to disable ClearType each and every time you launch the game. In fact, it's such a obvious solution, it's a wonder 2K Games didn't include something similar when they shipped Conquests

 

[MrSweetchuck]

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.

I noticed that disabling XP compatibility after first run also dramatically improved the frame rate of the game. While keeping it on, the game felt VERY sluggish. And turning it off the game now feels like it did 20 years ago.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

Even with KeepRes=1 and PlayIntro=0, Civ III doesn't work on my UHD / Multi monitor setup, anything else I can try?
Unfortunately Civ III does not cope well with particularly large monitors. KeepRes appears to have an upper resolution limit (and the text does not rescale and will get smaller and smaller). The suggested workarounds here are not perfect and will be very much dependent on your particular setup.

-Check your high DPI scaling settings as per the black screen section above.
-Drop your desktop resolution before you play and continue to use KeepRes=1 (not ideal because it will mess up your desktop and is tedious to change every time)
-Play windowed using Video Mode in conquests.ini and experiment with sizes to get the best fit.

I've had great luck getting Civ III to run in full widescreen AND preserving the aspect ratio (i.e. not distorting it), while still being to able read the text comfortably and see all the details on the map, etc. My conquests.ini file settings are:
PlayIntro=0
KeepRes=1
(NOT using Video Mode at all)

And then I found this little applet called Reso that dynamically changes your screen resolution before running any program and then changes it back after exiting said program. It allows command line options so you can essentially run it as a shortcut. For example, I run Civ III at 1280x800 and this is the shortcut I use: C:\reso.exe "C:\GOG Games\Civilization III Complete\Civ3Launcher.exe" 1280 800 32 60 -- (32 is the bit depth and 60 is the frame rate)

 

[Lord_Hill]

Nice to get a second opinion on that, I added that in based on personal experience without much to back it up. O think it needs xp mode for some initial registry stuff but after that it runs better without it. At least that's my current working theory anyway

 

[Blake00]

And then I found this little applet called Reso that dynamically changes your screen resolution before running any program and then changes it back after exiting said program. It allows command line options so you can essentially run it as a shortcut. For example, I run Civ III at 1280x800 and this is the shortcut I use: C:\reso.exe "C:\GOG Games\Civilization III Complete\Civ3Launcher.exe" 1280 800 32 60 -- (32 is the bit depth and 60 is the frame rate)

Oooh I'll have to try that on some other games.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Thanks @Civinator and @MrSweetchuck , I've updated the gog section with a short description of the launcher. I keep expecting to run out of stuff to add to this thread but people keep finding stuff, Civ 3 is such a fussy game! :-D

 

[BlackBetsy]

It's been a loooooooong time since I played Civ 3 but I've been wanting to go back and play through the anthology of all Civ games (or at least all of the ones I have there seems to be no way to get Civ 1 and 2). I was doing technical testing and Civ 3 runs fine on modern hardware but the UI is way too small at 4K I was curious if there is a mod somewhere to scale the UI?

Old post, but Civ1 is definitely available and I played the hell out of it around Thanksgiving through DOSBox. I think I downloaded it through MyAbandonware. You can play it online as well but I don't recommend. There is no ability to save, etc.

 

[SirBedwyr]

I've had great luck getting Civ III to run in full widescreen AND preserving the aspect ratio (i.e. not distorting it), while still being to able read the text comfortably and see all the details on the map, etc. My conquests.ini file settings are:
PlayIntro=0
KeepRes=1
(NOT using Video Mode at all)

And then I found this little applet called Reso that dynamically changes your screen resolution before running any program and then changes it back after exiting said program. It allows command line options so you can essentially run it as a shortcut. For example, I run Civ III at 1280x800 and this is the shortcut I use: C:\reso.exe "C:\GOG Games\Civilization III Complete\Civ3Launcher.exe" 1280 800 32 60 -- (32 is the bit depth and 60 is the frame rate)

This is a bit of a mystery, but regardless of the setting I use, Civ III insists on running at default 1024x768 resolution, even using the reso shortcut you suggested, thank you.

I run the game in three places: on my 4K LG TV downstairs, my 27" 4K monitor upstairs, and lately the Steam deck (mostly this is about the challenge of getting it running than actually running the game... some will understand this terrible disease). I noticed that no matter the setting in the conquests.ini file or compatibility settings on the executable directly, my monitor reports 1024x768. No matter what. I can force the monitor to run at a 4:3 aspect ratio in its settings. I have a suspicion my TV is changing aspect automatically, I haven't checked yet. But yeah. 1024 period. I'm flummoxed.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

the challenge of getting it running than actually running the game... some will understand this terrible disease

Yep, I have that

Civ III insists on running at default 1024x768 resolution, even using the reso shortcut you suggested

Maybe this will be helpful:

KeepRes=1 will cause Civ3 to keep the resolution of your desktop, whatever that resolution is. It should be after the [Conquests] part of the INI file, such as:

[Conquests]
KeepRes=1
(other things that are already there)

If you are running Vista or later and have UAC enabled, and Civ3 is installed somewhere under C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86), UAC may have prevented your changes; if you re-open the file and it isn't there, it did. In that case, you should be able to work around it by saving the file (while being sure to keep the .ini extension) to somewhere outside of C:\Program Files, and then copying it back in and overwriting the old one, and verifying your changes are present.

In this video I add KeepRes=1 (and a couple of other settings) to conquests.ini and launch it widescreen...in fact I think it's exactly 1366x768, not that it matters.

If you tried adding other video size settings to the .ini, take them back out. KeepRes doesn't seem to get along with them if I recall correctly.

This is part of an "install on Win7" series, and I installed to a custom location. Your conquests.ini will be in a different folder somewhere under Steam. I assure you it works on the Steam version, too, as that's what I've been using lately.

 

[Lord_Hill]

Don't forget the hardcoded resolutions you can change in the INI file only work when combined with KeepRes=1. So they're only really useful for playing windowed instead of full screen.

Without KeepRes, the game always defaults to 1024x768 regardless in my experience.

EDIT - if you were interested in running it on steam deck, you can do the following

1. Install Civ 3 via steam, change compatibility settings to 'use proton experimental' and run it at least once.
2. In desktop mode, find conquests.ini and add KeepRes=1 and PlayIntro=0 (disables movies, forces desktop resolution to be used)
2. Download the latest version of the C3X mod and use desktop mode to copy the files into a 'C3X' subfolder in your Conquests folder
3. In desktop mode configure C3X how you want (but make sure the setting 'draw_lines_using_gdi_plus = wine' is there) , then use desktop steam to add C3X's 'install.bat' as a steam game. Set the compatibility of that to 'use proton experimental' as well.
4. Run C3X through steam to install it. Run Civ 3 through steam.
5. Disable all sounds in preferences, they will glitch!

Basically a lot of words to say, install Civ III, enable C3X using proton, run Civ III using Proton.

 

[SirBedwyr]

To clarify, this is in Windows 11 on my office computer so I don't use Proton (I only mention the Steam Deck as an example of me being a little obsessed). When I apply KeepRes=1 on the Windows machine, the display doesn't resize, but the game still displays at 1024x768 in the middle of the black screen even if I have VideoMode=1600 (first attached picture). Now grant you that this is with the exe's "Override high DPI scaling" set to "application". If I remove that, it looks like the resolution goes to a setting that cuts off the menu display (second attached picture). My monitor reports it as full 4K so that's something.

I have my game install folder in: "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization III Complete\Conquests\" so there shouldn't be any system conflicts.

I tried installing C3X in case it does anything different, but it installed successfully and does not change anything.

Oh also FWIW I did get the game running ok on the Steam Deck using Proton 5.5-10, but I found the music and sound effects repeating and skipping so I uninstalled it.

 

[MrSweetchuck]

but the game still displays at 1024x768 in the middle of the black screen even if I have VideoMode=1600

Take out VideoMode entirely from your INI file. KeepRes won't work at all if there's any trace of a VideoMode setting.

 

[Quintillus]

but I found the music and sound effects repeating and skipping so I uninstalled it.

You probably need IndirectSound to fix that. I had the same problem on my new Windows 10 machine (though strangely not on my first Windows 10 machine), but the fix in that post fixed all the weird sound clipping issues I was having.

The first screenshot looks correct for the main menu with KeepRes=1, but the game map should take up the whole available screen.

 

[SirBedwyr]

The first screenshot looks correct for the main menu with KeepRes=1, but the game map should take up the whole available screen.

Oh. What I was wanting was a 4:3 display of the game with vertical black bars and a compromise resolution between 1024x768 and something that renders the UI too small to read. Kind of like insisting on old 50s movies rendering in 4:3 because that's what they were filmed on. That's why I had 1600 as a setting. It seemed like a reasonable upscaling compromise but the game was still displaying at 1024.

 

[WildWeazel]

Have you actually gone on to start a game though? As Quintillus said, your first picture looks correct for a 4K display. Nothing gets upscaled, so the main menu background is always going to be 1024x768 (unless you replace it with a larger one) and all the in-game elements will remain their original dimensions, but you will see much more of the map. If you want things to be physically larger, you'll probably want to set your resolution to 1920x1080 which will evenly downscale from the native 4K and still be quite legible.

 

[Nicknine]

@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).

I'm pretty sure it's safe to mention SafeDiscShim in the OP. I've examined its code and it doesn't do anything secdrv driver doesn't. The latest version of the driver is literally set up to simply return hardcoded values to the game's requests and the shim copied its logic. So it really doesn't eliminate or simplify any protection checks.

 

[Stew Pid]

My Civ 3 Complete was working fine on my Windows 10 laptop In April. I uninstalled Civ 3 Steam version and haven't touched the CD version since then. Now when I launch the CD version .exe I am faced with a black screen and endless loading. When I run the world editor it tells me PTW and Conquests cannot be found and that it cannot access any PCX or game files.

The install location of Civ 3 complete hasn't changed and still holds all the files it had before, I even made sure the properties of the install location were accessible with admin permission. I tried running admin again on the .exe and compatibility for Windows service packs 3 and or 2.

As to what to do now to fix this problem, I am unsure.

 

[Lanzelot]

As to what to do now to fix this problem, I am unsure.

The Steam installation pretty surely changed the Windows registry keys where the game keeps the location of its art and game files. Try a fresh install of the CD version, that should create the registry keys from scratch. (Probably faster/easier than trying to muck around in the registry manually and finding all keys that need to be restored...)

 

[Stew Pid]

The Steam installation pretty surely changed the Windows registry keys where the game keeps the location of its art and game files. Try a fresh install of the CD version, that should create the registry keys from scratch. (Probably faster/easier than trying to muck around in the registry manually and finding all keys that need to be restored...)

Reinstallation wouldn't delete any custom files like mods or maps right?

 

[Takhisis]

New addition to the Linux section, C3X now works around all(?) the wine graphics bugs by removing all opengl calls from the game and replacing thfm with gdi calls.

How do you make Civ3 (or Civ3X) work on Wine?