3 Technical problems in running Civ3.

[ExoD2]

Fonts Solution

Hey all.

I haven't had a chance to play around with my fonts too much yet, but I only have ~95 fonts in my folder so I'm not sure if that would overload it... I'll try moving some of them out of there later tonight when I get back home. Maybe it's some particular font that's doing it? Just a stab in the dark...

Wish me luck, coz I really want to build something...

[Huntred]

Originally posted by LdyMox
If you don't have it just install it from the civ3 folder.

Done - and tested to make sure the font installed correctly. Only 94 fonts in the folder.

Civ3 still not playing fair. I've got 3 background tasks (speaker, mouse and sys scheduler) - 4 if I count the resource meter telling me I'm 80-something percent free on a 256MB stick.

Dang - I feel so close, yet so lame.

[Aitara]

Compaq Presario 5008US
900Mhz Celeron
WinME
256 Megs RAM
52% System Resources Free
Graphics Acceleration set to "none"
191 installed fonts, including Lucida Sans (which I had to install manually, BTW)

STILL having the incorrect font show up, causing text fields to display incorrectly as in earlier posts on this thread. Have installed Civ3, uninstalled and reinstalled; no luck.

I'm under 200 fonts, so the tech support "fix" isn't the answer.

[Spiker]

Originally posted by LdyMox
Mine also crashes after making a custom world. Gee I feel like a Beta tester

Yeah, I'm also having the same font problem and the games crashes even when I try to exit. What a buggy game! Can't believe Sid Meier could come up with some **** like this... Very disappointed!! I'm gonna return this game or just simply throw it into the trash bin, and use the tin box to hold candies and cookies. Maybe it's time to go back to my PS2. PC games just suck!!!

[Spiker]

Originally posted by dv8ed
Don't bother calling tech support.

I just did. They said that mostly nVidia users (I was the first ATI he'd talk to) with high end video cards (A TNT2? But anyway) have been reporting this problem. It's only fixable with a yet-to-be-created patch from Firaxis or MS (Yeah, right) and it is a DX problem. Apparently they've been flooded, because he knew exactly what I was talking about as soon as I started describing the problem.

They've got that right!!! My card is the 2nd fastest card in the world so far, the 3D Prophet III which uses the GForce III chip from Nvidia. And this is not an old card like the TNT2.

[ExoD2]

"First off, make sure you are running the latest drivers for your sound card and video card that support DirectX 8.0 and DISABLE 3RD PARTY APPLICATIONS! In Win98/ME you click on start, goto run, and type in MSCONFIG, make sure SELECTIVE STARTUP is enabled, and LOAD STARTUP GROUP ITEMS is UNCHECKED, and reboot your computer"

This was a solution posted by one of the phone support guys from Infogames in one of the other Civ3 fansite forums. It fixed my problem, so I hope it'll also help some of the other people who are still having problems.

Cheers.

[ghetyei]

mysterious intermittent "healing" of the font problem

I wish to share with you a mysterious phenomenon.
I have a Toshiba laptop and I probably have the font problem, because some of the text on the diplomacy screen is missing, and
text on the histographs screen are garbled on the bottom.
Or so it happened every times, except once, when for one session I could see how the screens are supposed to look like.

You won't believe how it happened. I was not trying to fix anything concerning Civilization 3, but to install another bloated
program. The Encyclopedie Universelle by Larousse, and I was very frustrated because I was unable to find the French-English dictionary that was supposed to come with the package.
So after installing and uninstalling that program couple of times, I just gave up, and started playing civilization.

And suddenly it was all there. Every text fitting the underlying rectangle, I saw the line "Never mind" the first time on the Diplomacy screen. I felt like crying, but ended up doing the manly thing: I played Civ3 till next morning.

Next time I started Civ 3 it was deja vu all over again, and I am unable to reproduce the miracle.

I have a Toshiba 2065 CDS with an upgraded (20 GB) hard drive,
a 360 Mhz processor, 160 Mbytes of memory. My vide card is an S3 Virge/MX so this font issue is not limited to those other cards.
Since the program worked at least once, I refuse to believe that this would be a hardware or DirectX issue. Makers of multimedia applications are quick to blame your computer, when some of their exotic an aggressive hacks does not work on any other machine but theirs.

This other program in question is a pretty aggressive one too: it attempts to (re)install Quicktime, the Cosmo Player, and another movie player whose installation dashed by so fast that I could not even take down its name (Xmpeg or what not). It probably pushed every button and pulled every lever in what concerns processing sound or image, and in the process it must have incidentally undone the "damage" done by the Civ3 installation.

Any comments?

Best regards, Gabor Hetyei

[Rasbelin]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov
Just curious--have you guys called tech support?

Or how about the 0.80$ per min hint & cheat line?

[mfauzi]

I guess when it comes to desperation, the best way is to start clean again. At a time my Civ III was not starting unless I start my winamp and wait for it to load (yeah, it took forever to load winamp.. WINAMP!). Of course, it was a computer fault. So I just decided to format my drive (with my OS in it) and reinstall everything I need (including Civ III). Now it runs as clean as a whistle I don't know if it might work for all of you though, but everytime my computer seems clogged up real bad, this is what I do. Oh.. make sure you backup up all your crucial stuff first though (documents, save games, etc.)