2 newbie questions

[Furtigan]

First one may be easy. Loaded game fine, registered, played, etc. Roommate wanted to check game out. Gave roommate disk. Roommate inserts disk, gets the first title screen (before movie), and computer goes blank. Game refuses to install. All requirements seem borderline, but OK. (celeron 333, 16 RAM, etc.)
Please help ASAP, as roommate is now playing 16-civ games on my computer.

Next: I've never downloaded mods in my life, so forgive my stupidity. If I download multiple mods, will they all work? In other words, if I download the Firaxis patch, then somebody's new art for tiles, then a mod to add units, are they all going to work together? I expect this is not a yes/no thing, so any guidance given would be helpful. I am not very skilled with my computer, so go easy with the tech terms. And feel free to say "you really shouldn't screw with anything unless you absolutely know what you're doing."

Related question: I download 18 mods and the game is a mess. Is there anything I can do to Civ3 that reinstalling won't fix? I reinstalled awhile ago after screwing with the editor and was alarmed to find some saved games that I did not remove from the folder within Civ 3. I thought these should have been erased.

Thanks for any help.

[MrWhereItsAt]

I know what it's like having a friend on your comp when, quite frankly, those Russians need conquering and it ain't a happy time!

The first problem, ... not sure. Maybe it's a problem with his graphics card not being able to play that first movie, but I'm not sure why the game wouldn't install. You could always tell him that it wouldn't be fast enough anyway once things got near the industrial era, so he should upgrade processor or something (it's what I'm doing ) If they are as cheap as here in NZ, you could double the speed of your CPU for, ummm, $600NZ or under $300US.

Mods are files that are either new (as in adding new resources) or are replacements to files already with Civ3. This means that they should be able to be used together, as long as they were different replacement files. BUT, most mods alter civ3mod.bic, a file in your main Civ3 directory. One mod naturally has a different one of these to all the other mods, so mods shouldn't really work together. You could find out exactly what is changed in a mod, by reading the text files included, then use the civ3editor to open the civ3mod.bic file for another mod and make the necessary changes using the editor. This way you could combine two mods. This is perhaps difficult and very time-consuming. It would have to be a kick-ass mod for me to bother with.

18 mods... Uh oh. The only way to restore Civ3 without reinstalling is if, when you were installing the mods, you made backups of all the files that were changed. Go to that directory (prob'ly C:\Program files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization 3) and check to see if there is a folder labelled "backup" or "copy" or something. If there is, a mod you installed might have made backups before it changed things. If not, you need to reinstall and remember for next time, mate!

[MrWhereItsAt]

Oh, and when you uninstall games, the ones I know of don't deleter the folder where the game was installed or any saved games you had. If you want these gone, go to the same directory as above, find the savedgames folder and delete any savedgames you don't want!

[quinalla]

1st question, I don't know about your roomate's computer but tell him to get the hell off of your computer so you can play Civ 3.

2nd quesiton, yes and no, if you download a mod that changes say a graphics file and the firaxis patch changes that graphics file, you will have to reinstall the mod if you want it how you had it. See what I am getting at here, just know what you are changing and save you mods somewhere besides just the place where you change civ 3, then you can always put them back if something changes them.

3rd question, for most games uninstalling will erase everything except things like save games that if you are doing an uninstall-reinstall you would probably want to keep. Everything else should be erased except for maybe the folders, but yes a reinstall should put it back to the original version.

With mods, you want to make sure you always save the original version of whatever you change in case you want to change just that one piece back and not do a complete reinstall and change everything (if you have more than one mod). I hope this helps a little, sorry to be so wordy.

-quinalla