CIV 7? NO! - The Best Way to Play Civilization 3 | HD Widescreen & Audio Fix

[@GamerZakh]

I have a couple other public guides on Patreon if you want to see those. You don't have to be a patron or pay any money, they're just there for reasons. Hope you find this useful! If you wanna buy Civ 3 and support, use this GOG referral link: af.gog.com/en/game/sid_meiers_civilization_iii_complete?as=1715648857 Thanks!

[@chaircheck2424]

I kinda appreciate how you don't skip over steps that should be obvious to most people. Older gamers obviously know what an .ini file is and how to edit one, but it's nice that you make it accessible to people who grew up on tablets and aren't used to rummaging around in ini and cfg

[@GamerZakh]

Thanks! I do make guides to be as easy as possible. Advanced people can speed through it if they want, but many need things broken down.

[@sweepingtime]

I love bringing old games back to life.

[@poilboiler]

It's alive! It's alive! Ahahahahahaha!!!!!

[@howtosavealife3065]

5:06 did he really just get double cow start and his first try??? That’s insane.

[@cow_tools_]

Such good memories of this game! I would argue it is aesthetically the best looking Civ of them all! Would love to see a real HD upscale someday.

[@GamerZakh]

Yeah I do think visually this is the best one.

[@namename2215]

Likewise. Felt like Civ III captured Sid's eccentricities the best. The different leader portraits for each era was great.

[@Cris1Mac]

Thanks so much for this. That's a great explanation for someone who doesn't do this much. Had this game for years and you just made it better.

[@GamerZakh]

Glad I could help!

[@Cdprojects111]

I gotta say, I just out found out about you this weekend with your Caesar III games and you are in my top KZbinrs now! Thanks to this video about the best CIV game!

[@GamerZakh]

Hey welcome, and thank you so much! I'm really glad you're enjoying it.

[@ahctlucabbus]

Spent some searching last night to get this working relatively fine with keepres = 1, and failing to launch it in a lower widescreen resolution by changing desktop res. However as someone mentioned the bcheck's reso exe fixed that too. Did not even know I had an audio glitch, but now I have leader music too, great, glad I found this channel and vid! :D

[@LuKo3x5066]

Civ2's music is amazing!

[@habibainunsyifaf6463]

Omg, it looks better than what i remember with my crt screen

[@MaconMedia]

Civ III is my favorite strategy world-building game of all time!!!

[@Luisin88]

I remember the intro cutscene being very 'skippy' it's like an AI filled in those missing frames and made it look seamless, ty Zakh!

[@LPhoenix]

I've found a pretty useful tool, which I think you'd be interested in. It's bcheck's reso. With it, you can create custom shortcuts, which for the duration of the program running, it changes the resolution and/or refresh rate of your monitor. When the program is closed, it resets the resolution and refresh rate. I use it to eliminate the hassle of running and recording a game in 1080p on my 1920x1200 monitor. As you mentioned running 1600x900 resolution for older games, this could be really useful for setting it up once.

[@GamerZakh]

That does sound handy, thanks!

[@Samski1987]

Aah Zakh, you know all the tricks! 1600x900 is good indeed. Thanks for fixing the sound tho, didn’t know that little trick Try CCM 2.5 mod if u haven’t already, it is solid

[@AA-ou9yd]

Yessss!!!! A CIV 3 video!

[@Naggstek]

Oho, Civ 3 is when the series really jumps up in graphical fidelity! 2 was a bit hard to get into as a kid but the smooth looking interface of 3 made me feel like I knew what was going on (I didn't really know what was going on)

[@GamerZakh]

Personally I think Civ 3 is the best looking one, but also for some reason it's way more difficult to beat the AI.

[@kon_radar]

If the game is under C:/Program Files (x86)/ ... you usually have to open your Notepad in Administration mode to be able to save edited files. Offline GOG installers save the games under C:/GOG Games/ .. by default, where you don't need admin permissions.

[@Winnetou17]

Shoutout to Civ 2, which, with the merits of being a normal windows application, can work on basically any resolution. And I also always liked the menu and the thing that you simply have instant access to cheats. Like... there's no barrier, just have fun with it! And the music.... I realize I actually don't know the normal music, back in the '90s I played the pirated version. But it did had the menu music. And even if it's a pretty short and simple loop, I have it permanently branded ? tattooed ? (missing the perfect word here) in my brain, and I don't think I'll ever get tired of it. Now I'm curious if playing in 8K is actually doable or not. Civ 2 and 3. Gotta be able to see your whole empire! Probably the texts will be way too small though, but maybe in Civ 2, the windows scaling might be applied. At least for things like the menu items. But the popup selection windows are most likely fixed and will be way too tiny on an 8K display. Well, if it's 77" maybe not :)) Even though I'm still basically only using 1080p for now, I always had this fascination... this desire, to see as much as possible from the map. Too bad most old games cannot scale properly (some don't even give natively the option to run a high resolution). But when I will get that 32" 4K monitor, I can't wait to test all strategy games in the higher resolution. Probably won't use 4K, but 1440p for most games. I'm still decent at seeing small text, but 100% scaling on 4K is a bit too much :)) Hopefully something like Europa Universalis 4 should work out of the box in 4K.

[@GamerZakh]

It is always interesting how many old games pre-98 just don't need widescreen mods. I first noticed it on SimPark, where the UI would actually change how many buttons are visible on a tab based on resolution. Actually an adaptive UI, something that wouldn't come back to regular web design until around 2010. I'd expect these games would still run at 8K but yeah, probably unplayable haha.

[@MatthaisUK]

Civ III was my introduction to the series, but I'd have a really hard time going back to it vs IV, V or VI. The corruption and waste mechanics (cities not close to your capital or Forbidden Palace small wonder would lose virtually all their production and gold yields) were just pure pain. The varied texture packs made by the community were really cool though.

[@GamerZakh]

I personally think Civ 3 is the best looking one, but yeah it's also the hardest for me to play. I can win pretty easily on Prince difficulty in all the games except this one. How Civ 3 is set up just makes it so much harder.

[@zakalwe2240]

same.

[@Rakkeyal]

To be honest, I have not enjoyed Civ nearly as much since I loved Civ4. I'm not sure what it is about the new games that I don't quite like, and perhaps its just nostalgia/time investment problems, but I have played a few hundred hours of both civ 5 and civ 6 combined and just never got into them. I probably just won't even bother buying civ7.

[@HansLemurson]

I'll agree that Civ4 seems like "the last good one" Civ5 broke something, and every game after has been building on that foundation. An un-usual suggestion though: You might be interested in trying out Civilization: Revolution. It was the first one in a while to be headed by Sid Meier, and it plays like it's a sequel to his original Civilization, with a few new ideas sprinkled in from Civ3 and Civ4. It's not a hard game, but it was designed around the idea of letting the player just have fun.

[@GamerbyDesign]

GamerZakh's voice is very pleasant so tutorial videos are a good fit.

[@GamerZakh]

Thank you! It's the teaching experience.

[@bradboelter]

3:15 In Windows you can simply right-click and select Edit. It will open in Notepad. It is a MSFT native file type so Windows knows what it's for.

[@GamerZakh]

I'm teaching what's actually happening. Too many tutorials and guides just say the quickest way to do something. If you just say right-click and Edit, it will open Notepad and work, but many users won't actually realise and understand that the file was specifically opened in Notepad. By breaking it down and showing what's actually happening, the person learning better understands the processes that are taking place and they are better prepared for the next modding attempt.

[@MahDryBread]

Thank you so much!

[@GamerZakh]

Glad I could help! I made guides for Civ 1 and 2 as well if you're interested, but they can't be on KZbin because of a new policy interpretation

[@MahDryBread]

@@GamerZakh For real? That sucks. I always liked Civ 2 but I've never played it with music before so I don't actually know what it's soundtrack is. I'd love to play it with sound.

[@GamerZakh]

@@MahDryBread Ah well I do have some public videos on Patreon, no need to be a patron or anything, they're just over there.

[@OLIV3R_YT]

Very cool & simple, thanks!

[@GamerZakh]

Happy to help!

[@ВикторКозлов-к6с]

What a start! A river and two cows

[@duskfall_777]

Love Civ3, I prefer it from the newer titles.

[@Normandy1412]

Uhhh. Are you going to make a LP of this game?❤️

[@GamerZakh]

I might but I have to plan it in a way that works better for the channel.

[@erez87xp]

Civ3 was my first civ

[@alextorres5490]

i have 3 & 4 need to focus because controls is different from other civ

[@maxgraf438]

I Hope For a Remake of civ 2 Test of time... one of my First Games ever

[@GamerZakh]

I love that one, did a video on the fantasy mode and although the questing/missions are kind of broken/messy the whole premise and layered maps is still really fun.

[@OneCreator87]

Civ 3 is the best of the series, even if it's a bit more grindy.

[@GamerZakh]

Yeah it's probably got the most charm to it too. Personally I think it's the best looking 2D one.

[@dantrianon4248]

I already have the game on Steam, how to proceed, then? Would I have to get it on GOG as well?

[@GamerZakh]

If you already own it on Steam, the first thing is to just try it with the Steam version. Only if it doesn't work do you get the GOG version. If you don't already own it, GOG is always better for old games.

[@Winnetou17]

Somebody else seems to have the same and simply putting the keepRes didn't work for him. But, before buying the GoG version, do try it out. Maybe search a bit on the forums, maybe it can work with Steam's version too. And if not, then GoG version it is! Fortunately, at $3 it shouldn't be a burden. Can't wait to also add Civ 2

[@v_money]

for the resolution fix I did this and now it won't let me launch the game at all

[@GamerZakh]

@@v_money Does undoing it or reinstalling fix it? It could depend on your setup, if you have multiple monitors, odd resolutions, etc.

[@veljkojelikic2458]

Hello! I had the same problem. I fixed it in "display settings", by changing "scale" to 100%

[@turquoisemanturk]

Have you tried call to power ?

[@GamerZakh]

I haven't, I've only played the mainline games.

[@xXXofdjXXx]

May I ask what is the refresh rate of your monitor? When adding KeepRes, my game keeps crashing. I am trying this on a 1080p 144Hz monitor.

[@GamerZakh]

That's odd, I don't think refresh rate would cause a problem there, usually that's when your resolution is a non-standard one and the game UI/graphics can't understand how to use it. For reference, my monitor's refresh rate is 165Hz. What's your resolution set to?

[@xXXofdjXXx]

My resolution is set to 1920x1080. When adding keepRes it constantly crashes, while removing it fixes the problem. I should add that I have the steam version of the game, so perhaps there are some differences between it and the GOG one?

[@GamerZakh]

@@xXXofdjXXx Ah yeah the Steam version of many old games just behave differently. I've generally given up with old games on Steam unless it's the only option because it just constantly has problems with modding.

[@xXXofdjXXx]

Ah I see, in that case I'll just buy it on GOG. Thanks a lot for your help!

[@ahctlucabbus]

Keepres=1 did work for me on steam. Changing desktop res lower than my native 1080p 75 hz did not work, game won't launch. However bcheck's reso as someone nicely mentioned above did work to lower the res to 1600x900 though. Civ3 is 75% off at GOG atm btw.

[@alextorres5490]

nice guide tnx

[@PY5RA]

Was hoping for actual HD patch. Sadge*

[@Gordon_86]

wait... civ 7 is releasing now??

[@GamerZakh]

It is in development, this video will be relevant forever.

[@eduardmart1237]

Does ut work for 2k resolution?

[@GamerZakh]

I haven't tested but theres 2 issues: 1. Sometimes there's an upper limit where the game breaks if the resolution is too high, but not always. 2. The UI doesn't scale up with old games, so at 2K resolution the game assets just get smaller. You see more of the map and the UI shrinks until you can't read or click on anything easily. Generally with old games, 1080p is the highest you should go but often it's better to keep it at 900p or 720p because the UI is already small.

[@mikclark]

game will not start after addind KeepRes=1 ini file

[@GamerZakh]

@@mikclark What is your monitor's resolution? Some old games don't work at specific resolutions.

[@horsethi3f]

Its okay, but civ4 was a masterpiece. It had more mechanics than newer civ games, plus doomstacks! But nothing compares to Alpha Centauri, such excellent writing..

[@TranscendentalAirwaves]

Nice, now if only the AI didn't cheat so darn hard lol Someone honestly needs to create an actual spiritual successor to Civ II (aka the best civ).

[@kon_radar]

I'm spelling the H like Google Translate does in "HD TV".

[@z-rossi3672]

Too bad this community doesnt have modders like in homm3 or aoe, kinda surprised

[@FrozenLegion]

Good god get your magnifying glasses out to read the txt. Ill stick with the older res.

[@GamerZakh]

It's not just about size, you can use this to just get the game into widescreen. So for example, set your desktop resolution to 1280x720 then do this. I personally like 1600x900. What I show in this video is 1920x1080, which is small, and that's why I say in the video it doesn't have to be that.

[@SkyFly19853]

I was playing it last night. The best way to enjoy the game by Chieftain difficulty. Otherwise, it's almost impossible to get World Wonder before other Civs.

[@GamerZakh]

Yeah there's something about just Civ 3 that makes it super difficult. I play Prince on all the other games, but Civ 3 I gotta drop it.

[@SkyFly19853]

@@GamerZakh I played it warlord... And there was no way I could get World Wonder before anybody else.

[@everythingsgonnabealright8888]

.ini is not a “folder”, it’s a file extension.

[@GamerZakh]

Hey you should make guide videos with that knowledge! You'd be great at it.

[@wulf_ace]

did you skip Civ 2?

[@GamerZakh]

No, check pinned comment.