I know I'm not alone in this as all of the friend I have who are gamers and have similar kit have had the same problem and overcame it with the same solution. The only thing I've used which gets it running is DOS Box. I do know for a fact though that it will not run on my current machine which is running 64 bit Windows 7 with all current service packs and updates. Not knowing your machine can't speak authoritatively regarding it running under Windows 8.1.

Just to be certain my mind wasn't playing tricks on me (it tends to do that when you get to be my age), I booted up the old IBM 386 I have laying around here, along with some even older bits of ancient nostalgic hardware, and got it running straight from the command line. As such, it could either be run from Windows 98, or from the DOS 3.1 command line. Windows 98 was essentially a GUI nailed on top of DOS 3.1.

That way you avoid getting coppies which have been tampered with, or which may contain adware or worse, viruses. One word of caution about DOS Box: be sure to download it from the developer's web page. The best even out do the ones which came with the game. There are even a fairly large number of player made maps available on the Internet which range from absolutely brilliant to utterly stupid. Its clunky, but with the Ubisoft version not working reliably, its still the best option available if you're playing with a friend you can trust.Īs far as random maps and user made maps are an issue in the Ubisoft vesion, there is no problem playing them with the origional disks and DOS Box. You can't play multi-player other than in hot-seat mode since Windows doesn't support tcp/ip, but if you trust your opponent you can still play over long distances by playing in hot seat mode saving the game at the end of your turn, and e-mailing the savegame file to your opponent. All you need to play this game in its origional bug free glory is a free download which will allow you to play a lot of golden oldies from the '80's and '90's called DOS Box.

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