I'm running win10, and just installed CIV III complete. After a short while, the game started a horrible lag, to the point of tragedy. Anyone else experiencing this?

Maybe this could shed some light on your issue:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/lag-on-conquests.423472/

I know the thread is old but it mentions something about the compatibilty setting on the game causing lag.
See if your Civ exe have any compatibility settings and maybe turn it off, or try another setting.

You may also want to find out if any background program is the cause of the slowdown. For example I have a Lenovo which has its own web browser. I realized early on that when it is being updated, it slows down some of my programs and games.

I have the same problem. Not after a short while, but the game is just instantly lagging - especialyl once i enter teh screen of teh advisors. I haven't tried out if it gets even worse after while.

I'm on win 10 with integrated graphics.

I have actually civ3 on steam and there it runs fine, except for the video-playback-/victoryscreen bug, where the game will crash upon mouseclick.
That's why i bought it here on gog but even though I don't have the bug from the steamversion anymore, the lag here makes it even worse.

The "lsansfont" error that OP1 mentioned didn't work for me.

The gog civ3 also looks a bit more "pixelated" / sharp-edged than the steam version - so my amateurish guess is, that it has sth to do with the compability with my graphics-chip.

Regarding the "lsansfont" error, did you delete or rename the LSANS.FOT file before running the game? The LSANS.FOT should regenerate after the start-up but this should fix the problem. If the problem persist try to open the LSANS.FOT with notepad and edit it so that the path to the font file is correct.

Yes I did delete the original lsans.fot and watched it reappearing. I will try the edit that you mention sometime the next days. Thanks for the suggestion.

I am experiencing this problem. I have Windows 10 and the lag is bad from the start. However I have noticed that it becomes less laggy over time. So as long as I don't reload my game, it gets better. Still I find that when I shut down and come back later, my enthusiasm to play is decreased. Did anyone ever find a solution? I love this game and but I'm finding that the version from GOG is just isn't cutting it.

AND
!disable windows compatibility mode!

Hi. I found a solution. I had horribly lag in Civ III Complete on Windows 10. In installation folder, under Properties, Compatibility mode was greyed out and set on WinXP SP2.
To run it properly, copy installation folder in another location and simply play the game from there (if u look at properties now, you'll see compatibility mode is not active now). This worked for me.
The game has to be installed and the original installation folder has to stay in his original location.

P.S.: I know this is an old thread, but I didn't find this solution anywhere. I hope it will help someone.

OMG!!!!!!! I been dealing with Civ III running so slow I could literally click the end turn button, go pee, come back and would still have to wait for the turn to cycle, for 3 years. I put up with it cause I love the game so much. Finally got tired of it and was going to really tell GOG off cause I knew the original game did not have this problem,
Then I ran across this forum. Thank you, Thank you Thank you. I followed Maybiii's suggestion. copied the conquest directory to a new directory and created a new desktop shortcut from the exe file in the new directory . Ran the program and OMG it worked. The game plays just like it used to. again thank you so much Maybiii. you are a life saver.

I cannot thank you enough, Maybiiiii. It worked! I'm still running Windows 8.1 64 bit and the enormous lag of one of my all-time favourite games was ruining my gaming experience. Copying the whole game folder to another drive, in my case drive C (SSD), worked like a charm. Thank you, big time.

Maybiii. I Thank you too. Your idea is brilliant! In short, I repeat the steps for everyone. You enter Program x86files/GoGgalaxy/Games/Civilization III. Then you copy the Conquests folder somewhere else. For example on the desktop. You enter the folder start exe or make a shortcut and start from there. Works perfectly on Windows 10 !!!

You should note that if you start the game this way, however, autosave doesn't work. It apparently saves the files in the original directory where the game is installed..

Here's my quick and dirty solution to avoid duplicating the game folder with all the consequent issues.

1. Go to the game directory and find Conquests\Civ3Conquests.exe
2. Open Properties -> Compatibility and untick the Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP.
(if it's greyed out, click the Change settings for all users in the bottom to disable the lock)
3. Bypass Civ3Launcher.exe and run the game using Conquests\Civ3Conquests.exe directly.
‎4. (optional) If you're launching the game from GOG Galaxy (like I do) add an additional executable:
⠀4.a. Click the Settings icon to the right of the Play button
‎⠀4.b. From the menu select Manage Installation -> Configure
‎⠀4.c. Under Features tab scroll all the way down and select Add another executable / arguments
‎⠀4.d. Select Conquests\Civ3Conquests.exe, add a label (ex: Direct Launch), no arguments.
‎⠀4.e. Tick the Default executable option under the label
‎⠀4.f. Launch the game normally using the Play button.
5. Never press the mouse button to skip videos (like the Firaxis intro), use keyboard instead, cause otherwise the game will hang.

P.S. Surprisingly, I had to do all this on one of ancient computers, but not on another one, which works fine with the default settings.