I’m trying to install Sid Meier’s Civilization II Collection on Linux using Wine, but it never installs due to some permissions issues (see screenshot below).
Of course I tried everything I knew. In fact I spend almost 2 full days trying to solve this. Using Lutris doesn’t work. Heroic Launcher does the same. Extracting the iso file do the same. Changing permisions to files and folders does the same. Putting the whole CD into .wine/drive_c and changing the whole permissions of files and folder does the same. I do not use “sudo wine” as I saw it can yield some issues.
I have 2 different computers running Manjaro and one has a CD drive, and using the real media doesn’t work either.
So… Any clue ? I have no issues on installing the game on Linux Mint, but it seems Manjaro is whiny.
Thanks for any advice or help you can give me, I’ll try.
I have not touched Wine in decades, so every thing is just speculation from my end.
The one comment about the Classic Collection Edition on WineHQ was:
When you run civ2.exe it’ll open 3 windows, two are just black. Click anywhere on one of the black windows to show the game menu. Patch.txt has the version number at the top. This is the edition in the big green box with the face (RF Generation: Civilization II: Ultimate Classic Collection (IBM PC)). I did a full install, it still needs to CD to play.
But focusing on needing the CD to play. I remember games like this always had copy protection. For example, often I could never mount an iso as a loopback device. It was far more advanced than that.
Games in that era did stuff like:
Exact disc label
Specific track layout (mixed-mode data + audio)
Deliberate bad sectors
Subchannel data quirks
So the Wine layer blocks all that. Unless you can pass-through whole devices?
Doing a quick search and not knowing a lot.. I believe your only options are an unethical modification of the Civ II binaries, or a DRM free GOG version.
Hmm - it doesn’t look like a fatal error - just some sound file failed to be copied from the CD to the location.
What happens if you just click OK?
You could move/copy that file “by hand”.
Perhaps run the installer from terminal - to see more verbose messages there?
I have also heard of what @Molski said - I never had such problem with the very few Windows games I installed using pure wine.
Basically just Quake 2 and Blueshift Half Life - and Doom.
That is literally the entire extent of my gaming “experience”.
I just never encountered DRM with the two games I ever played.
Quake: I actually lifted it from a University server - people used to play multiplayer Quake in the universities computer rooms with/against each other - when I was just there to try to learn for my studies back then.
… more than 25 years ago …
I still have that copy.
Half Life as well - that came from a CD and I had no problems.
If I remember correctly, I needed to apply a “no CD” patch.
I may at some time try to launch it again … or maybe not
All under Linux - I basically never really touched Windows since Win95.
When Win98 came, I was already on Linux.
I tried Minecraft two years ago - to see why my niece was so addicted to it. (she is very good at it)
But my “machine” - which is a Sony Vajo laptop from around 2014 - could not really handle it.
The edition you talk about is not the same one I have. Mine is Civilization II Collection, which seems to be french specific (contains Civ2, Civ2 Scenario, and Fantastic Worlds, 3 discs). On my windows machines (98, 2000 and XP), the game runs. And I don’t NEED the cd for playing, I can play without it, just without the fmvs.
If I click “ok”, the installer just ends. I didn’t try copying the game directly though so I will try that later and report.
