I just spent a delightful weekend with a really wonderful friend, and during our time together I introduced them to one of my favorite PC games of all time, and had a rough time figuring out a small glitch that kept breaking the game.

As such, I've decided to document my jury-rigged solution here.

Warlords 3 was originally released in 1997 with the subtitle Reign of Heroes by SSG, an Australian developer. It was the sequel to a DOS based strategy game that has a small but dedicated fanbase still out there on the fringes of the internet.

What set Warlords 3 apart from other turn based strategy games was the introduction of some RPG elements into the game. You received a hero unit that were powerful units that would lead your armies around the map, but also were able to explore ruins and discover items and generally let you build a story around them, especially with most things in the game having a short description attached to them and really gave everything a constant worldbuilding feel.

I found the game in a Software Etc in 1997 while it was on sale. I was able to buy it and I became hooked. The game itself challenged me, it was the first strategy game I ever really got into, and I found myself easily enthralled because of the presence of vampires, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. The game featured a lot of cool fantasy artwork akin to what you'd find in old DnD books at the time which very much appealed to me.

The game came with a single player campaign and a bunch of pre-made maps and a random map generator, and all this guaranteed hours of fun. But I made quick work of the campaign and most of the maps, and I yearned for more.

The next year, Warlords 3: Darklords Rising was released. It was less and expansion and more of an expanded re-release. It was exactly the same game as before, but with more units, slightly tweaked graphics, many many more levels, and many little fixes and modifications. On top of that, it came with a level editor, allowing you to make your own levels, and many people on the internet made their own.

Where Reign of Heroes was something I found in a bargain bin, Darklords Rising was a brand new, fairly hyped up release, and when I found it at the Aztec Fry's Electronics in San Jose in autumn of 1998, I had to beg my Dad for it. And it absolutely did not disappoint.

Warlords 3: Darklords Rising remains one of my favorite games of all time, easily in my Top 5 Classic PC Games list.

It's always functioned relatively smoothly, but there were some hiccups in making it function well on more modern setups.

So if you are installing Warlords 3: Darklords Rising from an old CD, I would recommend swinging by the old fansite Warlorders.com and acquiring the No-CD Patch. If you are using a download from GOG Games you do not need to do this.

I've never been able to get the music to work properly on a computer past the year 2005, so I would recommend downloading the music files on Warlorders.com and playing them in your media player of choice while running the game.

There was a fatal error glitch that was prevalent in the days of Windows XP and Windows 7 that would cause the game to crash a lot that was linked to the in-game mouse icons that were being used. You would have to start the game with the -wincurs argument in order to disable the in-game mouse icons and replace them with windows mouse icons.

As I am using WINE these days to run old Windows games, this is less of a problem than it used to be. I simply run WINE in Windows 98 mode and it runs more or less perfectly smooth.

However, I did notice one quirk with my Warlords 3 setup on my retromachine this evening that frustrated me but I accidentally discovered a workaround. After playing Darklords Rising once and closing out, when trying to start the game again, it would not give me the option to start it. The Single Player option was greyed out.

This used to indicate that the CD was not present in the CD player in order to do the CD check, an early form of copy protection. However, even reinstalling the game or setting up a separate installation did not ungrey the box, nor did downloading the No-CD Patch.

I am still uncertain to the cause, but here is how I got around it: I would have to start Darklords Rising in a different version of WINE than the version that was previously used to start it up.

I usually use WINE 5.0, but I either start up a game that uses WINE 5.7 or manually set it to launch with WINE 5.7 via a quick configuration tweak in Lutris. This allowed the Single Player option to be selected again. I will have to switch again the next time I load it up.

Running Warlords 3 in a WINE virtual desktop seems to avoid the issue altogether.

So I am posting this in case I forget, as my friend very much enjoyed this game and I wouldn't want for our next playthrough to be disrupted.