Using Protontricks to make Civilization IV (including Beyond the Sword) playable

[MatthewForrester]

The ProtonDB entry for Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword explains that in order for the game to run on Linux, you need to use Protontricks to install MSXML3. This is still the case as of the time of writing; the game won't start due to XML errors without MSXML3.

I tried to do this using the current version (1.12.0) of Protontricks and got an error message:

Your version of wine 5.0-655-g2409bd1 is no longer supported upstream. You should upgrade to 7.x

Don't panic! If you just dismiss the message, then the Protontricks GUI will start anyway (after a delay). As you proceed through it and start to install MSXML3, you will get another error message:

Working around wine bug 26925 -- Forcing quiet install

Dismiss this. It's quite slow (at least on my elderly laptop) but eventually the installation will complete, though I don't remember a completion message. But if you follow the other steps listed in ProtonDB (setting WineD3D), then the game starts correctly. 🎆

This is based entirely on my experience in Ubuntu 22.4.5 and using the Flathub version of Protontricks 1.12.0. It should be noted that versions of Protontricks before 1.12.0 are incompatible with current versions of the Steam client, so you will get other (and very real) error messages if you try to run earlier versions of Protontricks.

I think it's likely that the same procedure will work for the base version of Civilization IV and Warlords (which Steam treats as separate games), should you want to play those.

Terminal
If you try to start Protontricks from the terminal, then you will get a variation of the error message:

warning: Your version of wine 5.0-655-g2409bd1 is no longer supported upstream. You should upgrade to 7.x

But the same workaround seems to work.

Could there be an error in the error message?

I think there might be an error in the error message. My Wine installation is 6.0.x (as supplied by Ubuntu 22.04), not 5.0-655-g2409bd1. And Im slightly puzzled why Protontricks on Flathub use system Wine rather than the Flathub Wine, but probably there are good technical reasons that I'm ignorant of.