Is the 3.0 installer still good?

[Teal_Blue]

Hi,
            I have the game up to 8.0 now and the expansions, which are pretty much still over my head, but that is OK.    I found an installer for 3.0, 3.06, 3.12 and 5.0 on the ModDB site, which i thought was legit and thought it might be interesting to try a retro version, maybe scoot back to a simpler time and try a simpler version, if that is even possible. So the question is, can i install 3.0 on my machine in a folder separate from my 8.0 install?

Or is the 3.0 version on the ModDB site no longer good, or illegitimate?

Do you offer old copies for those of us that have licenses? I can send you my id, and or keys if that would help confirm that i have all the copies legitimately.

Thank you,
Sincerely,
-Teal

[Draco18s]

You can totally install old versions in a separate directory.  I went out once to dig up a copy of ~3.8 and found it (though I never did play, heh).

As for the files on ModDB, they are likely clean (given what I know of the site).  Arcen's moved away from DRM, and while there are license keys, all it does it tell the executable not to be in demo mode.

Even as far back as 3.0 your key should still work just fine.

[Teal_Blue]

Thank you very much, i will give it a try and let you know, i suspect i shall still die horribly early on, but well... maybe i will live a little longer, who knows?      Thank you very much for the info and the reply.

-Teal



note-
                hmmmm.... installed fine, but looked waaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyy different. Haha, anyway, now it wants to upgrade to 3.189, which i looked up and it said balances and tweaks. So that seems fine, just didn't want to have it tell me to go to 4 or 5 or 6 or you know. Also, things looked very 'static' back then. I've never seen this, well, that isn't really true per se, i've seen vids of it. Very interesting. 

Thanks again for the tip, now to see if i can actually start a game and see what happens. 

[Draco18s]

If you want to get tricky and technical, there might be a way to upgrade to any specific version you want.
Would involve editing your hosts file to make your computer look at a location on localhost for the versions file.

Never mind, even easier than I thought.  Just requires manual patching by looking for the version you want here* and downloading the associated patch zip.

*or here or here.

[Teal_Blue]

Thank you for the links, I have copies from everything from 6.0 forward. I've had the game for several years now, just not very good at it. Anyway the 3.189 looks and plays differently, maybe my imagination more than anything. Or it feels different without the expansions.
Thank you again, take care,

-Teal