Hello,
This is a great forum - I had no idea so many people like me still prefer to play these old games.
Tankred, I also remember Fields of Fire: War Along the Mohawk. I don't know if you bought a new CD or a complete pack with the manual. I have the original. The manual states it was published in 1998 by Empire Interactive (http://www.empirestrategy.com) with the game copyright Edward Grabowski Communication Ltd. The website address has long been taken over by another company, nothing to do with games software and there doesn't seem to be any support on Empire Interactive where the title is listed as "War Along the Mohawk". It does list Grand Prix Manager 2 (1996) as being another game by Mr.Grabowski, but I don't have this one and so can't tell whether the same problem occurs with this. Possibly not as it was published by a different company, Microprose?
I don't have Win7, but still use XP Pro SP3.
I tried a complete install on XP but could not track down any patches.
It won't install under DosBox as you found.
Although it installed under XP, it wouldn't play, so I thought I'd post the results here in case anyone else has found a workaround.
It installs 2 versions: an 8-bit version and a 16-bit version. The system requirements are: Pentium 90 or higher with 16MB Ram (32MB recommended), MS compatible mouse, CD-Rom (quad speed or higher), Win95, DX5 or higher, 1MB Video Ram or higher, screen resolution 800x600 or more.
If run 'normally' in XP, I get the message "not a valid Win32 application".
If the 16-bit version is run in W95/98 compatibility modes then nothing happens at all. I mean nothing: don't know where the program disappears to, but I don't even get an error message.
If the 8-bit version is run in W95/98 compatibility modes then I get a rather snotty message "do not pirate games!" I thought this could be because it can't see the CD from the hard disk, so tried running the program from the CD and received the old "not a valid Win32 application" error. Oddly the CD does run the repair install program, but it makes absolutely no difference when you try to run it again.
Being very non technical, I'm now stumped.
So if someone on this forum would like a challenge, perhaps they will find this information useful ?