Celtic Kings: Rage of War - Running Game on Win 10/11

You want to play this in 2023 (or later) with Windows 10 or 11. Great. You loved this game as a kid and want to play it again. Same here.

Why You’re Here

You tried running the game and it keeps crashing. So let’s get to how to fix it so you can play it.

You want to play Celtic Kings but it keep breaking. It can be fixed.

Good news: You can play it.

Bad news: You’re stuck with 1600 resolution as the best option. Any manual changes to the pak files crashes the game using the steam version.

So to play it, here’s what you do:

Go to your file location (mine is this: J:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\CK_RageOfWar)
Find “Celtic Kings” application file, not the launcher.
Right click it and go to to Properties>Compatibility
Under the “Compatibility mode” section, check the box that says “Run this program in compatibility mode for:”. Then select Windows XP (Service Pack 2). Other windows XP may work, or even Vista, but this is the one that worked for me and got me into a match.
Go to the “Settings” section in this same “Compatibility” window.
Check “Reduced Color Mode” and choose 16-bit (65536) color
Same section, check the “Run this program as an administrator” box
Hit apply.
Run the game from the source file window each time. For some reason clicking “Play” on steam just crashed the game for me.

Should be good now to relive your childhood. Cheers!