Games keeps crashing mid-game

[Neville]

I am getting crashes on the Rys and Fall and Charlemagne when ever I build a Wonder. IE "Civ has encountered a problem and will be shut down."

Crashes with RTW when at movies (but Dale has been great helping me out there. Thanks again Dale.

 

[samiratou]

I'm running a marathon game, Native American civ. Crash routinely happens between turn 1019 and 1020 (1940). I'm not sure what's triggering it, but I've attached the save of the turn before the crash--whenever I hit "enter" to move to the next turn I get a message from Windows that there is a problem and the game has to close.

System specs: AMD Turion 64 X2, 1.6 GHz, 1G RAM, Windows Vista, ATI Radeon x1200.

Another odd thing, when I navigated to C->Program Files --> Firaxis Games -->Beyond the Sword and tried to open the Saves shortcut, the path had broken (though it was fine this morning). I was able to get to the saves through Documents-->My Games, but I've never navigated to saves through that method, so it was weird that it forced me to go that way to get to the saved files.

 

[RedRalph]

I've got the same thing. Black screen, music keeps playing, then eventually, the entire PC goes to this weird, ultra low-resolution graphics and has to be shut down. Driving me fricking insane. Please fix this Firaxis

 

[Nordfeldt]

Hi guys

I found a solution to my problem, and maybe yours

It's a bit time consuming, but it beats starting a new game!

The turn before a crash occurs you save the game in the world builder then you restart as another civ and take the turn, then save and restart as your original civ. This worked for me, if you play a mod just put the savegame in the mod folder and start a scenario.

Good luck.

 

[RedRalph]

Hmm.... thanks for the tip but I dont need to do that, I can justy reload and it plays fine. Massive pain in the arse though

 

[jkp1187]

Hmm.... thanks for the tip but I dont need to do that, I can justy reload and it plays fine. Massive pain in the arse though

I have been experiencing this intermittently -- I'll usually hear a jarring chord from the speakers, the mouse will freeze, and I will have to do a hard reboot. No point in posting a save, as it is non-repeatable. When I reload from the autosave point, the game almost always continues. I seem to get this about once every day or so.

I really wonder if it's a hardware issue of some kind. I've noticed that the game is less prone to crashing when I have my air conditioning runing than when I just have the box fan going. My system is somewhat old, although I've lots of RAM, so haven't been experiencing any performance issues.

 

[samiratou]

My problem has thus far been repeatable--crashed in the same spot 4 times last night, even after a full computer restart. I've shut down the computer and will try again tonight, but I'll be a bit disappointed if I can't finish the game (not terribly, since it wasn't a spectacular game and I'm still learning, but still).

 

[Morty]

My game is crashing when ever i build a wonder the video will start to play and then it crashes to the desktop, when i load the auto save again the next time i play it will work for a few turns till i build another wonder anyone else having this problem? it only happens after i build a wonder,

I get this problem when I'm playing a large world. I believe its a PC problem rather than a game problem. i.e. your PC is running out of memory.

To get around it, there's an option somewhere to turn off videos. So you don't get a pretty video of Wonders being built, but at least you can still play the game!

 

[Solver]

samiratou, my patch should fix the crash you are having.

 

[jdurg]

I've seen this happening in other games as well, but mostly it's due to issues with the hardware itself and not generally with the game. When I first got Civ4 I had a bunch of crashes and later realized that my overclocked CPU was not as stable as it appeared to be. I lowered the overclock and the game ran MUCH smoother.

With a lot of RAM, you get the benefits of better performance, but also run the risk of a faulty RAM chip which might only rear its ugly head when under a high level of strain. CIV4 is VERY CPU and RAM intensive so a lot of times it might just be showing faulty hardware that no other software had been able to detect. This is usually the cause of the unrepeatable crashes and the 'random' crashes that are typically seen. This is common in any high CPU intensity software. Even if it's non-overclocked, standard hardware it can have faulty pieces that can really tick you off!

 

[svkenney]

<quote>samiratou, my patch should fix the crash you are having.</quote>
Ran the patch about a day or so ago. Result was somewhat better, but just longer periods of play before the crash.

Same problem running on a laptop, Intel T2400 @ 1.83GHz, 1G RAM, on Win XP Pro version 2002.

System crashes before you can save... have to reboot computer, restart the autosaved game, and I get about 250 more turns before it crashes again... tried lowering the settings on the video card, the game, and refreshed the drivers to no effect. Solver's patch helped somewhat, but instead of crashing every 250 turns or so I get another 150 or so before I run into the same problems...

Hope the fix comes before the reputation of the expansion pack takes a hit... I just want to play a game without the bugs for once!!!

 

[RedRalph]

I've seen this happening in other games as well, but mostly it's due to issues with the hardware itself and not generally with the game. When I first got Civ4 I had a bunch of crashes and later realized that my overclocked CPU was not as stable as it appeared to be. I lowered the overclock and the game ran MUCH smoother.

!

How do you do that?

 

[samiratou]

I've seen this happening in other games as well, but mostly it's due to issues with the hardware itself and not generally with the game. When I first got Civ4 I had a bunch of crashes and later realized that my overclocked CPU was not as stable as it appeared to be. I lowered the overclock and the game ran MUCH smoother.

With a lot of RAM, you get the benefits of better performance, but also run the risk of a faulty RAM chip which might only rear its ugly head when under a high level of strain. CIV4 is VERY CPU and RAM intensive so a lot of times it might just be showing faulty hardware that no other software had been able to detect. This is usually the cause of the unrepeatable crashes and the 'random' crashes that are typically seen. This is common in any high CPU intensity software. Even if it's non-overclocked, standard hardware it can have faulty pieces that can really tick you off!

Yeah, I'm debating upgrading to 2GB of RAM (my laptop expands to 4GB, but I can't afford $250+ on memory upgrades at the moment). My boss also recommended things like disabling the wireless connection (I don't play online) and get as much background or other programs off as possible to reduce the load.

Thanks for the heads up on the patch, Solver!

 

[jdurg]

How do you do that?

It's a pretty risky maneuver involving your BIOS and settings on your motherboard. You basically tell your CPU to run faster than the manufacturer says it can. It all works based on the fact that when manufacturers make CPUs they always try to make them so that they run as fast as they can. When one fails at the highest speed, it may still run well at lower speeds. Or, if the manufacturer has met their quota for high speed CPUs but still has a bunch of CPUs left over, they'll just set them at a lower speed and sell them as such. This means that your 2.5 GHz CPU may have initially been created as a 3.5 GHz CPU. If you have the knowledge and right hardware, you can make the chip run at the higher speed it was designed to run at.

If you have a pre-built computer like a Gateway, or Dell, or HP, or a Laptop, you basically can't do it. If you do a search on Google for 'How to Overclock A Computer' it should come up with quite a few sites that can explain it a bit better than I.

 

[RedRalph]

Seeing as I understand so little of that post it may as well be in Chinese (apart form the word "risky") I'll leave it. but thanks anyway brother

 

[jdurg]

Seeing as I understand so little of that post it may as well be in Chinese (apart form the word "risky") I'll leave it. but thanks anyway brother

Yeah, if that was not understandable then just stick with what you've got.