Great Kuriotates game CtD!

[Randolph]

After playing this game for a few days with no problems I loaded it up today and got a CtD after ending the turn once. I loaded up the autosave, got a few turns further and then it cashed again. It's strange that after playing for several hours yesterday that it would crash right after loading today.

I came to the forum to look for some general info that might help, but I saw that people post CtDs here, so I thought I'd post it. I've been having a lot of fun with this game, even though I don't have a terribly clear plan how I'm going to actually "win," and it would be wonderful if someone found the problem.


Separate from the CtD, I thought I'd point out that the AI seems to be poorly calculating it's willingness to make peace when it's loosing an offensive war (ie. you're killing all their attacking troops, but not capturing their cities). Several times in this game an AI has been unwilling to make peace with me for a reasonable price (they want one of my big cities or all my tech), but then appears to accept vassalization to another AI so that they will assist them in the war. It seems like the AI should be more willing to accept a white peace then to become a vassal. Aggressive AI is check, so that might be part of the issue.

I've actually had a lot of fun with the fact that I've been constantly assaulted by most of the AIs for the entire game, but it still seems like some pretty irrational behavior.

Huge thanks for any help, I love the game!

 

[Emptiness]

Separate from the CtD, I thought I'd point out that the AI seems to be poorly calculating it's willingness to make peace when it's loosing an offensive war (ie. you're killing all their attacking troops, but not capturing their cities). Several times in this game an AI has been unwilling to make peace with me for a reasonable price (they want one of my big cities or all my tech), but then appears to accept vassalization to another AI so that they will assist them in the war. It seems like the AI should be more willing to accept a white peace then to become a vassal. Aggressive AI is check, so that might be part of the issue.

Questions of peace or of vassalization seem to rely heavily upon power level, as calculated by the game. This usually translates directly to army size, rather than any actual measurement of army effectiveness. So, you may find yourself in a position where your smaller army is capturing AI city after AI city, but the AI displays no increase in willingness to deal becuase it is not experiencing the loss of many units. The current AI tends to keep most of its units in a single stack, which is usually not in a city (and so it is possible for invading armies to never encounter the stack, especially when controlled by a human who deliberately avoids it). By contrast, if you track down and destroy this stack the AI will immediately become tractable, even if you have not taken a single city.

This also explains why the AI is usually willing to make peace with or vassalize to other AIs before it will do so with a human; other AI will also tend to have large armies, and so appear powerful on the same order as it. A human player, by comparison, will generally have a smaller army and so appear weaker on paper even than the AI he or she is in the process of trouncing. If you kill half of the units of an AI that started with twice your units (without a single loss yourself), the AI you are beating will still "think" it is as strong as you but will now think that other AIs that have as many units as it once had are now much stronger. It is not uncommon for me to get into a war with an AI that it will simply refuse to quit even though I am winning, and then have some other AI dragged into the war when my foe agrees to become their Vassal.

 

[Randolph]

Good stuff Emptiness, that theory is definitely consistent with what I was experiencing. This is the first game I've played in a few months, but I do think it was particularly bad in this game, probably because my ability to win defensive wars was/is (cross fingers for 'is') vastly disproportionate to my power level (high level centaurs with blitz can really tear apart invading armies). I'm only playing on Monarch, but I'm a bit rusty and I had one of my three cities sacked early in the game (god damn Pyre Zombies) which set me back a bit, so the AI had some pretty impressive stacks compared my small elite force.

It was/is a great game partly because of this though, constant war for survival without the "weirdness" of the high difficulty levels. I am probably at or pretty close to finally hitting a coasting point where the AI can't really threaten me anymore, but it was still going to be a notable challenge to actually build the tower of mastery (Alter looks out of reach, just didn't get enough priests), and once the war I set up between the two big AI alliances comes to an end things could get messy again quickly.

Anyway, thanks for the input, it definitely explains a lot!

 

[Emptiness]

When I try to load either of your saved games, Civ 4 immediately crashes. Are you using base FfH2 0.41j, or some other version? Are you using any modmods?

 

[Randolph]

Base .41j I believe, no modmods. I doesn't seem to say my version in the main menu, just "Fall from Heaven 2" in the upper right.

hummm, it doesn't crash on load for me, maybe I need to reinstall. Hopefully I can find my original civ4 disk...

Here's a save that seems to be working properly for me, if you wouldn't mind checking to see if that crashes the game it would be nice to know.

 

[Emptiness]

The text in the upper right of the main menu just says the name of the mod, based on the name of the folder in which the mod files are stored.

Your second saved game also crashes for me, with the error "unable to uncompress game data". This could be caused by a modmod, but since you're not using one it probably indicates that the patch was not installed correctly. My suggestion would be to try reinstalling FfH2 first, because a reinstall of Civ4 may not be necessary. I've put together a guide, How to Install FfH2, that you may find helpful. I would suggest starting with the first section, Recovering from a failed installation attempt. If you have any problems, let me know.

 

[Randolph]

Huh, I've been playing FFH for years, and I thought I've been installing it correctly, but I'll check that out. It's possible that I installed some modmod awhile back and don't remember. IIRC I might have done something to make improvements on forests show up underneath rather than crushing the forests. That seems pretty minor to mess up saves though.

Thanks for the help.

 

[Randolph]

So I'm downloading the mod & patch again and I'll reinstall. My bet is that I did something to the installation to mess it up so it will be good to fix that, but this game, and the other game I"m currently playing, are probably lost for good. Oh well, hopefully future games will be more stable

 

[Emptiness]

IIRC I might have done something to make improvements on forests show up underneath rather than crushing the forests. That seems pretty minor to mess up saves though.

Yeah, that should not have caused any problems, unless an error was made while making the changes. Hopefully the reinstall will fix things up. After your reinstall, if you care to post another save I'll see if I can load it.

 

[Randolph]

So I reinstalled FFH2, and as we suspected my old saves don't work, but presumably the game is properly installed now. I think what I did wrong is was that I installed the patich into the wrong folder. Here's a save from the new install, I assume it'll work now.

Thanks again for the help.

 

[Emptiness]

I'm able to load your test game just fine, so you should be all set.

 

[Randolph]

So I finally got another good game going (as the Kurios again, still trying to finish one of these), and now I'm getting a CtD again. I hate to keep bugging folks, but if you Emptiness, or anyone else could at least see if it loads up and crashes for other I'd appreiciate it.

It would be great if I could actually finish one of these games!

Thanks,
Randolph

 

[Breunor]

So I finally got another good game going (as the Kurios again, still trying to finish one of these), and now I'm getting a CtD again. I hate to keep bugging folks, but if you Emptiness, or anyone else could at least see if it loads up and crashes for other I'd appreiciate it.

It would be great if I could actually finish one of these games!

Thanks,
Randolph

Ok, I fixed the game here, see the attached file. A very odd bug, it was beign caused by a worker, of all things, outside of the Sdiar city of Latito.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Randolph]

Wow, thanks Breunor, you guys are great! No way I would have been able to find that.