Civ 3 Crashing problem with save?

[Imperialists]

Hi, I play Civilization 3 Conquest a lot back in the old days. And in all my years, I never had this happen to me. I also had just reinstall it just 4 days ago. After a fresh install have 3 partition on one hard drive. C is windows 7, E Is windows xp have it just because, D is just 900gb. playing on windows 7

Started a game played it for few hours, once I was done for the night, saved and Exited out.
Next day when, I went to play civ 3: game loaded fine, hit enter and at the end turn game crashes, windows error pops up; with no error codes just tell me (something caused this program to crash will now exit).
So I figured to many cities to many units, probably caused the problem? estimate - AI and me have 250 some cities and probably around 600units.

Started a new game this time bigger: played for half the day, saved exit out: something told me to check and make sure it worked right: started the game loaded the save game, game loads fine- pressed enter and at end of turn game crashes. So I flip out, game was fine until saving. So I started troubleshooting of what I know, I went through every saved game, I had from the past( Saves back up from years). everything works fine.

Went back to the main game, loaded fine, hit enter: I should say game loaded but once it comes near end turn it crashes. I then go and attempt to save the game thinking; game crashes. I go and back up to auto saves, attempt to save; game crashes.(all auto save for it all crash too) I then go about reinstalling civ 3 in to D then to C game still crashes-reinstalled back to D. I then theorize: conquest must not have enough permission to save, I go about making sure it has privilege, and admin. (if you have lans fot error 28 run as admin and solved) still the game crashes, I then turn off auto saves, hit enter game doesn't crash, hit enter no crash. attempted to save game: crashes, restarted 3 turns: turned on auto save, hit enter crashed.

went back to my first map, that crashed hit enter -autosave on, no crash confused? I spam entered my first game now works fine. went back to the my second game, crashes. so now i'm here.

windows event viewer log a crash- 0xc0000005 doesn't help me.
Game settings
Huge
Warm
Wet
no barbs
Arp 60% water
version 1.22

 

[tjs282]

Hi, I play Civilization 3 Conquest a lot back in the old days. And in all my years, I never had this happen to me. I also had just reinstall it just 4 days ago. After a fresh install have 3 partition on one hard drive. C is windows 7, E Is windows xp have it just because, D is just 900gb. playing on windows 7.

Just guessing, but if you haven't played it for a long time, and you're playing on Win7 from a CD-based install, you might (now) be having trouble as a result of the security update rolled out in September 2015, that disabled secdrv.sys (which was used in a lot of 2000s-era games' CD copy protection) You can read all about it here.

If so, then re-installing the game under your WinXP partition might well fix your problem for you: that security update happened after M$ stopped supporting WinXP, so that Windows-version wasn't affected by it.

Also: don't try to 'patch' your game to v.1.29 -- that patch-number is for the original "Vanilla" Civ3 release, the one with only 16 Civs and 6 Civ-traits. Conquests is the second of the two Civ3 expansion-packs, and AFAIK usually also included the first expansion, 'Play the World', giving you 31 Civs in total. And if you have Conquests v.1.22, that's the latest version, so you likely already also have the last-released versions of the game-executables for Vanilla (v1.29) and PtW (v.1.27), even if your installation didn't create shortcuts for them: you should be able to use Windows Explorer to find them in the relevant (sub)folder of your installation (and play using them, if you're so inclined).

 

[Imperialists]

Just guessing, but if you haven't played it for a long time, and you're playing on Win7 from a CD-based install, you might (now) be having trouble as a result of the security update rolled out in September 2015, that disabled secdrv.sys (which was used in a lot of 2000s-era games' CD copy protection) You can read all about it here.

I had uninstalled kb3086255, due to those problems. I haven't tried it on XP yet, but would like to find out a fix on W7

 

[Civinator]

May be it´s a problem with your virtual store? Installing under Windows 7

 

[Imperialists]

May be it´s a problem with your virtual store? Installing under Windows 7

cant be virtual store as I don't use it. Civilization 3 conquest install path is D:\Program Files (x86)\Atari\Civilization III Complete\Conquests. Windows 7 is located on C. still didn't work as I had install to both. from what I gather, the game cant save or write due to reason unknown. loading another save can and will save and wont crash, I think if I make another map and play until it the problem occurs, and if the other map become unstuck, it might be something with call stacks idk still working on it.

Also I found another guy with same problem pretty much, just about a week prior to me, I'm speculating if it could be a mircosoft update.

is their a unit cap or city cap?

Kill is the current main that crashes, if anyone willing to see if it work for you, and the other my first that crashed then started working when Kill start crashing

 

[Civinator]

is their a unit cap or city cap?

Both: 512 cities and - if I remember well - 8096 units on the map. Exceeding these limits shouldn´t trigger crashes.

 

[Imperialists]

Both: 512 cities and - if I remember well - 8096 units on the map. Exceeding these limits shouldn´t trigger crashes.

yea, its pretty much narrowed down to the saving, I don't believe I cap out at cities, nor units. if I play another map it works fine, atm im playing another trying to trigger it again, this map works fine. Kill on the other hand you can load it but you cant save or let auto save, save or it crashes turning it off fixes it but then I cant save.

 

[Civinator]

Can it be that you have destroyed a civ in the turn before the crash? In that case it could be the so-called "houseboat"-bug.

 

[Imperialists]

no i wasn't at war with any ai players, but some ai players were at war with each other, and just before the crash on retire a city was captured, also retire playing through its record can also trigger the bug, also what is a boat house bug?

 

[Civinator]

what is a boat house bug?

The house boat bug is when you eliminate a civilization by conquering its last city and that civ still has a settler on a boat. The game will crash just as it happens in your save-file.That´s why players in succession games named that bug the house boat bug. The bug was fixed in later versions of Civ 3 vanilla and came back in C3C. As you didn´t destroy a civ in the turn before the crash, I don´t think that in your case it´s the house boat bug.

Unfortunately at present I have no more idea what it could be if it is not the problem with the copy protection and not with the virtual store.

 

[Imperialists]

Unfortunately I haven't been able to repeat it, coincidence it stop after I changed security permissions to civ file folder to Account full control?(basically Run as Admin). It isn't happening anymore: I found some people with civ 5 and 6, experienced save problems similar to mine, but I havent played civ 5 in long time, I don't have 6. It may be a small ghost problem something wrong with duel hard drive permission granting or double partitions. I've also notice small but random bugs on older programs now since installing with a Duel OS and blank drive, "probably cause I'm watching for problems now", registry keys might not function right. idk just my thoughts.

 

[Civinator]

It isn't happening anymore

That´s the best thing that can happen to you in playing this game.