Civ 6 freezes at the initial loading screen

[mnf]

55 hours into the game and now it started freezing on start-ups.

I had no problems playing since launch, all the way until last night. But today, when I tried to open it, it started freezing. Sometimes at the copyright notice ("Continue" freeze), sometimes at the load game screen with the leaderhead info. Tried over ten times by now and can't get into the game.

I did notice that some time during the past weekend, NVidia GeForce Experience silently applied "optimizations" to my settings. I only noticed it because the game became full screen instead of borderless windowed full screen. Perhaps NVidia messed something up?

I also found that the Log folder contains a GameEffects.log that is 7MB already...don't know if related.

 

[liv]

It seems to be a problem with Windows Defender. When I turned off windows live defender it loaded again

 

[haplo1998]

Exact same problem. Worked fine at launch and over the weekend, now fails miserably on 'loading please wait' screen (Empire / Character Introduction). I also tried to simply start a new game, and the same problem occurs. This is intolerable. Frankly, I'm surprised a major game developer hasn't been hit with a class action lawsuit for all the miserable launch problems they always seem to have.

 

[haplo1998]

Ok, the combination of waiting a long time at start up and running STEAM as administrator seems to have worked. Have no idea if it will continue to work.

 

[mnf]

I did notice that some time during the past weekend, NVidia GeForce Experience silently applied "optimizations" to my settings. I only noticed it because the game became full screen instead of borderless windowed full screen. Perhaps NVidia messed something up?

I also found that the Log folder contains a GameEffects.log that is 7MB already...don't know if related.

Okay, I got into the game. This is what I did.

I went into the graphics options, used the advanced settings performance slider to set it to High, then customized it the way I did when I first started the game. Now it runs just as it did a few days ago. Smooth.

I also checked the GameEffects.log file again and it's at 0KB.

For those of you who have the problem. Are you all using NVidia GeForce Experience? Maybe this really is NVidia trying to tweak the graphics settings and injected bad config into the game, causing the game engine to calculate some extreme game effects that took a long time.

If you can get into the main menu, perhaps it's worth a try?

PS: GTX-1070 here.

 

[Chris Wheaton]

It seems to be a problem with Windows Defender. When I turned off windows live defender it loaded again

Turning off Windows Defender worked for me. I have the game optimized with Nvidia GeForce Experience and disabled Windows Defender

AMD FX 6100 16Gb RAM Nvidia GTX 1070 on Windows 10 Enterprise.

TY and everyone else, give it a try if your using Windows Defender

 

[mbaren]

Yep. I followed the advice above ("Wait 10 minutes") and the game did eventually load. And once I exited, it loaded at its usual fairly zippy speed.

However, once this issue started, even when the game was back to normal loading, I couldn't load a saved game or start a new one - or, at least, in both instances I waited at least 15 minutes to go into the actual gameplay itself - nothin'.

But once I disabled Windows Defender? Back to normal - I can now load existing/create new games. Annoying, but at least there's a workaround for now.

 

[Koaer]

Just tried EVERYTHING, restarting, cleaning my case, Ccleaner, uninstall. Saw this thread and said fudge it. Was freezing for a bit on loading screen and locking up when starting the game. Decided I'd try waiting. loaded a single player game, minimized and did other things. about 15 minutes later it loaded. After that everything loads normally, including multiplayer.

 

[Blegroth]

+1 to windows defender being a problem. No issues all weekend, until tonight, on Windows 10. The task manager anti malware service now blows up when trying to start the game, causing massive delays that seem like hangs. Going into the windows defender app, turning off real time protection fixes it. The setting seems to revert to enabled after reboot, so might have to disable it before each game session. Hope that fixes itself soon.

 

[ca7nip]

Hi all, wanted to add my two cents

For Windows 10 Anniversary adding the Civ VI folder to exclusions (In General -> Update & Security -> Windows Defender -> Add an exclusion) has solved the load issues in full for me

 

[CmdrSalamander]

I'm pretty curious to see what causes this. Seems utterly random.

(EDIT: Oops, didn't realize the thread had acquired a second page... leaving my post here just to agree that disabling Defender or making an exclusion fixes things.)

Some people on a Reddit thread on the same topic reported that it was due to Windows Defender. Sure enough, I disabled Windows Defender and the game is now launching consistently for me.

 

[tomplum68]

i can confirm that turning off windows defender works

 

[Simo]

Also can confirm that windows defender was my problem (so far only brief testing but loaded as normal and the CPU % in task manager was high during the load this time whilst before it was 0.1% sitting idle)
Exception folder trick mentioned above did not work for me (do exceptions include all sub folders or I have to manually make each folder exempt?) but manually turning of defender worked.

Thanks for everyones tips, good we are starting to get back online whilst hopefully the issue is permanently sorted soon.

 

[Dale122]

I was stuck on loading a saved game, left it at loading and disabled Windows Defender, switched back to the game and it then miraculously loaded, so this is definitely the problem.

 

[Brackenspore]

No issues all weekend, until tonight

Yes, yes. Exactly.

 

[DominusMortalis]

For Windows 10 Anniversary adding the Civ VI folder to exclusions (In General -> Update & Security -> Windows Defender -> Add an exclusion) has solved the load issues in full for me

This worked for me, too. For anyone having difficulty finding which folder to add to Defender's exclusions, it will be a path similar to:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI

 

[SheckyS]

Yep. I was having problem on loading (some) saved games. But turning off Windows Defender fixed it.

 

[h0sti1e17]

Thank you for figuring this out. Just need to get home from work and make sure that is the issue. But since everyone says it is, I assume it is.

I went nuts, it coincidentally happened after I updated my driver and used GeForce Experience to optimize my settings. I spend hours rolling back drivers, uninstalling GeForce Experience, deleting Civ 6 and re-installing. Never thought of Windows Defender.

 

[HydroSqueegee]

Same mysterious problem this afternoon for me. Turning off Windows Defender fixes it.

 

[Lios]

Registered just to say this: I added the Civ6 map to the Defender exceptions and that worked too. Defender has gotten an update, it asked me to enable a virus scanner, and apparently it fudgs up Civ now. Stupid. But very happy to have found this thread and the work around