Civ Freezes At First Move With Mods

[Cerulean Rex]

I have been playing Civ V for over a year now. Sometimes with Mods, sometimes without. Mostly with of late. However, something has occurred that is making my game freeze up just after "Begin Your Journey" any time there is a Mod loaded. Click "BYJ" and I see the map, my settler and my warrior or whathaveyou, and all graphics freeze and as does the UI. Can't do a thing. Does not matter what Mod. Any Mod will produce the result.

I am running Win7 Pro 64Bit, an Intel i7 Quad Core CPU on a Republic of Gamers - Rampage II Motherboard, 12 Gigs of RAM, and two NVIDIA GeForce 1GB 9800 GTX+ GPUs. (The GPUs are not interlaced. Running them separate to run a three monitor setup, so the game is essentially running on only one of them.)

I have run through a lot of troubleshooting steps to no avail so I want to start from scratch and see what the community thinks I need to do to get things in order again. I want to start from the basic steps and work through it. Any help will be appreciated.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Sometimes mods can mess up with the game entirely because they don't like each other much. Modders are quite diligent on this forum and updates are flying constantly

It happened randomly when I tried to use IGE to stir up a map. I only had the EUI running as well, and I had to CAD the game.

1. Load up a random map without any mod and see if that fixes anything and then try to figure out which mod causes the conflict.

2. Clean up the game cache (I assume you're running on Steam).

3. If the entire game freezes and you have to do a hard reset of your computer, then the issue is a bit beyond the game itself and most likely is related to the GPU

 

[Cerulean Rex]

Thanks for the reply ST412!

First, IGE, EUI and CAD are unknown acronyms for me.

So point by point ...

1) I can play an unmodded game just fine.

PLEASE NOTE -> There is no one single mod to search for. I can load a game with ANY ONE SINGLE MOD and the behavior occurrs. I have tried this repeatedly with various mods of large and small consequence.

2) I am running on Steam, yes. Please direct me to the 'game cache'?

3) The game freezes but my computer does not. I am playing in windowed mode and am able to click the red X to close the program.

Again, thank you very much for responding.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Ah. Well there we go then, But first:

IGE stands for In Game Editor, which is a mod that basically allows you to cheat by editing map features, cities, units, anything. It's highly unstable though and has a decent crashing percentage.

EUI is Enhanced User Interface, a delightful little thing that its creator should definitely be bigger than Jesus for. Technically not a mod but DLC, because it's installed by copying in the DLC folder and not mods

Lastly, CAD is control + alt + delete and you know about that

So, to the point, since you can play an unmodded game just fine, then the issue was, like I assumed, entirely related to mods. Second, to load a modded game, you have to go to mods, include all mods that your game uses, and load your game from there instead of doing it from the main menu. I'm not entirely sure why the saves are visible from the main loading menu because IIRC they are physically stored in a different folder.

I'm fairly certain that should work so you should ignore questions 2 and 3

 

[Cerulean Rex]

Thanks for the Acronym clarifications!

Ok as far as IGE, I don't think I have used that, at least not under that title. I have been using "Really Advanced Setup" however which sounds a lot like it. Not in that it allows you to change things once the game starts, but allows you to tweak tons of aspects before game launch. It can be a little testy sometimes.

EUI is super tight. I like using it by default. I am missing it right now. Since it is DLC and I am not seeing it at present, I probably deleted it, or portions of it in the process of making things work again. That might be causing an issue but not sure.

I always use proper path to use mods when setting up or loading up a modded game. Click MODS, Make MOD selections, and then click NEXT and wait during Configuring Game Data, click SINGLE PLAYER from there and either SET UP or LOAD depending on what I am up to.

If the problem in that particular case is not between the chair and keyboard, what would you do next? I'm all ears.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Well, it looks like either certain mods don't like each other much or some of them have since been updated.

Taking a stab in the dark approach, I suggest creating a modded game from scratch including mods that you can be sure to work, like, custom Civs, and if all goes well, save, exit the game and then reload and see if it works

 

[Cerulean Rex]

I am using EUI again. Things work just fine with it. Glad to see it again.

I read your response. I set up a game with one mod only. A simple one which is not likely to need updating and might not have any impact on the game at all. I chose "Ethiopia Color Fix".

I set up the game, got The Iroquois from my random civ selection and as the map appeared behind the Civ exposiiton screen with the "Begin Your Journey" button, I could see the warrior stretching and yawning, the birds flying over the swirling fishes, all just like normal. I clicked "Begin Your Journey" and all graphics froze. Same old behavior.

I clicked the button to make the Settler settle and the graphics of the game go about 80% white and in the top left of the frame for the window next to "Sid Meiers CivilizationV (DX9)", it was also reading (Not Responding). Same old behavior. I was just about to close the window and move on, then thought better of it. I would wait and see.

I have waited for the game to come back and respond before, some times many minutes. I was not expecting it to come back this time. Suddenly after about three and a half minutes, the white cleared and I could play.

I settled the settler, saved the game and exited to main menu. I then reloaded the game, and it started up immediately after BYJ.

I exited and started a new random civ game but added 3UC and 4UC mods and this time no waiting after BYJ. It was all working correctly.

So ... something FINALLY cleared in the system. What, exactly, I will likely never know.