[Civ6] Game freezes when trying to load or start new games

[DarkSatyr]

All afternoon (10/23) the game worked fine. I closed it to play some TF2 and tried to load my save a few hours later, but I haven't been able to load or start a new game since. I reach the leader loading screen, the voice-over goes fine and the music will continue to play, but I never actually get in game and if I try to interact I get a "program unresponsive" pop-up.
I'm on Windows 10 using a Nvidia 660Ti, I've restarted my computer, reinstalled the game, cleared my local saves and verified my game cache, along with trying various combinations of video settings. The game reaches 812MB of RAM when I try to start a game but never goes above it.

 

[Magnot]

I ran into exactly the same thing: interminable loading screens after playing for several days without major incident. What seemed to solve it for me was deleting local content and re-downloading the game. Here's what's funny, though: I was also playing TF2 right before it happened.

 

[Blegroth]

Windows defender issues beginning tonight.

Civ 6 freezes at the initial loading screen

 

[DarkSatyr]

Windows defender issues beginning tonight.

Civ 6 freezes at the initial loading screen

Thank you!! Turning off active protection in Windows Defender worked! Back to civ now!

 

[sigmakan]

I'm having the exact same issue except Im on windows 7 and I already have windows defender disabled.

 

[timbur]

Thanks for the suggestion! I got it working by not disabling it, but rather by adding an exclusion to the Civ directory. In my case: D:\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI
If I need it for other games, I will change the exclusion to the parent directory, "common".

 

[Zhahz]

I'm having the exact same issue except Im on windows 7 and I already have windows defender disabled.

My brother was having this issue and we tried a variety of things from various threads (as a programmer and computer dork I get to do tech support for everyone I know).

His defender wasn't running.

He'd already rebooted (always 1st step for any pc problem) and verified files via steam.

I had him delete his steam app cache (harmless to delete it), it sits at: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\appcache, delete the folder and everything in it, steam will rebuild it over itme.

I had him run Civ 6 as admin. Find Civ 6 exe at C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Binaries\Win64Steam\CivilizationVI.exe, right-click, open properties, check run as admin on compatibility tab.

If the game shows as not responding in task manager let it sit a while (5-10 mins I've seen some post). For my bro, he had to let it sit 30-60s after doing all of the above.

After all that and a good deal of explicit language he got his save to load up.

Good luck!

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

I'm having the exact same issue except Im on windows 7 and I already have windows defender disabled.

Do you have Microsoft Security Essentials installed?
That has exactly the same active protection system as Windows Defender.
Either disable the active protection (risky), or add the Civ6 installation folder (to the exclusions).

 

[Zhahz]

Sadly this issue bit me after I'd helped my brother with it. Adding an exclusion for MSE as per TJJ's comment above took care of it (thanks). So I got us both setup that way and no more hangs/slowness when firing up the game or loading.

 

[sigmakan]

According to this reddit post, Microsoft has resolved the issue.