Crashes RAND 1.75 patch C

[Narcio]

I've gotten quite far in my most recent game on marathon and large map but I started getting frequent crashes. At first they were just once in a while, so I was able to keep reloading and it was ok. The frequency of these crash events has increased over time to the point now where they are probably happening on average once every turn or two.

I have two different systems I've tried to play on.

1) Core2 Duo e6600, 4gb ram, ATI Radeon 4870 512mb, Vista 64bit
2) Sandy Bridge 2600k, 8gb ram, Nvidia GTX 570 1.25gb, Windows 7 64bit

System 1) gets crashes like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civ4BeyondSword.exe
Application Version: 3.1.9.0
Application Timestamp: 4a0c27e6
Fault Module Name: D3D9.DLL
Fault Module Version: 6.0.6002.18005
Fault Module Timestamp: 49e03705
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 000697ed
OS Version: 6.0.6002.2.2.0.256.1
Locale ID: 4105
Additional Information 1: 3164
Additional Information 2: f31c530d3d12785f4cca5eb2cbce0d8e
Additional Information 3: 011d
Additional Information 4: 01351879a445e41ad4df3ba5eb395c4d

System 2) gets crashes like this:

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civ4BeyondSword.exe
Application Version: 3.1.9.0
Application Timestamp: 4a0c27e6
Fault Module Name: D3D9.DLL
Fault Module Version: 6.1.7600.16385
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a5bd9a9
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 00035794
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 8485
Additional Information 2: 84853502223d8164a31468861a7c3d71
Additional Information 3: a4ea
Additional Information 4: a4eacf9d27e5ee8cb3a70ac0035eb8ab

The first system is starting to show its age, and I suspect doesn't have as much ram as it should to play the game, but I'm surprised about the 2nd system's inability to play long without a crash. Both systems have the newest versions of video drivers as of the time of the crashes. Both systems are seemingly completely stable in all other operations I do on them.

I have made minor changes to RAND 1.75 patch C by editing the Civ4GameSpeedInfo.xml file to increase the cost of techs in the slower game speeds. I don't think that has anything to do with the crashes.

I installed with Formations! I play with most of the AND game settings enabled. I have a limit of 5units / tile set.

I have tried uninstalling Civ and all of its mods and reinstalling them all again.

I have tried clearing cache.

I really love RAND (even more so after finally trying Civ5) and I'd love to figure out whats going wrong. Anyone have any suggestions about what this problem might be? Should I just be playing on smaller maps? Do I need 16gb of ram?

I appreciate any suggestions and or comments.

Thanks.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I really love RAND (even more so after finally trying Civ5) and I'd love to figure out whats going wrong. Anyone have any suggestions about what this problem might be? Should I just be playing on smaller maps? Do I need 16gb of ram?

I appreciate any suggestions and or comments.

Thanks.

Civ IV itself can only use 3Gb any extra can be used by the OS and other programs you are running - so no you don't need 16GB of RAM. Deleting the cache is a good start.

I would turn formations off. Then try reducing the graphics level.

I don't think there is a way to get rid of all these crashes but I have been able to play through to the end of game (snail/huge) on my XP machine with crashes only every 10-20 turns towards the end. You should be able to do better.

 

[Narcio]

I tried backing up my present copy of RAND, installing it again without formations, but it seems that it doesn't want to load my save when I do that. I did however try putting it on single unit graphics which seemingly reduced the overall system memory usage by about 15% on my first system (with 4gb ram.) Thats a pretty huge difference. Maybe I'll give up on this save and try another game without formations. And yes, on my 4gb system I had graphics settings all reduced to the minimum already, except single unit graphics which I just tried now.

I have also noticed that I can usually get the game to crash by scrolling the map around by clicking on the mini-map. If I start doing that for a while, it will almost always crash Civ.

Thank you for your tips. I'll see what I can do. I'm also going to check and see how much ram civ is using in total on both systems. You mentioned it can use a max of 3gb, but I seem to recall it not going much about 2, despite having the ram available. I wonder if there is some reason why it wouldn't be able to use more even in a 64bit system.

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

I have also noticed that I can usually get the game to crash by scrolling the map around by clicking on the mini-map. If I start doing that for a while, it will almost always crash Civ.

Yeah, the same happens to me. Sometimes it also happens when cycling units my view jumps from one side of the world to another, which is quite annoying. I tried multiple games with a GEM and I haven't been able to finish a single one; once in middle-age the game keeps crashing every turn; technically I could reload every turn but after doing that for 30 times I quit playing... And before you ask my pc is a q9450, 9800gtx+ 512Mb, 4GB, Win7 64bit so yes, it can definetly handle RoM-AND.
Another problem I noticed is that sometimes the game has problems when saving/loading. Since my games keeps crashing every turn, I started to save the game multiple times per turn; but if I save the game before every message on the top of the screen disappears (you know, those messages about what's happening to other civs) and then I reload that savegame, the game will almost surely crash saying something like "can't initialize player" or something similar. Never happened in previous versions. Now I'm trying playing on a smaller map with some (not all) civs from the Mega Civ Pack and the game keeps crashing although this time I think it's due to MCP. To tell the truth, I think that Civ4 engine simply can't handle all the details that were put inside ROM/AND/MCP...

 

[Ricemon]

Good to know I'm not the only one with this problem, this is probably the only obstacle that keeps me from finishing a game.

 

[Afforess]

Sadly, not a fault of the mod. See this line here:

Fault Module Name: D3D9.DLL

If it were from the mod, it would be crashing in CvGameCoreDLL.DLL

D3D9, is a directx file, used for graphics processing. I suspect you are running out of VRAM or RAM mid-game.

@45°38'N-13°47'E

I think that the MCP would be the biggest issue, with the amount of artwork is has.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Or the D3D9 re-installed/updated.

I have an ATI Radeon HD4650 with 512Mb of DDR2 ram and have used it for the last 2 years with All of RAND's versions so it would stand to reason the 4870 should work too.

But the D3D9 is refering to the DirectDraw 3D portion.

Maybe a visit to Microsoft's site would help?

JosEPh