Crashes

[Thalassicus]

I've noticed patterns with a number of instability difficulties that occur with the game and cause crashes to desktop (with standard MS error messages):

1) Second movie to play (wonder movie etc) after starting up the game always crashes. (Since installing BTS a year ago, I've unfortunately had to disable movies.)
2) Leaderheads crash about once per hour, at the moment the screen pops up
3) Era advancement crashes about once per game
4) Occasional crashes at times that I haven't yet identified a pattern to (once while I was just scrolling the map, another time when I issued a bombard order with catapults)

I didn't put this in BTS bug reports because I'm not sure it is one per se; I'm more just looking for tips to resolve these issues.

In classic and Warlords, I didn't encounter crashes to desktop, and my graphics settings or system specifications haven't changed in about two years (geforce 7600 GT, asus motherboard, 2ghz amd processor, plenty of Crucial memory. Can't afford any upgrades due to financial difficulties with inflation and a layoff in the family from the recession). When I first started encountering crashes after installing BTS (such as the wonder movie crashes especially) I just put up with it and tried to work around them best I could, in the hopes a patch would fix the instability issues the expansion introduced.

That hope is obviously long gone, but I've dogged along nonetheless. A few times it's got particularly frustrating, though, since the game will crash about one to five times per hour. Sometimes it doesn't free up the RAM in use, resulting in the need to restart the computer or wait through a fifteen minute load time while it clears out that space.

The only personal modification I use is adding music tracks to the music list. I use the NASA terrain mod, the last patch released from firaxis (October's I think), and also have Bruric's patch.

Many other games like World in Conflict run great, and Civ 4 itself prior to BTS, the crashing issues I've only encountered with BTS.

one thousandth post... it sure has been a long time here...

 

[one2tieyourshoe]

I wish there was a way to either stop the leaderheads from moving or appearing at all. I haven't found one yet.

 

[LordMachiavelli]

Sounds like it's probably a video issue. My movies used to stutter until I switched to the "quick move" game setting. I don't know if that actually helped or if it was just coincidence. I also have a 7600, btw.

Check for new video drivers.
Set your card settings to "application controlled".
Try changing the in-game video setting, although I have mine set to "high" with no problem using a 3.2Ghz Celeron D and 1.5Gig ram.

Also, it's probably pretty safe to right click the process in task manager and "end process" to get rid of the 15 minute wait. Since the application already crashed, you probably won't lose anything. I assume you are autosaving every turn? You should be able to knock off 30 seconds of game load time by double clicking on the autosave file btw, and letting the file association start up the game for you. Hope some of this helps.

LM

 

[Thalassicus]

Yeah, done all three -- quickmove, autosaving, opening from save files. Opening from the save files not only reduces load time directly, but has the added convenience of being able to leave the room or do other things while it loads...

With the process list, oddly, sometimes when it crashes, when I look at the processes Civ isn't there anymore, and memory and the processor both state they've got plenty of free resources, yet everything still chugs until I reload Civ or restart. I'm not sure if it's a memory leak or what (I haven't often encountered a memory issue that affected the system after the process is killed since the days of win '95), but it only occurs perhaps once in a hundred crashes (once a week or so) so it's not a big deal. Might even be any number of hardware lockup issues... though I doubt it's something in general with the system since I've encountered no problems with C&C3, Oblivion, World in Conflict or anything else over the past year.

I'll look for that application controlled setting and the rest, thanks. If anyone else has tips, it'd be greatly appreciated.

 

[GIO888]

Re-install your BTS, then add bruric's patch and do the stuff mentioned above.

I used to get some of what you talk about until I re-installed everything - altho' I did add another Gig of Mem at the same time.

Taskmanager is awesome. I used to load maps straight from Worldbuilder too before I re-installed, that seemed to help. Otherwise hold up the Stage and get a new PC!