General CTD precautions?

[Tsathoggua]

Just curious if there is any generic advice to avoid regular CTDs late into games. These typically start for me past turn 300 or so and seem to have any number of causes. I haven't gone into World Builder mainly because I doubt I know enough to really assess where the problem is (and I hate seeing the map before I've honestly explored it).

I usually run Large maps with 9 civs, which is already a hefty downgrade from my usual FFH games using Huge maps and 12 civs.

I know a lot is changing in the coming patch, and that's well and good. I'm mainly after advice for now, if any exists. I've read somewhere that having multiple processors is an issue, since Civ doesn't use them both. If it helps eliminate hardware causes, I have 2GB memory free after Windows hogs more than its share, and 1GB of video ram.

 

[inuyashasama]

Set autosaves to save every turn and save the last 20. That's the most you can do for any kind of crash. If going back 1 save doesn't work, try the 20th. If the 20th doesn't work, it's over.

 

[admtanaka]

Play with the "no animals" option ticked.

Rife never CTDs for me.

 

[Tsathoggua]

Play with the "no animals" option ticked.

Rife never CTDs for me.

Never? That's some strong language, sir. I'll give it a try -- do you think ramping up the barbarians to compensate would nullify the effect?

 

[inuyashasama]

The reason no animals would prevent CTD is if an animal is created/captured, and the captured/created animal spawns on the same tile as an enemy. This will always, 100% of the time, cause a CTD.

 

[Tsathoggua]

The reason no animals would prevent CTD is if an animal is created/captured, and the captured/created animal spawns on the same tile as an enemy. This will always, 100% of the time, cause a CTD.

Are animals still spawning at turns 500+ on epic speed? That's where my most recent game is hitting the wall. It's basically late-late game at this point.

 

[inuyashasama]

Not usually, which is why I doubt that's the only cause of them. Thus, set your autosaves to every turn.

 

[KrugSmash]

Even with 2 gigs of memory free, the cause of late-turn CTDs on large and huge maps is very probably from lack of memory.

 

[Jester Fool]

Even with 2 gigs of memory free, the cause of late-turn CTDs on large and huge maps is very probably from lack of memory.

Or to specify further, memory leaks (caused by not releasing free store memory properly).

 

[Zai]

I always play with no animals, because I think they are ridiculous, but I get other crashes when using certain civs. If I play against like Amurites, D'Tesh, or Jotnar, then I get sporadic crashing. If I play against only Bannor, Elohim, Calabim, Lannun, Balseraphs, Ljosalfar, Svartalfar, or Mechanos, then I never, ever, crash. Not even after 600-700 turns.

I played a little against Hippus, Luchuirp, Sheaim and Illians, and they seemed stable too, but I haven't spent enough time with them to be 100% sure. Likewise I think Scions and Doviello might be causing rare crashes, but haven't played enough with them alone to be sure. No idea about the other civs.

 

[admtanaka]

I should have been more specific in my earlier post, but I NEVER have a CTD (or at least cannot remember having one) with normal speed/standard size/default number of civ maps with animals disabled. I should probably make some other qualifications:

1. No liberation (Frozen are broken from a balance perspective in the present version anyway)
2. Jotnar and Legion D'Tesh disabled (for the AI, anyway). I've played as D'Tesh without incident. The AI can't handle these guys anyway.
3. I don't notice any Amurite specific crashes. They're present in many of my games.

 

[Valkrionn]

I always play with no animals, because I think they are ridiculous

Animals WILL be rebalanced next version; It is all that remains to do before the new patch can come out, other than checking for as many bugs as we can.

I should have been more specific in my earlier post, but I NEVER have a CTD (or at least cannot remember having one) with normal speed/standard size/default number of civ maps with animals disabled. I should probably make some other qualifications:

1. No liberation (Frozen are broken from a balance perspective in the present version anyway)
2. Jotnar and Legion D'Tesh disabled (for the AI, anyway). I've played as D'Tesh without incident. The AI can't handle these guys anyway.
3. I don't notice any Amurite specific crashes. They're present in many of my games.

Frozen have been updated for 1.3, far more balanced. AI is better with the Legion as well, as the AI now understands how to use forts effectively (helped the Kurios too!)

 

[Tsathoggua]

1. No liberation (Frozen are broken from a balance perspective in the present version anyway)

LOL you're telling me. The Frozen were summoned by the Illians in this latest crashed game. They popped in a tiny corner of my empire with no room to expand past 2 cities and nowhere to send units, since I wasn't about to extend them open borders.

By the time I got around to mopping them up, they had 65 pop in their poorly-placed capital, and 70-ish in the second city. Populations that high basically force you to capture a city you can't even make use of for 40+ turns, or suck up 30+ points on the Armageddon counter.

I razed one city because an early-game Great Commander meant I had an empire literally crawling with mobile fortresses, but I had no choice but to keep the second around because razing it would have put the counter over 100. :s

 

[Tschuggi]

I should have been more specific in my earlier post, but I NEVER have a CTD (or at least cannot remember having one) with normal speed/standard size/default number of civ maps with animals disabled. I should probably make some other qualifications:

1. No liberation (Frozen are broken from a balance perspective in the present version anyway)
2. Jotnar and Legion D'Tesh disabled (for the AI, anyway). I've played as D'Tesh without incident. The AI can't handle these guys anyway.
3. I don't notice any Amurite specific crashes. They're present in many of my games.

I always play with normal speed/standard size/erebus map/immortal/timid animals/aggressive AI/no settlers/raging barbs/all unique features/living world with animals NOTdisabled and have nearly always a crash at round 70 to 300, no matter what civ.

So I'm waiting for 1.3

 

[cvx]

To be honest i don't play rife anymore atm cause i crash every game in the first 200 turns.
This is what makes it even more sad that the release of 1.3 takes so damn long. The alternatives are Orbis where i don't like the 3 food thing, Wildmana with so much stuff being totally useless and making the civilopedia a mess of information no one needs (but my favorite mod anyway cause of the stability and extremly good performance) and ffh2 vanilla which is just bla.

 

[Sjru]

Weird, about 80% of my CTD are related to mages or magic, as when it happens, I figure out who is the offending civ, and then I slay all the mages, I dislike it, but I have no choice if I want to keep playing. Generally, by killing mages, I get the problem resolved 70% of the time or so...

 

[Torugu]

I can't help but think that there's a problem on your part. I only have a CTD in about every tenths game of rife and those are mostly non-repeatable (as in they can be resolved by simply reloading the last auto-save). I don't think that I've lost more than 2 or 3 games to CTDs.

Did you do that MAF fix thing (assigning more memory to your graphic card or something)? I know you're talking about CTDs not MAFs but perhaps it helps anyway?


Edit: I'm playing with Timid Animals and random civilizations on epic speed and standard, large or huge Erebus Continents. I now play with No Liberations for balancing reasons, but I didn't have CTD problems when playing with the Frozen in Game either.

 

[Sjru]

No, I don't have MAF, its not that, perhaps I just have too many civs in game (14), I use Large with medium seazise on Erebus continent. I always ban the Ai for playing Frozen, Lanun (they just don't sail) Kuriotates Jotnar Dtesh and Balseraph (too much CTD's because of puppet for them).
Of course, having to go to WB to fix CTD every 5, or 6 turns in late game is annoying, but is kinda funny, I get tired of that though, so I hope that the cake is not a lie and we can play 1.3 this weekend.-

 

[admtanaka]

I always play with normal speed/standard size/erebus map/immortal/timid animals/aggressive AI/no settlers/raging barbs/all unique features/living world with animals NOTdisabled and have nearly always a crash at round 70 to 300, no matter what civ.

So I'm waiting for 1.3

All unique features and living world haven't seemed to give me any CTDs. I'd really recommend you to use "no animals" instead of "timid animals" and report back if there is a difference. I haven't tested it enough to prove a cause-effect, but I really noticed an improvement without them.

 

[JEiK66]

Hearing vanilla FFH2 called "just bla". sounds weird considering that it makes ultra-addictive civ vanilla look bla.