Huge map : constant crashes from indus era

[Krainios]

OS : W7 32 bits
GC : NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 870 @ 2.93GHz
(8 CPUs), ~2.9GHz

Huge map / Marathon

-----------------------------------

from around turn 600 it became impossible to carry on playing,
the game crashes constantly : hours and hours of play wasted, it was my first game, it really pisses me off ...

If it is not possible to play with these settings, why do they make them available ?
These guys in the game industry are kind of crooks, selling stuff that doesn't work properly and getting away with it ...

I cannot spend half of my life in front of CIV5 to find out what is really working and what is just BS, I really feel ripped off.


My questions are :

1 ) what are the max settings ( largest map / lowest speed ) in
which the game actually works until the end ?

2 ) Is there some hope for a patch that makes the game works
" completely " and when ?

 

[CurseUppl]

How much RAM do you have? Since you're only using 32 bit Windows, it sounds like a hardware limitation and not the actual game.

 

[Krainios]

Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3320MB RAM

Isn't that enough ?
My PC is new !

 

[Smote]

Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3320MB RAM

Isn't that enough ?
My PC is new !

It's kinda low

A system like that usually has 8GB RAM and win7 64bit

 

[CurseUppl]

Yeah, your GFX and CPU are good, but I find it disturbing you only have 4 gigs of RAM. You're not letting your system reach its full potential with only 4 gigs. Aim for 6 or 8 gigs. In the long run 8 gigs would be best.

So I suggest you double up on your RAM. It's pretty cheap. Also, you need Windows 7, 64 bit. These days, a gaming PC needs 64 bit Windows and 4+ GB of RAM. But like I said, upgrading is pretty cheap and you can easily do it yourself. Just find out what RAM you have and double up on it.

 

[Krainios]

I chose 32 bits ( it was the same price ) cause I worried about
problems with old games with 64 bits ...

 

[CurseUppl]

Yeah, but what good will that do you when a year down the line, you can't play new games because their RAM requirements will require 64 bit?

Also, Win7 64 bit is very stable compared to Vista 64 bit and XP 64 bit. I can run old games like Red Alert or Heroes 3 with a bit of tinkering. Plenty of places around the internet that are dedicated to making old games run on new a OS.

 

[timtofly]

Because by then they will have better hardware that will be more affordable and all the 64 driver glitches will be worked out.

I am still enjoying the game with 2 Gigs. I am having a Graphics overlay file though that is not releasing memory. Is that from playing the game online with steam? Every other day steam needs to redownload about 15 files that keep getting messed up. I am trying to get through the acheivements, so I think that I have to be online. I am getting the strange graphics with blurred lines that a lot of people were getting back in Oct. Has the game finally fried my graphics card?

 

[Smote]

I chose 32 bits ( it was the same price ) cause I worried about
problems with old games with 64 bits ...

Windows 98 or lower is "required" for compatibility with most old games.

However, a new operating system like Windows 7 64bit can actually run these old games by running them in "compatibility mode." Its a setting that needs to be selected on a program to program basis. (Google it!)

Some other games can be run with emulator programs.

Also, benchmarks have shown that Windows 7 64bit can run 32bit programs just as well, if not a little better, than Windows 7 32bit. It also enjoys greatly increased performance for 64bit programs.

Because of this, Windows 7 64bit is only advantageous, rather than the advantage/disadvantage trade-off that usually occurs.

 

[Tenketsu]

Yeah, your GFX and CPU are good, but I find it disturbing you only have 4 gigs of RAM. You're not letting your system reach its full potential with only 4 gigs. Aim for 6 or 8 gigs. In the long run 8 gigs would be best.

So I suggest you double up on your RAM. It's pretty cheap. Also, you need Windows 7, 64 bit. These days, a gaming PC needs 64 bit Windows and 4+ GB of RAM. But like I said, upgrading is pretty cheap and you can easily do it yourself. Just find out what RAM you have and double up on it.

This would seem to disagree with you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264-3.html

Maybe things have changed drastically since this was written, but if so I personally haven't seen it.

 

[Smote]

This would seem to disagree with you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264-3.html

Maybe things have changed drastically since this was written, but if so I personally haven't seen it.

This benchmark does not directly pertain to Civ5, and is invalid. This is because Civ5 is an unusual game, and ordinary benchmarks and patterns do not always apply to it.

For instance, most games are bottlenecked by graphics, while Civ5 is usually bottlenecked by CPU. Also, I would want to see memory benchmarks done on turn 600/huge, in which case Civ5 might take significantly more memory than usual, perhaps exceeding the usual 2-3GB for a single game.

 

[Thorgred]

also the more civs as oponents the faster it crashes on those marathon games since the computer ai tends to build their cities very close together a bit to close to my taste hopefuly with the coming patch the cities will be more spread out if the computer ai builds cities

 

[Ronnoc]

I agree with OP, been getting frustrated all night. I have been playing and constant crashing as I get into the industrial era. I tried playing huge maps with 12 civs, then large with 10, so I guess it will be standard with 8, but I am betting eventually that it will crash as well.

I just built a brand new system, intel core i7 950, 6 gb of ddr3, gtx 450 video 1gb ddr5, Win 7 64 bit. I was hoping the crashing problems in Civ 4 would be over, but I guess not.

Can the memory leak problems be fixed? The one thing I had hoped to have fixed. I have played Civ since the first one, but thinking it is not worth the frustration.

To me, it seems like a defective product. I am not sure I have completed a game to the finish so far due to this.

 

[Securion]

We are a group of people (200+ of us) that play EVE together, and many of us play other games as well, like Civ 5 for an example, and I haven't heard of anyone capable of finishing a game on a large or bigger map. Ever.

If the game requires more ram than any other game in the industry today (3+ gb ram), then they should tell their customers that.
Also, why program a game that requires 4+ gb ram in 32 bit when there is no 32 bit OS that can run it (32 bit is 4gb max)? Doesn't make sense.

Its clearly a faulty product.

 

[Ronnoc]

I believe someone had stated, a modder, that once you start going past 2gb of memory in the game that it starts to become unstable and crash. I don't know enough of how that works and what the cause is, but it is very frustrating.

 

[joe.crowe]

It's kinda low

A system like that usually has 8GB RAM and win7 64bit

"Kinda low" I beg to differ, since 4Gb is all a 32 bit system can access that is the max. If anyone feels the game needs more than 4 to avoid crashing on a huge map why was it ever sold as 32-bit? A 64-bit game would have allowed the programmers to include any feature imaginable and still not even touch the number of code slots available. Additionally I think you are all barking up the wrong tree re. memory. I have 8Gig and a 6 core CPU that crashes reliably late in the game with a huge map but interestingly enough, if have the resource monitor up the game is never accessing more than 1.5 - 1.75 gig of available ram. Therein I think lies the problem, some program limitation is preventing the game from accessing as much ram as it needs to run reliably late in the game so no amount of extra ram will help until the code is changed. I could be out to lunch but having read posts till cross-eyed there seems to be no common element to the late game crash except the huge map and number of turns played. I have seen posts ranging from 4Gb-32 to 16Gb-64 reporting the same issue so I think we can stop looking at peoples' machines for answers IMO.

 

[timtofly]

After validating the local file 33 times in a row, it seems my game is more stable now. I think that when it starts crashing it corrupts files somehow and needs to be revalidated. Reloading a game seems to slow things down also. After loading a saved file a couple of times, you may want to keep validating the local cache until it says that validation does not find any problems. My question is it says there is 1 of 1 file. Are there more than one file. Is it the same file that does not validate properly or are there more than one file and it only checks one at a time?

 

[fuzzyillogic]

I can add some validation to the fact that does not depend from hardware: I too have a win7 64bit Phenom X6 with 8 gb of ram, a 6850 1gb ram, civ v and all drivers updated to the very last version, and still some games that do crash regularly after about 600 turns on huge maps even if i turn down to minimum video details. Oh, and from resource management I too do not see the game consuming more than a scarce couple of gigs...
Don't know how common it is and if its new for the last patches: I'm attempting to play it for the first time since the first disastrous games I played as soon as id did came out... I hoped after so many months it would have been slightly more stable, sigh...

 

[fuzzyillogic]

Reading a thread on the 2k games forum, I discovered that the actual amount of RAM available is unimportant, as ciV run as a 32 bit process, so even on a 64bit system with 256TB of RAM it would use only its small space. Anyway, following the suggestion of somebody, I read about this http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112556 utility, that switch a flag in the executable, allowing it to make at least full use of its own addressable space, reaching the 3 gb of usage. This did *not* help in my case, it still crashed after about 3 turns, but as other people said that it did help them, in any case I do report it here...