It keeps crashing when loading!

[Minor Annoyance]

It crashes nearly every time it gets to Setting Up Players when starting a new game or loading an old one. It didn't do this before I uninstalled it and now after five times reinstalling it won't. I've tried a system restore but every time it just says it couldn't restore to that point. I've screwed this thing up somehow but nothing works to fix it. The last thing I can think of is reinstalling directx and if that doesn't work I'll just have to remove the entire game and reinstall, but I've ran warlords and vanilla and they worked so I don't think that will work, and if it doesn't work I have nothing left. I might as well put the disks in a closet.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

I think it might me a specific civ that crashed the game. Why else would it crash exactly when it gets to Setup Players but not every game, but always with specific save games. I think it's the Carthaginians because they're the only civ in common with the two files I've tried. I can't imagine why though.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Although I don't think anyone is reading this, but I'm certain it's the Carthaginians. I haven't gone and tested ever civ in the game to see that it does with them, but I know for sure it doesn't with Carthage. I have no idea how to fix this since reinstalling doesn't work. I've thought about reinstalling the whole game, but Warlords works fine with Carthage and vanilla doesn't have them so I don't know how they could be the problem. Maybe there's a way to keep the game from ever picking Carthage to be in the game without having to manually pick every civ in every game, but even if there is that's not and ideal solution.

 

[ori]

Does the game give you any sort of error message before crashing?
If you really think it is due to a specific civ (carthage works fine for me by the way) you could try the following edit in your .../Firaxis Games/Sid Meier's Civilization 4/Beyond the Sword/Assets/XML/Civilizations/CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file:
open that file with any text editor. Search for the lines where it says

<CivilizationInfo>
<Type>CIVILIZATION_CARTHAGE</Type>

Now either delete everything between the <CivilizationInfo> and </CivilizationInfo> tags for this Civ or comment all the lines out by adding
<!-- in front of <CivilizationInfo> and --> after </CivilizationInfo> for this Civilization. Maybe that cures that crash if it really is Civ specific...

Spoiler unnecessary remark :

... and people do read this, though not necessarily within 24 hours

 

[Minor Annoyance]

O.K. it's fixed. I noticed when the game starts it says XML (cached) so I thought if there is something wrong the cached version of some file might be surviving all my attempts to fix them. So I changed the config file to not cache and file and the Carthaginians work now. So my guess is that the cache is saved somewhere that isn't removed when the game is uninstalled and the installing the unofficial patch, the real patch and un/reinstalling the game and using the old patch caused the cached version of some file (who knows which file or which version) to not be compatible with whatever other files the game ended up with at the end.
So that might actually be useful information for people. If they modify files make sure the game's config file doesn't caching enabled. Now I just have to do what I originally planned, and reinstall the game and use the old patch without the combat animation bug and hope I don't screw up anything else. Three days well spent.

 

[ori]

Just as an info:
you can clear the cache by holding down the shift key during startup.
But glad it worked out somehow