Large game crashes.

[mo123567]

Does anyone play large marathon games with lots of civs? That's what I usually do. I like to have every civ in the game and I play the longest game setting.

I've been playing my third RiFE game. It's been going for quite a while and now on turn 915, or so, I can not continue because the game crashes every time I try to end the turn. This was the same fate of my first game as the Amurites as well. (My second game as D'Tesh was cut short by my choice because I decided to wait for the new version).

I have a fairly powerful PC and the turn length had been bearable so I'm not sure what the issue is. Does anyone else have this issue?

I'd post my save but I get an error saying that the file is too big.

 

[ExMachina]

Do you get an error message saying "memory allocation failure" or anything like that? It sounds to me like it may be related to the size of the game.

 

[mo123567]

The game just shuts down while computing the turn change and I get a windows message saying something like "Civ BTS has shut down. Windows is searching for a solution". Unfortunately no solution is ever found.

I've successfully gotten to the end of large games before in other versions. Maybe the extra civs in RiFE pushed the game and my PC to the limit. By the time my game ended, though there were only like 15-18 civs left.

I'm not 100% sure but pillaging might be part of the problem. In my game as the Amurites I reached a point were I couldn't go to the next turn so I went back a couple of turns. I had been heavily pillaging my opponents territory with HN units, but the second time I played those turns I didn't bother since I just wanted to hurry to see if the game crashed again and it didn't. I was able to play another 50 or so turns until I got stuck again. Not sure if I was pillaging again.

In my most recent game as the Mechanos, I had been pillaging a bit with giants and range attacking opponent civs from the safety of mountains with airships when it got stuck.

Does the computer have a tough time calculating resource changes?

 

[Meldon]

I love playing large, long games like that too, and always got the same crashes. But I switched to normal speed on a large map with 10 civs rather than epic speed on huge with 15 civs, and I haven't crashed yet. I just hope the new version lets me play my huge games =/

 

[Moosh]

This has happened to me as well, and I know it's not my PC; core i7, 6GB DDR3 memory, GT240 GPU, it's like something is causing the game to just terminate itself. I load the game back up and end the turn and it's like it never crashed, just goes about it's busy as normal.

-Moosh

 

[Bezhukov]

I've been having luck going into worldbuilder and removing any lizards trying to move onto tiles they can't or animals that have gotten stuck on peaks.

I've played about 10 RiFE games now and they've all crashed at some point between turn 200-300 epic speed.

 

[inuyashasama]

My games will crash in the same way, but also give a memory allocation error, which just means that the graphics card couldn't keep up. Lowering the graphics makes it stop. Hope that helps, though it sounds like it won't.

 

[snarko]

Keep in mind that having a very powerful computer compared to a powerful computer will do little for civ 4. It can only use about 2 gb ram. The processor help the computer calculate faster but that won't really reduce crashes. Also civ 4 can't use multiple cores so even if you have four it'll only use one.

 

[mo123567]

My game crashes every once in awhile but the big problem is when I get to a point were the crash is persistant, as in restarting the game and ending the turn again produces the same result. I'll have to check the WB as Bezhukov suggested. Something that is not supposed to be happening is probably happening. I hope a solution can be found. It would be so anti-climatic for me to have to resort to smaller games. If I could get away with excluding a buggy civ or 2, that would be OK.

 

[Meldon]

Unfortunately, the only thing that works for me is switching to Large map with 10 civs. Huge map with 15 civs (My preference) crashes too much, I think it's too much for the computer/game to handle when you get farther in the game and everyone has a lot of cities/units.

 

[(name here)]

I think certain civs have associated crashes related to random events. In particular, the Khadi seem really unstable, I've never managed a successful game with them in it.

 

[Jheral]

Good thing the Kahdi are going away, then.

mo123567 - I feel your pain about not being able to play long, huge games; I used to play huge maps on marathon with 16-18 players, but I've finally conceded and moved down to large; too much lag and crashes.

 

[Meldon]

I doubt the Kahdi are my problem, I've actually never had a game with them in it. Ever. Which is really weird in hindsight.

 

[(name here)]

I doubt the Kahdi are my problem, I've actually never had a game with them in it. Ever. Which is really weird in hindsight.

Probably because all of those crashed. The Scions are also slightly screwy, and the infernals have some major stability problems.

 

[Meldon]

I always assumed it was the Austrin since a message sometimes pops up upon starting the game that something was messed up with them.

The Kahdi may cause some crashes, but not all of them. Sometimes I make games where I choose all of the enemy civs, no Kahdi, still crashes. The Scions may have something to do with a lot of it, they're in a lot of my games, but Scionless ones still crash. Always crashes before anybody can summon the Infernals.

I should do some experiments with some of these civs, but my hypothesis is still the game size is just too large.

 

[Torugu]

I doubt that with the exception of a few special cases civ selection has much to do with whether you're experiencing crashes or not. I have played a lot of games with the Kahdi in and I didn't experience any more crashes than in games without them (not like it matters at this point of time since they're going to be removed anyway).
I am somewhat more ready to believe that there are some scion-specific crashes since they have so many unique mechanics but even so I can't recall having more crashes in scion games than in games without them. In fact they were in in some of my longest and most resource heavy (huge maps, many civs) games and I didn't experience any crashes at all.

Like Meldon said, game size is the most likely culprit for random/semi-random (as in repeatable but not tied to one specific event) crashes, not much you can do against that.

 

[mo123567]

I'm still pretty sure my issue has to do with something wrong happening on the turn I'm trying to play. I had only a few non-repeatable crashes in this game and they did not increase as the game got larger. My other game was the same way. All of a sudden on a certain turn I just can't continue. It's not that it built up over time as the game got larger. The game had been completely playable up until this point.

 

[dommain]

I been having issue with this also and its not my system. It keeps happening on standard map. I can delete certain civilizations and I can continue past repeatable crashes. The ones that have unique abilities like -found settlement- cause issues. The issue is they keep trying to use it on turn 2, 3 and so on for some reason, for example, and other things like that I think. I had a repeatable crash with Grigori some how on turn 35.

The other reason is the the war between animals and barbs cause certain spawn to keep casting spells on each other using up memory and computing power.

 

[Mufus]

I've found that many crashes happen on turns when AI players generate Great Leaders. Makes sure that you save the game often, and have the new random-seed on re-load option enabled (very important). When the game crashes, just reload - you'll usually be able to get past most turns with the first reload attempt.

The other killers are when some of the rituals are triggered. These are pretty unstable and when your system is low on resources will flatten the game reliably every time they complete. Multi-turn spells (or spell effects) used to similarly affect crash rate. For some reason, now I've upgraded my system and am running with a much beefier graphics card, dual core CPU, Windows 7 with 8GB RAM these rituals and multi-turn spell haven't been troubling me anymore.

It's a terrible state to be in to play a game, but I tend to save the game every turn prior to hitting "end turn"... sad but true. It doesn't help my disk drive's remaining space but at least I don't get so frustrated when playing Civ.

 

[mo123567]

I've finally gotten around to messing around with the world builder. I tried deleting the Khadi but the crash still happens. I tried stopping a Chosen of Esus ritual but I'm not sure how, short of deleting a Sidar city, which I will try next. I've noticed that the crash always occurs during a certain sound effect but I have no idea what the sound effect represents. It's hard to describe in words but it's a single tone followed by some whispy sounds, then the game crashes.