Freesmog
Skeptic1938222569
I stopped by BestBuy on the way home from picking up my old laptop. The first saleswoman seemed pushier and once I shied away from the much more expensive models she was pushing recommended that I act fast to get that Asus. I then double checked online though and found that it was not available for shipping and is not in stock anywhere near here.
Of course, that is why I like reading Newegg reviews because it's not some salesperson trying to move a product.
The second salesman took more time to listen to how I use my laptop and what went bad with my last one. He insisted that as someone who burnt out my last video card and lost a motherboard in the process, I should really have a machine with a dedicated graphics card. He said that among everything they sell this is the best suited for my needs. He claimed that it would last me a lot longer than any of their cheaper models. With tax it costs about $10 more than I have now, but if I put it on my mom's BestBuy credit card I won't have to pay anything for 18 months. They do not have any in stock at that location, but they do at the next closest branch, they are getting more soon here, and I could have it shipped for free to my house if I order online. I think I am leaning towards this one, but will continue to look for better deals online before making a final decision.
My first thought was being surprised that the Intel integrated video chip would overheat that easily. I would look into it. Intel chips are usualy pretty cool, and when it comes to any computer, finding a solid motherboard and video (chip or card) is essential (again check reviews).
Edit: I just looked up the graphics card, and it seems that the salesman lied about it having a dedicated graphics card. My research shows that it has one of the best integrated graphics cards on the market with comparable performance to an entry level dedicated graphics card, but that frying the graphics card would still ruin the motherboard. Come to think of it, I am pretty sure that the sign there clearly said that the graphics card has 512mb memory that it does not share with the CPU. Maybe that is not the same as having a dedicated graphics card and he just chose not to correct my confusion.
You can see a side by side comparison of the two I am now most strongly considering here. Note that the Toshiba is $100 cheaper at BestBuy.com than NewEgg.com and with my gift card would be reduced to exactly the same price as the Asus, but would take a week longer to get to me. Edit: It appears that they actually just got a new shipment at my local store, so I could pick one up immediately instead of having it delivered.
Again, I would check reviews(can't stress this enough). I don't know anything about Toshiba, but know Intel and Asus have been around and are decent companies. Newegg might actually match your price or plan, or don't care as much about selling Toshiba products. Oh, and about Bestbuy, I know their tech support is marginal, however if something happens during your warranty they will replace it with a better model if they are not selling it anylonger. My friend, granted a few years past, used to abuse the Bestbuy warranty program LOL. He'd buy the extended warranty (or not) and before it ran out, he would damage the product somehow and get a new one (often times a better model). In general BB charges more cause it's a storefront, has crappy tech support and/or too expensive, but their warranty program is very good
I just got around to trying your save game.First I tried to see if I could edit the file to work under my version without changing the name, but that corrupted the file and make the game crash so I changed the name of the mod on my version instead. I ran into a WoC Problem too, and since I'm using a 6 year old laptop my machine probably had a worse time handling it than yours. My computer became completely unresponsive until I just turned it off. I think that is a larger map than I usually used even with my newer laptop before it broke.
I could not tell much by simply playing the game, but since I have logging turned on (as explained here) I have a couple of ideas. The end of PythonDbg.log says that the last thing that was happened is that the city of Stoville was acquired and kept. That could very well be related to another Infernal player entering the game. Alternately the problem could be related to the last event found in BBAI.log, which is Jonas III's Dragon Fanatic casting Evangelize. Apparently I used the same txt_key for evangelizing to units or cities with this particular religion, so I'm not sure which spell is being cast. It it is SPELL_EVANGELIZE_UNITS_DRAGON_CULT and is successful, then it could be causing the next unit to call def effectCultusDraconis(caster) and defect to another player while the AI still thinks it needs to be given orders. If it is the city version, then maybe it is triggering a revolt.
I don't really want to risk another game on a map that size on this pc. Maybe you can test to see if changing the <bAllowAI>1 tag under SPELL_EVANGELIZE_UNITS_DRAGON_CULT helps?
Lately I've been sticking with Large map size (I've always went giant in the past) but for this particular game I chose giant because I was using Full of Resources map (a mapscript that was also made for FFH2 but somewhat outdated) with the Hub map (and I thought it wouldn't be enough land). Anyways, bad idea I found out as for some reason sea maps bog down my computer more than full land maps (like Highlands, fantasy realm, etc.). It would be awesome to bring the Full of Resources up to date and improve it for FFH2 mods. I did notice evangelizing non disciple units the promotion had immediate effect, but the following turn was removed FYI. I'm going to try another game on a large map instead tonight and get back to you. I won't change anything, and if there is a problem hopefully this time can be played on your laptop.