Major lockup ---> crashing problem and savegame problem...

[Illuminati092]

A few days ago I bought Civilization 4, and have had no
problems installing or playing the game up to a point. Once I
researched the technology "satellites," which reveals the entire map,
I noticed a VERY significant slow down in game play. I
initially thought nothing of it and continued to play. The game then
suddenly slowed down and stopped responding, and I was forced to hit
the reset button on my tower. I waited 3-4 minutes before hitting the
button, and the system still did not respond to anything. Now, any of
the save games that I have saved after the point of the "satellites"
research will not load, and the game simply crashes back to Windows
with no error message. I tried installing the game patch, but this
did not help the problem at all. I have included my DXdiag

Lag should not be a problem on my:

3.06 GHz Intel P4 with HT
1280 megs PC2100 DDR
128 meg GeForce 6800
300 gig Maxtor HD
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2

 

[Zydor]

Illuminati092

Its very likely you have hit the memory management problem - a known issue in Civ IV.

There is a User patch that addresses this, has not worked for all, but has worked for the majority of people who have had the slow game - slow turns - slow saves - increased CTDs in the late game (typicaly starting from around the 1700 / 1800s). There could be other things causing this (so keep expectations on the level), but as you are apparently stable - as such - in the early game, you look to be a classic for this fix, and its worth trying this first as its easy to install / deinstall. As of this morning the thread dealing with the fix has had 114,000 hits, with lots of endorsements there. It does not touch game code, nor mess with your PC setup, so you can consider it a benign Patch that is in any case easy to deinstall if you dont want it in the end.

Go here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=146309
Post 1 shows you how to install - its an easy unzip, copy and run it. The default settings (there are 2 that you can change ) get most up and running, but its very very worthwhile optimising the values of the settings to get best results. Have a look at the thread and you will get the idea. The guys on the thread are v helpful, so ask if you have concerns / confused / want advice on the settings.

Also look here
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=3480992#post3480992
Its new Gforce drivers that may be of help with other less drastic problems you have.

We all hope it will not be long before the next Offcial Patch - some news on that is at:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148872 (Post 19)

If the fix does not work for you come back here, and we can look deeper into your setup.

Regards
Zy