[PTW] My game is freezing during the inter-turn

[Ray2]

Some info:


- I am playing a custom version of ‘The Ancient Mediterranean mod’ (for PTW) by Thamis, with lots of added content.

- I have played a normal game (I am around t.200) without any issues at all.

- Then I decided to play-test a new game fast, simply by ending each turn immediately, just to check if the game progresses normally until the last turn. In both of these playtests, the game froze somewhere after turn 200 (2nd era of the scenario).

- Since I couldn’t use Sima’s Multiplayer Tool (incompatible with PTW), my only option to check what’s going on was to start a new game with the scenario in ‘Debug Mode’ and ‘Map Explored’ options enabled.


And indeed the game froze again in turn 238. This happens towards the end of the inter-turn, when a barbarian swordsman is attacking an AI unit (red arrow in the pic below):

Please, let me know if you have any ideas about what could be causing the game to freeze.

Also, are there any tools I could use to edit a PTW save game? The only one I know about is the ‘Civ3MultiTool’ by Gramphos, but when I use it to remove any units from my save game, I cannot load it anymore (I am getting some Load Error – Error Reading File).

 

[Ray2]

After searching the forum I found this post by Civinator:

In my eyes it´s not the number of units in the biq that causes the problems. The next version of CCM (as you did citate that mod) at present holds far over 2.000 different units and runs without problems.

I had to fight a lot with freezes while bringing CCM to the first Betatestversion. Mostly the freezes result from AI pathfinding problems, especially when units with the wheeled flag were combined with units without the wheeled flag. One of the strangest testified bugs was a chariot with the wheeled flag escorting a settler. The chariot attacked a unit on a mountain that was forbidden terrain for the chariot (and there was no road) and than the unit did freeze until the end of time. The CCM prebetatest-thread is full with such reports.

The best methode is to watch a game of your mod in DEBUG mod. Here you can play computer vs. computer and to see what happens before the crash / freeze. Onother fast methode could be to steal the military plans of the other civs (may be in different starts of the saved game) and to watch what happens before the freeze.

My game freezes when the barbarian is attacking a Peltast. The Peltast in this mod has a movement of 2. Could it be that the Peltast tries to retreat and the AI ‘sends’ him to an impassable tile of the map? I think units cannot enter those half-black border tiles of the map. If that’s the case then probably this is what causes the game to freeze.

I need to check this out.

 

[timerover51]

After searching the forum I found this post by Civinator:




My game freezes when the barbarian is attacking a Peltast. The Peltast in this mod has a movement of 2. Could it be that the Peltast tries to retreat and the AI ‘sends’ him to an impassable tile of the map? I think units cannot enter those half-black border tiles of the map. If that’s the case then probably this is what causes the game to freeze.

I need to check this out.

I have the same problem. When it happens, I escape the game, reboot the computer and restart the game, going to the most recent Auto-Sav, and starting from there. Why it freezes, I have not figured out as yet, but it tends to happen when I am playing on one of my Huge Maps, like 320 X 300, or slightly smaller.

 

[register]

When my game is freezing, I do not know why, I'm saving a game and after restart I'm changing a queue of buildings and units to build, so the completion is in different turn and this always helps.
Btw, you have a nice city gfx which I have not seen yet, Padua, Lyrnessos, Corfinum and Spina. Can I find it in our database?

 

[Ray2]

I have the same problem. When it happens, I escape the game, reboot the computer and restart the game, going to the most recent Auto-Sav, and starting from there. Why it freezes, I have not figured out as yet, but it tends to happen when I am playing on one of my Huge Maps, like 320 X 300, or slightly smaller.

I remember my game freezing too occasionally, when playing max size maps (e.g. TETurkhan's 362x362 worldmap). Probably this happens because of the lack of memory (?), especially when I also have a dozen of programs running in the background. But as long as you can continue your game after a restart/reboot it’s not so bad. Just in case, remember to always save your game before you end each turn.

When my game is freezing, I do not know why, I'm saving a game and after restart I'm changing a queue of buildings and units to build, so the completion is in different turn and this always helps.
Btw, you have a nice city gfx which I have not seen yet, Padua, Lyrnessos, Corfinum and Spina. Can I find it in our database?

Thanks. This is an Ancient Greek city graphics set by Kyriakos. You can find it here: https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/realistic-plus-series-ancient-greek.19218/. Check out his other resources too, they are really nice.

 

[Ray2]

My game freezes when the barbarian is attacking a Peltast. The Peltast in this mod has a movement of 2. Could it be that the Peltast tries to retreat and the AI ‘sends’ him to an impassable tile of the map? I think units cannot enter those half-black border tiles of the map. If that’s the case then probably this is what causes the game to freeze.

I need to check this out.

And this is exactly what happened

I tested the same situation using the editor. When the Iberian unit attacks the Phoenician peltast, the game sends him to the tile with the red circle, as that is the only tile not adjacent to an enemy unit. Unfortunately, it also happen to be one of those impassable tiles (you can’t even place units in them using the editor):

So, solutions:

- Enabling ‘Polar Ice Caps’ didn’t change anything. Anyway it was not any kind of solution having a polar ice cap in N. Africa, as it would happen in this map.

- Enabling Y-Wrapping solved the issue. But again it’s not very realistic having your Peltast in Russia appearing in the Arabian peninsula after retreating.

- Only thing I can think of is creating a buffer zone with water tiles, in the north and south, so as to not allow any units to fight close to those impassable border tiles. Unfortunately this will not look good at all in this type of map, but I don’t know what else I can do.

Please, let me know if you can think of a better solution.

 

[Civinator]

Ray2, why are you playing with PtW and not with C3C ?

You can create such a "buffer zone" with land terrain, too.