PBEM game crashing, anyone else have this problem?

[zerksees]

I am currently playing a PBEM game with two human and six AI players. It is a deity level game and it is currently stuck at 880 AD. After the last human player takes his turn in 880, the AI civs start their moves and at the end of the visible moves the game crashes. It "performs an illegal operation" and gets shut down.

I have tried the game on three different computers on Windows 98, 2000 and XP, using different PTW disks and it always ends the same. All computers have the 1.21f patch installed.

Has anyone had this type of problem?

If so how was it resolved?

Has anyone completed a similar type of game and it went OK?

I am trying to get technical support from Atari (Firaxis), but so far all they told me was to reinstall and clean the disk. I sent them the sav version of the game and told them what to do but they ignored that and sent the generic "reinstall and clean the disk" message.

Thanks for your help

 

[karlchen99]

Hi Zerksees!
I have some problems with my PBEM game too. It still runs up to 1780 A.D., it's much smaller than your game and crashed with the same error...

Actually I had some problems before with the same game. But nothing serious. Like a problem with diplomacy between the human players.

Did you have some problems before the major crash as well?

Cheers
Karlchen

 

[zerksees]

Absolutely - I had other problems.

The main problem we noticed is that when the other human player and I tried to end a trade, we discovered it was no longer visible on the diplomacy screen. Yet if you look at the domestic advisor screen it still showed that I was sending the luxury and he was still receiving it.

Are your problems similar?

We tried changing preferences to "always renegotiate deals" to no avail. I got the run-around from Atari - they say my game install and this game are both corrupted. The only way to fix it is deinstall, reinstall and start over. How irritating! I was hopeful the latest patch would fix it (1.27f I think), but it did not.

In the readme with that patch, there were discussions about a fix that would enable a game to keep its own preferences rather than using the preferences of the computer it was played on. I think this may clear up my problem next time but this game is stuck in limbo.

Somehow Atari was able to tell my SAV game was corrupted, so my current plan is to start sending the SAVs from points earlier in the game (I kept them all) to determine if I can find one that is not corrupted. Maybe I can start from a pre-corrupted point with the new patch and it will be OK.

 

[karlchen99]

The problems sounds similar to my problem with the game. Yesterday I take a closer look on the reason of the crash and it is (in my case) a trade problem! My last turn ends with an end of a trade between me and the other human player. I use the "Civ Multi Tool" to check the trades between me and him. And I find out that one of the trades is corrupted. The tool is able to change every detail of a trade and you are able to edit/delete every one. Except this one. The tool crashed if I tried to delete the broken trade. Fortunately I could extend the time for the trade... and it works! So it's seems like I have to live with the trade up to the end of the game or: I will destroy the streets to the goods for just 1 or 2 turns... than the deal is canceled too.

So I will try that. But I suggest you to use this savegame editor: "Civ Multi Tool" as well. It works very fine!

On the other hand my human opponent has found an other solution. But I didn't check it up to now...

But I will check before we go on with the game, maybe he had a better solution!

 

[karlchen99]

My friend has a equal solution. So it seams to be the only chance to keep the game running.

We tried to break the contract on normal way but it doesn't work. Even when you cut the streets to the goods, declare war on each other or give the cities as a present... nothing works.

But I have a question for you. In your game one of the human players make a present to the other player? I think of some trade contacts without getting something back for it.

Maybe we can find the well for that crash to avoid it for the next games.

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by karlchen99
But I have a question for you. In your game one of the human players make a present to the other player? I think of some trade contacts without getting something back for it.

I believe we were gifting luxuries to each other. Since it was a team effort there was no reason to negotiate. If I had an extra luxury, I gave it to him, and vice-versa. We were probably also gifting technology. However we were not gifting contacts. I was selling that to the AI

I will have to try the editor you mentioned. It might take me a while to get to it but I will reply back when I do.

 

[karlchen99]

The usage of that tool is very simple... don't worry.

But it seems to me that the problem is "gifting luxuries". We did the same. Actually the crashed trade was such a deal. Check your savegame. I am sure that a corrupted trade like that is your problem as well.

I think in the next PBEM game we have to avoid that!

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by karlchen99
The usage of that tool is very simple... don't worry.

Yesterday I downloaded the multi tool version 1.02. In the readme it says it does not work for PTW. I wonder if this is why you can't change anything. I was able to look at the game with the multi tool, but any time I tried to save a change it crashed.

What version are you using?

If it works for changing other PTW games, where did you download it from? Maybe I found a thread for an older version of the game - thanks

 

[karlchen99]

I use the same version. And I can change everything in the savegame. But today we found a bug in that tool. Maybe you have the same problem. It seems that the tool has problems with to much units on the map. Because we had to change a trade again. And it crashed with this error message. Or the savegame is getting to big. The current size is 229 KB.

I will have a look for a newer version... by the way... I got that tool from these forum...