Possible CTD fix. See if it works for you.

[SmCaudata]

Okay, this worked for me.

I was getting crashes to destop on my second game. They were initially about 90 minutes apart. As I progressed they got closer together and more severe. The last few crashes were bringing the system to a blue screen or another type of freeze. I could play for 5-10 minutes before the lock up. This was around 1900AD on a standard continental map with 6 other civs.

I went into the Civ directory and copied the Resources\Temp folder to my desktop. I then deleted all the files inside of it.

I kept the files around just in case this made the game unplayable. The reason I took out these files is because temp folders are usually okay to blast. Also, I figured it was a kind of cache and since the problem was getting more frequent, I thought this was a good candidate. Deleting cache has fixed games for me in the past, though usually incorrect textures and other graphic problems.

I reloaded the game and ran for over 90 minutes without a crash. The game was a little choppy the first turn and slow framerate if I scrolled out to the world view (I could be taxing my system here though). Also, if I hit escape the menu brought up had a purple rectangle instead of the Civ logo...other than that the game ran fine with no crash. I actually turned it off.

Anyway, see if that works for you. I can deal with a bit of choppiness and purple boxes if it keeps the game from crashing. I haven't done extensive testing to see if this continues to work, but I figured I would get the idea out there and see. If this works for others, that would point to the temp files getting corrupted somehow on certain systems.

 

[SmCaudata]

I got rid of the purple rectangle on the in game options menu. I put some files back in the temp directory.

civ4_title* (3 of them that started like this)

I noticed that this directory also contained one referring to Gandhi but none of the other leaders in the game. I was playing as India. What is curious to me is that the program did not go and grab the civ titles from somewhere else when they were not in the temp directory. Also, why are the other leaders in the game not in the tiemp directory. I did see Gandhi's image at the end of the game when I won, so this file was correctly looked up.

It looks like the code for caching files needs a bit of a look. The majority of the people don't seem to have this issue, but there is a high percantage who do. Hopefully they will fix this soon.

 

[Schee]

I don't have the time to try that this evening, but I looked at my Resources\Temp folder, and I also have the temp_gandhi.tga file (and it's also the only temp_<leader>.tga file I have).

Except I haven't ever played as someone else than Louis XIV or Napoléon

 

[SmCaudata]

I started up a third game and it is now crashing. Also, this third game has not made any new files in that temp folder. I guess they are used elsewhere. It must just have been coincidental that me moving those files out of the directory was done just before the game worked for a couple hours. My guess is that there is something that needs to happen to crash and I apparently did not do that for the remainder of my 2nd game.

This problem is very frustrating. People report that turning off autosaves helps a bit. Others ahve said to switch down to 4x AGP. All these "fixes" may just be solving a specific issue that is one of the causes of the crashes. Hopefully firaxis can narrow things down and fix this up quick like.

 

[Woody]

I started having frequent CTD on my last game. I was playing with a huge map and about 1800 I started to get crashes. They were all just Civ4 quiting and exiting to desktop except one. That crash gave be a BSOD, but because of it I solved my problem, the BSOD said the error was with nv4***.dll. I knew that nearly any file that starts with nv4 has something to do with my video card drivers. I went and download and installed the 81.85 forceware drivers and didnt have a crash for the rest of the game(another 4-5 hours)

 

[neriana]

I get crash to desktop pretty often in full-screen mode, and NEVER in windowed mode. Everything runs more smoothly in windowed mode as well, at 1280X960 resolution and nearly the highest settings.

 

[sbear]

The temp folder has to do something with the crashes. I was having persistent crashes to desktop that eventually lead to hard crashes freezing up the system and rebooting. Saved games would not load. Deleted the temp folder and I could load games again. The annoying crashes were gone - for a while. Now the game started doing it again and I get an error when I try saving a game. Autosave works though. At least the hard crashes are gone...

Could deleting the temp folder and less crashes be a coincidence? I think no, since before I deleted it the game was totally unplayable to the point I was about to take it back to the store. The question is, why do these crashes start reocurring? No more temp folder to delete

The other question is, did Firaxis actually beta test this game or is the paying end user now also the beta tester?!! Why does the build start with a "0" anyway?

 

[mrgenie]

The other question is, did Firaxis actually beta test this game or is the paying end user now also the beta tester?!! Why does the build start with a "0" anyway?

Well, it's obvious someone needed cash, and very quickly!!! so we're not beta(0) testers, I think the real beta testers were the game developers themself. I didnt notice any REAL_not programming involved_Person to be a beta tester. So I assume firaxis people just pretend beeing beta testers, writing nice stories, publishing nice pictures, it's all part of marketing strategy. I'm very sure they also told people of IGN or others reviewers to start only small games to get to the final parts of the game quickly so their reviews be complete, while knowing the performance issues and things like CTD not happening on big systems with small maps. I know some told me they also have crashes on small maps, but testing it myself thouroughly I am 99% sure it's all the performance issue!! I can play 8games on Standard or smaller and i get 0,0crashes untill the end of the game, i started 4Huge maps already and I always get crashes around the time I have half of the map explorer. so it's definitly a performance issue we're talking about. anyway, there were never real beta testers, only marketing people of 2Kgames and Firaxes. and they were spreading nice talks to get our psychotics to the point that we all WANTED TO BUY that game, NO MATTER WHAT!!! and they succeeded!!! maybe it's ok if they just need money to progress the game and let the big bosses drive big mercedes..but they should have told us:"hey, we all gonna screw you! we gonna tell you this is a final release but we know damn well there are at least 100bugs to find in this game within 4hours of playing, including huge performance issues" at least i would have know and delayed the buying..but now I paid for something of which i could prosecute other industries and force them to give me back my money or fix the problems within a reasonable amount of time(which would be up to 14 days) im waiting more then 2 weeks now for firaxis to fix things! they are definitly screwing everybodies rights here and they are big liers and i hpe some more honorable company will take over the development of civ....Sid! you lost all the trust i had in you! you went from a good designer into a money monkey! get your hands off this game before you totally screw it!