Stability issues

[arthurF]

I am currently playing with the december 1 version. Not only that but i threw out all civ 5 files, reinstalled, and then downloaded and installed that version of the Community patch.
I play HUGE maps, with epic timescales. In the late game, usually sometime after 1700 AD., i get crashes. I have been crashing in late game with all version of CP that i have installed in the last year ( about 5 versions ? Maybe 6?), but this is the first time i have had the same problem after taking these precautions.
I have reported the issue to the Github page, following instructions, with log files etc. But i have never seen any discussion of what was causing these crashes, and what was being done about them.

I love playing with CP, it is hard to go back to vanilla, but after spending upwards of 7 hours on a single campaign, and then being forced to abandon all that because of the instability, i am growing frustrated. Could we have more transparency about what is being done to stop these crashes?
I doubt that anything but real playtesting will find these. There is no serious programmer that is going to spend upwards of 8hrs running one game just in the hopes of crashing.

 

[Moi Magnus]

Are you playing with any "aesthetic mod" ? Such as flag promotion, 2k texture terrain, RED, ...
If yes, try without.
(The CP AI need a lot of memory to work. Aesthetic mods require a lot of memory too. Civ is a 32 bit application, and is not very well coded, so may encounter memory overflow, causing crashes)

If no, then I don't know why you crash.

 

[arthurF]

No mods but CP. I wouldn't have even posted if there were other mods installed.

 

[Gazebo]

Big maps need a lot of memory. Probably a hardware limitation.

 

[arthurF]

16GB ram, i7 processor, and nvidia 970 gpu.

 

[Moi Magnus]

16GB ram, i7 processor, and nvidia 970 gpu.

Civ is 32 bit, so ram over 4GB cannot be used.

 

[Tekamthi]

I havent played dec 1 version; but have played other recent versions to late game on marathon/huge. I do get crashes that seem to increase later on, but can usually reload and move past these. Autosaves on every turn has become default for me when playing VP.

Having played a while now, though, I don't think it's VP anymore -- while it seems like there are more crashes under VP late game, I now speculate that I usually just got bored of vanilla by late game and retired, so didn't notice this as much... the odd time I remember continuing after missing early victory option, I vaguely recall getting crashes, too. Over time I've realized that the systems I run just don't like civ 5 on DX11 -- if I play w/ DX9 I get almost zero crashes, even late in game. I only play VP now but I imagine it would be the same w/ vanilla. When civ 5 launched it was only dx9 from what I recall, and from a completely non-technical perspective I'm guessing dx9 civ 5 might just be a little better 'cooked' than the newer engine. When I take dx11 (ie for touch controls sometimes), leader screens has to be on minimum.

I'm running a substantially lesser system than OP's... 8GB 4th gen i5 w/ ati 7870.. can def get late into VP game w/ dx9.

 

[Gazebo]

16GB ram, i7 processor, and nvidia 970 gpu.

That's fine, but what really matters is that civ is 32 bit. Furthermore, some systems have less 'active' and available memory than their full value, particularly with regards to the swap space on your HDD. Keeping civ on your SDD (if you have one) helps a LOT.

G

 

[arthurF]

I have over 500GB free on my hard drive (not an SSD though, sadly). Tekamthi, are you saying i should try running the DX9 version?

 

[Asterix Rage]

i should try running the DX9 version?

Don't. dx9 is for old

-Clean win install
-Clear App, processes and sercices as much as you can
-Clean Civ5 updated .279
Then you get the best of your 32b/3GB

If 16GB you can maybe alloc 12GB on a Ramdisk and set paging file in it

Frequency is everything. Max is much better
Best efficiency is 2 or 4 core max.

​

 

[Jarula]

I always do huge marathon dx9 works best ironically.vvmore stable.

 

[Asterix Rage]

I always do huge marathon dx9 works best ironically.vvmore stable.

OK
I had bad experiences with dx9 before. With a no dx11 GC !
In some cases must be better

 

[arthurF]

DX 9 doesn't seem to have helped.

 

[Tekamthi]

DX 9 doesn't seem to have helped.

forgot to mention dx11 throws a rendering error msg of some kind when i get these... so maybe not same issue.

I find fullscreen way more stable than window'd, might be worth a shot if you're still struggling, although again I think I have some dx11 rendering strangeness affecting this...

 

[arthurF]

I always play full screen. The thing is, again, is that this happens only in late game. Sometime after 1600AD. I cannot compare to smaller maps, because i do not play smaller maps (perhaps i will try, if no one has any other ideas).

 

[KCT]

Don't. dx9 is for old

-Clean win install
-Clear App, processes and sercices as much as you can
-Clean Civ5 updated .279
Then you get the best of your 32b/3GB

If 16GB you can maybe alloc 12GB on a Ramdisk and set paging file in it

Frequency is everything. Max is much better
Best efficiency is 2 or 4 core max.

​

I have never tried the Ramdisk idea... I think I will do that for my next game to see if it will let me use FlagPromotions

Have you had success using it or are you just suggesting it on a hunch?

 

[Tekamthi]

there's no good reason you would need a ramdisk to play civ 5 or VP... if you were to try this, and your crashing was gone, then I'd guess its probably your HDD right now thats the issue. It might be easier to just install civ to a different drive and try that way to test this though. Drive problems can sometimes manifest in strange ways.. That said, it would be a really strange symptom for a bad drive to crash civ 5 w/o other noticeable system issues.

I think the ramdisk suggestion was intended as a means of maximizing the use of your OP hardware, which should well exceed whatever civ 5 needs, or even can use, to run. I could be missing something though

 

[KCT]

there's no good reason you would need a ramdisk to play civ 5 or VP... if you were to try this, and your crashing was gone, then I'd guess its probably your HDD right now thats the issue. It might be easier to just install civ to a different drive and try that way to test this though. Drive problems can sometimes manifest in strange ways.. That said, it would be a really strange symptom for a bad drive to crash civ 5 w/o other noticeable system issues.

I think the ramdisk suggestion was intended as a means of maximizing the use of your OP hardware, which should well exceed whatever civ 5 needs, or even can use, to run. I could be missing something though

My problem with VP has been that I want to use FlagPromotions and R.E.D. Modpack and by the mid to late game I experience crash to desktop every few turns.

My PC is an i7-4790, GTX-980, 16GB RAM, game is on SSD.

After an initial test, the game definitely boots faster with it loaded onto RAM, we'll see if it prevents crashing though.

 

[Asterix Rage]

Clean install and used of compatible mods only is for stability
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mods-compatible-with-community-balance-patch-cbp.542679/

The paging file is always used. Especialy if VP/FlagP/R.E.D are loaded
I used a ramdisk with an old hardware to set this paging file on it before. It was very efficient on a 32b OS using much more than 4GB.
Technicaly, it can be tricky to handle this kind of unusual setting. Virtual memory is a low level feature on a OS.
Alternatively, you can set your paging file on a separate physical drive. It allows to use 2 bus instead of one to access the main c: drive and the virtual memory.

Disable virtual cores on your i7-4790 and raise the frequency as much as possible to get the best of it.