Submitting game with frequent crashes?

[dalamb]

In GOTM 33 my game keeps crashing every turn (after I make a small amount of progress) with some message about allocating graphics, despite my having reduced settings to Medium. If I incremental my way through this situation, will I still be able to submit it or is it going to look like I cheated by reloading?

I do reload from autosave and try to duplicate my moves as best I can, but I'm in the midst of a war with Napoleon so there's a lot of stuff to remember each turn.

I'm about to reduce the settings to "low" to see if that works better, but I've still gone several turns of frequent reloads.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Sorry to hear of this.

When a player reports a crash, we consider that game individually based on circumstances etc.

At the mildest extreme, if you've had one crash, your autosaves were set to every turn so you only had to replay a part turn, and you've PM'd the relevent staff person (AlanH or the person responsible for that xOTM - in the case of GOTM33, Ainwood), and - most importantly - what we see when we examine your submitted game matches what you've told us, then your game will almost certainly be accepted. Obviously, if you have millions of crashes, there would eventually come a point where we'd say the potential for taking advantage of information from too many part-turns crashed is too great and we'd have to reject the game.

In this case, the best advice I can offer is to do everything you can to reduce load on your computer/graphics card to avoid further crashes as much as possible - eg. go through all the in-game options AND the civilization IV.ini file to set the graphics to the lowest possible settings, reboot your machine (in case something left over from the crashes is causing problems), consider swapping to another machine if there is one available, etc. and play on and submit (and PM Ainwood or AlanH about the problems), but be prepared for the possibility that your game might not be accepted.

(btw I've sometimes found that if Civ keeps crashing in full screen mode, changing the .ini file so it runs in windowed mode sometimes helps).

 

[dalamb]

Yes, I have autosave set to each turn. I didn't know about windowed mode and scanning the .ini file, so I'll try those. If all that doesn't work, I'll "retire" and submit that game, with a note to Ainwood).

Does the number of units I have affect graphics crashes? I have lots.

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Does the number of units I have affect graphics crashes? I have lots.

I can't offhand see why the number of units you have would affect graphics crashes (unless you having more units puts more load on the AI, working out how it should move), but it's plausible that the number of units you are moving in a turn might do, since the graphics card has to work more to show the moves.

 

[dalamb]

So, if an SoD is too big, moving it might cause problems? That could explain my troubles.

I have given up and will submit a "retired" game from before the crashes started.

 

[Ronnie1]

I had similar probs with botm8, i ended up not completing, I fogot to retire and submit before the deadline, looking at my notes, i had 8 crashes over 70 turns, it became very tedious!

 

[da_Vinci]

I had a crash fest about a year and a half ago, usually late game, due to my card having either no dedicated VRAM or only 64 dedicated and rest shared (depending on which source you read). A new laptop with 256 dedicated VRAM (also more pipelines ... vertex and pixel varieties IIRC) and I have been crash free since.

Tricks I learned during that time:

Move units, save frequently after various engagements (hard to replicate the exact order units went to battle if there is a crash)

After all moves, save game, then go look at your cities in the city screen. I had lots of crashes moving from city to city, and it sucks to have to replay all the moves for a crash during city management.

Just before end turn, save. If the game crashes in the IBT but before the autosave, you will be glad you did (had that happen too).

How to not have a zillion save files? I used one file named "XOTM ## running save" and just kept overwriting that one.

Also, you may benefit from saving and rebooting every 10 turns or so ... (if the mods don't object?)

If you are crashing every turn, no workaround will be worth it. Then you need to fix the ultimate cause.

dV

 

[zvovesny]

In GOTM 33 my game keeps crashing every turn (after I make a small amount of progress) with some message about allocating graphics, despite my having reduced settings to Medium. If I incremental my way through this situation, will I still be able to submit it or is it going to look like I cheated by reloading?

I do reload from autosave and try to duplicate my moves as best I can, but I'm in the midst of a war with Napoleon so there's a lot of stuff to remember each turn.

I'm about to reduce the settings to "low" to see if that works better, but I've still gone several turns of frequent reloads.

Dalamb, try to underclock graphics card. It worked for me

 

[dalamb]

Where do I find out how to do that?

 

[nokem]

Where do I find out how to do that?

Some graphics cards ship with 'overclocking' utilities which allow you to change the clock speed at which your card operates - to make it run faster and hotter than the default mode. You can also use such a utility to make it run slower and cooler, reducing the risk of crashes from overheating.

If you Google "underclock graphics card" you'll find plenty of articles. But beware than underclocking may be as unstable as overclocking if you reduce the voltage across the graphics chip too far.

nokem

 

[zvovesny]

If you have Geforce, you can do it via RivaTuner. I slowed my GTS8600 down about 50Hz and suddenly all BTS crashes were away. And I really want to have stable Civ rather than to have few FPS more in Doom

 

[DynamicSpirit]

Now if I'd seen that post before I bought a new graphics card last week, motivated largely by a desire to stop civ crashing on me....

(Swapped my GeForce 7600GS for a GeForce 9500. At the same time upgraded from 1GB to 3GB of RAM. It's worked beautifully, Civ runs faster, less delays during the AI turns, and so far no crashes. Unfortunately, upgrading both memory and graphics card at the same time makes it hard to tell which one made the difference. My guess is the extra memory is responsible for the AI speed improvements and for killing any crashes that occur during autosaves, and the graphics card for the lack of crashes during unit movements. ).

 

[da_Vinci]

Now if I'd seen that post before I bought a new graphics card last week, motivated largely by a desire to stop civ crashing on me....

(Swapped my GeForce 7600GS for a GeForce 9500. At the same time upgraded from 1GB to 3GB of RAM. It's worked beautifully, Civ runs faster, less delays during the AI turns, and so far no crashes. Unfortunately, upgrading both memory and graphics card at the same time makes it hard to tell which one made the difference. My guess is the extra memory is responsible for the AI speed improvements and for killing any crashes that occur during autosaves, and the graphics card for the lack of crashes during unit movements. ).

Hmmm ... the GeForce Go 7600 in my laptop has been virtually crashless for a year and a half. 2 GB RAM in the box. Were your crashes said to be due to video issues? Maybe it was not the card, or maybe your instance of the card was the issue, not the features of the model itself?

dV