(SVN v3.5) Crashes, long initial load time

[Côte de Bœuf]

Hey there,
I'm trying to play Realism Invictus via the SVN available on SourceForge and I've had a recurring issue where my computer will abruptly shut off during play. In addition, it always takes an eternity for the mod to load initially--after booting the mod from unmodded BtS, the BtS task will disappear from my taskbar entirely and not appear again for 5-10 minutes.
The game runs flawlessly apart from these issues. The second issue is much less of a problem than the first, and if I could conclusively address the crashes I'd consider the situation totally resolved. I mentioned it because I thought it might be useful for diagnosing the cause of the first one.
Relevant circumstances:
- My computer runs Windows 10 64-bit.
- My computer is reasonably powerful. I won't post all specs unless it's absolutely necessary, but I feel like it should be able to handle something like this without issue hardware-wise.
- I changed Pericles' Creative trait to Industrious in the LeaderHeadInfo XML because I like to play Phi/Ind, Greece is my favorite Civ, and Pericles was responsible for the construction of the acropolis at Athens so it makes historical sense.
- I obtained this particular copy of Civ 4:BtS from GOG.com as part of the Civilization IV: Complete package.
Any help would be appreciated. R:I 3.5 sounds absolutely amazing and running into this issue has been a huge downer.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

The second issue is a non-issue, because that's how SVN is supposed to load, all of the assets are unpacked.

The first issue, if you're describing it properly, points at some fault in your hardware. One thing is for RI to crash (which it sometimes does, though quite rarely at this point), and another is for it to bring down the PC with it - which is not supposed to happen, and doesn't happen at all, and points that one of your hardware components (GPU, PSU, memory would be the three likeliest culprits) likely has a fault that's brought out under stress. I'd suggest running some stress tests through dedicated programs.

 

[Côte de Bœuf]

The following message is going to make it look like I'm not taking your suggestion seriously. I really am taking it seriously; however, it brought to mind a few other things I'd like to mention/ask.
Do you know of anything about R:I that would predispose a machine to crash like this? My memory is not good enough to exclude the possibility that something like this has happened before, but I can say with confidence that I've only experienced this particular issue with this consistency while playing R:I despite having played many other games that make similar demands on my hardware, most recently Rise of Mankind: A New Dawn's modmod Chronicles of Mankind.
One further thing to note is I've been trying to play on the "huge" map size and I have a bad habit of repeatedly regenerating the map when I start the game. While this is doubtless something that makes the game exponentially harder on my computer than it needs to be, it still points to a possible broader compromise that I'd like to at least know about going forward. If I could prevent things like this from happening by desisting from the practice I would, but at this point it's far from certain that that's the ultimate cause.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Yep, RI is really heavy on hardware - though most other major Civ 4 mods should also be. Civ 4 engine isn't really optimized to handle these amounts of contents, so with mods, Civ 4 memory footprint, both for GPU and RAM, is affected much more than by any more modern game would under similar conditions. The existence of dreaded MAF error, for instance, is a testament to the flaws of Civ 4 engine.

And speaking more generally, since nobody else is reporting hard crashes (as in, PC crashing instead of just game) but you, it is natural to assume there is some kind of problem on your side. Faulty hardware is a rather natural assumption at this point, though of course not a certainty. This is more or less the only piece of advice I could offer, since I can't reproduce and hence analyze the problem you reporting.

 

[Côte de Bœuf]

So it turns out that I had a ton of outdated drivers, including for my graphics card and CPU and probably for other important stuff that I don't know about. I'm updating them now. Hopefully this fixes things. Thank you for the advice.

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hope it helps! If it doesn't, I'd run some memory tests - often if there is a faulty RAM segment somewhere, it will only get used if RAM (or vRAM of GPU) is sufficiently full - which might happen with Civ 4 poor memory management.

 

[Robalex]

Hi Walter, Im not reporting hard crashes but most of us have it as far as I know, mainly when game advances to later eras. I have a good GPU, strong gcard and RAM, but after a few safe turns you need to start saving the game very often (almost each turn).

 

[Walter Hawkwood]

Hi Walter, Im not reporting hard crashes but most of us have it as far as I know, mainly when game advances to later eras. I have a good GPU, strong gcard and RAM, but after a few safe turns you need to start saving the game very often (almost each turn).

Those are not hard crashes you're talking about. It's just a MAF, where the game itself crashes. Note Côte de Bœuf talking how "computer will abruptly shut off", which is a whole different thing.

 

[Robalex]

sorry Walter, my mistake!