Tips? on being able to complete a huge game

[shapecharge]

All,

Need some help on how I can actually complete a huge marathon game without a crash's to desktop.
I got a good less then year old laptop, w/ win 7; 6 GB ram, 2GB video and easily meet all the minimum specs.
I have only been able to finish one game and surprisingly that was before even the .62 patch.
Was happy to see that late game crashes were a fixed in the last patch but apparently not for us who like huge maps and marathon games.

Typical Game for me:
Direct X 9
Huge Achipelego (sp) map setting
20 Civs and 20 CS.

Usually happens some where between turn 750-850 (marathon speed), just gives me the civ has stopped working windows checking for problems and CTD.

-Thoughts: It just can't handle (the game not my computer) multiple civ's with 30+ cities.
- Is there some way I can lower certain graphic options or the resolution size that others have found allow them to complete huge marathon maps w/o having the gray block fog of war instead of clouds. I am just running the defaults.

I have searched the treads for some solutions but no luck, am I just stuck w/o playing huge maps; is it all the water, should I try Pangea?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice:

So until I can hopefully some day complete a game its back to other game choices, and once again awaiting anthor patch. Which is to bad because I could definetly see some improvement I liked in the new patch and was actually having fun where prior to that patch I was bored and didn't really care if it CTD. Just wish I could get past the half-way point.

Ok here is the current in game video settings,
1360x768 50hz
anti-ali.. off
full screen: checked

Leader scene: high
overlay deatail: high
shadow quality: low
fog of war: high
terrain: high
terrain tessellation level: low
terrain shadow quality: low
water: high
texture: high

Do any of those items under the video options seem like something that would cause huge marathon games to CTD?

My thoughts is
1. changing the water texture from high to medium or low since I like to play archpelego the huge map has alot of water
2. changing my resolution from 1360x798 to 1600x900 since this is what my computer is set for in the control panel.
3. Changing all the highs to mediums

Do any of these thoughts seem like resonable solutions?
will lowering these settings really change the visual graphic quality to look poorly?
Am I grasping at straws and will I just have to face the fact that I can't play huge maps and marathon speed.

reminders:
I have the latest patch as of the 16th
I am running direct x 9

Thanks in advance

 

[Moss]

Moderator Action: Moved to Tech Support

You'll probably get much better and more helpful answers here.

 

[shapecharge]

Thanks Moss, good catch.

 

[The_J]

Only solution here: Wait for the patch after the patch after the patch :/.

Direct X 9
[...]
Leader scene: high

Just to mention: High leader settings with DX9 will make the whole game look worse than with medium leader settings (due to some strange thing they did to their graphics engine).

 

[timtofly]

I would say try the Leader Head settings before anything else. My game "plays" the same when changing all of the other settings. I decided it was better looking at the nice clouds and waves, since the game crashed any ways when everything was set to low. IIR, I adjusted up one setting at a time, but nothing seemed to help.

I cannot change from city to city in city view. The game will freeze about the 3rd or 4th city change. It now freezes mostly when it has to change views from one side of the map to the other. I thought maybe there was a heat issue. I put an 18 inch fan blowing around the lap top and while cooling the computer down, did not help the issue much. I turned off auto unit picking. It usually now only freezes after the first Next Turn and those last few "unfinished" unit moves. The game scrolls just fine when I move the mouse to one side of the screen and the map scrolls by. It just does not like those quick drastic scene changes. There are "blocks" or whole lines of grey, that seem to be being re-written that cause the game to freeze. Even with all of the graphics turned low, it does the same thing maybe even worse. I save the game right after I go into a few successful city screens to update the build que and at the end of a turn. Ocassionally it will freeze between turns if it pans too fast when showing AI moves.

Some times it leaves windows at the lowest resolution possible and you have to re-start windows. Sometimes you can bring up the ctrl+alt+delete box and end the game. Sometimes it will just turn off the laptop. Sometimes I have to put the computer to sleep, and then wake it back up to get to the ctrl+alt+delete box to end the game. Sometimes windows reports an error, and then sometimes it doesn't.

It seems to do it more late game and new games just zoom along. My laptop is just below specks, but it played the demo just fine. Since I purchased the vanilla copy just prior to the first patch, I cannot say for sure if the patches changed anything. This particular problem showed up it seemed all at once on Nov. 16th, about the time they said they were going to release a patch, but did not, until a week later or so. None of the patches have corrected it though.