Whats up with Civilization3.e.exe has...

[wotan321]

Greadius asked:

These things get fixed often?

Uh.... often in geological time maybe. This problems has shown up in a half dozen threads, and despite Infogrames apparent kind-hearted attempt to resolve it.... it remains a pervasive problem.

Any word on the 2nd patch? This has to be fixed.

 

[Jeffy Barbarian]

Hey I have just quit trying to play it until a 2nd patch comes down, but I am not holding my breath about it fixing this problem. Why would they? They've got our money now. And they have obviously paid off the Gamer Mags to give em a good rating, I saw where this piece of calvary dung got simulation game of the year in PC Gamer, my subscription is up next month, think I'll be re-subscribing?

I check this thread daily, and Apolyton as well loads of problems related to mine. We get the generic post for Infrograms/Firaxis - turn off all the programs, etc. I tried all thier fixes, no dice!

At least they could update thier own website, tell us that they are working on the problems. But why should they, it might put someone on notice that has not bought this trash heap the up and up on all the bugs.

I thought maybe I would not buy any games until I swept the web and got as many reviews as possible of a game, but looking at all the reviews so far, no one has address the wide, myriad of problems with this game.

Word of mouth, is the best defense for this travesty. I went to the mall the other day and stood by the civ III display for an hour and told 15 people that the game sucked, and asked if they could tell another 15 or so of thier friends. HA Firaxis/Infrogrames that's $600.00 you didn't get a$$ O's

 

[Apollo]

The latest suggestion I got from Infogrames Tech Support is to uninstall my game and then install it in the default directory, C:\Program Files\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III, because not installing it there can cause problems. I always thought that you could install it anywhere, that's why it allows you to change its installation location. I've never had any problems with any other programs that I installed in a different place than normal, but Infogrames says this can cause problems. I installed the game in C:\Games\Infogrames Interactive\Civilization III rather than the default, and I installed the patch there too, so I don't see how there can be any problem. Have any others who are having this error problem installed the game in a different location than the default?

 

[Jeffy Barbarian]

I always had installed in the default directory. That's not my problem. I got a feeling I don't have a problem, it's the game's.

 

[Digitalis]

Just thought I would glance over this end of the board.

You know I might get some info on my game but...

Okay how does this sound for a wierd crash?

I am at war with the Americans and the Aztecs and thourghly (bad spelling I know) whipping them. I have managed to beat a path through to the Aztec capitol, and then decided to make them suffer I moved in my tanks and destroyers and pounded there rroads into dust...

That is until I came to the last road, I got the famous crash message for W2K (not good). I reloaded immediatly and proceeded to do exactly as I had before (surley cant happen twice)

Needless to say I have tried replaying this moment many times...with only one solution. Dont take out the road.

I have managed to play past this point by well over 20 turns. Hope this enlightens any 'tech-support' onlookers and if not I am sure my civ was not about to errupt into disorder due to one road?

Digitalis

Wasting away in the glourious north.
(why as the anasthetic worn off)

 

[Dragon67]

Yes, I had that problem to Apollo, when I had the game installed in a different direction. But all kinds of problems was gone when I installed it into the default directory. Also note that I dowloaded and installed the "second" V1.16 pach.
Everythime I was in a war, or when a city run into disorder it crashed.
But no I have played throw 4 games, and everything works OK.
So that was the key to solve those problems on my comp.

 

[Apollo]

Well, after three months of correspondance with Infogrames Tech Support, several times not getting a response for three to four weeks and having to remind them, a total of 50 pages of text in Word, and I got the dreaded response today:

"Well, we've exhausted any conventional means of troubleshooting."

They said they couldn't do anything to help me with the infamous "Civilization3.e" error, and suggested I update my BIOS because that helped one customer. Oh well, I guess its up to us to fix this problem.

I just bought this computer in August, so shouldn't the BIOS be new enough? I don't know much about what the BIOS is, not even if its hardware or software. Would it hurt anything to update it?

 

[Dragon67]

If you are unfamiliar with Bios(cmos) don't mess with it. If you know someone that are familiar with it, try to ask them fore some help. Somethimes it can help to flash bios, and sometimes not. It depends of what kind of configurations you have inside your comp. But it can also be other kinds of hardware problems like: your motherboard do not suppord the video card 100%, your motherboard do not get enoth power, and many other kinds of problems. So once again, if it Is a hardware problem, get professional help if you not can handle it.
But also try to play some other games(powerusers) first, and see if you have problems with them. If you not have any trouble with them, I belive it have to be somthinge else. Also try to run your virus-scan.
Have you checked your viretural memory? That can also make crashes, if you have memory-leak. I'm not remember if it was the video card or the ram that occured it, but I know that many people had some problems with it. After some gameplay it crashed, and they got *.exe errors. The solution was to install Cachemanager. This utility can close your memory leak, if you have it, because it will control your viretural-memory, instead of windows. It will also increase you system recourses, and finally it has been a great utility fore many people with such kinds of trouble.
So if it is no other solutions try it... http://www.outertech.com/

 

[4Lorn]

I assure all that this problem is also present with 98se.

I also not that it seems to make no difference the year or nations involved. The common thread in all these messages and on my machine is that it happens when one or more pop-ups are to open. This seems likely the underlying commonality to some of the "solutions" stated. The adjusting of preferences or lux settings etc. would prevent a popup from opening and just sidestep the problem until next time.

Something perhaps about how the video is implimented for popups. Why this is intermittant is the question. Could this be a virtual memory overrun problem? Would a popup cause a sudden and large scale write or read from/to memory, virtual memory or video RAM?

Its a long shot but it occures to me that there seems to be a common point with the copy protection problems. In the copy protection problem the program tries to read data from the CD and is stopped by the protection scheme. Are these popups, especially the rarer ones like capturing a city with wonders or wiping out a civ, read frome the CD or are they read from the HD?

I don't know if this brainstorming, I am not knowlegable enough in these matters, helps or obscures a solution. I guess it can't hurt much as nothing here really seems to offer a true solution.

 

[dce]

I don't know if this is a solution or not, but it seems to work for me. Auto-generated maps NEVER crash for me, but if I use homemade maps, I always seem to get the civilization3.e.exe crash around the middle ages.
On a lark, I made a map with only a thin strip of land along the south pole and it crashed RIGHT AWAY! So I thought, maybe the computer is trying to build cities at the edge of the world (I seem to recall a patch fix in 116 that fixed ships at the edge of the world), and that is causing the crash. I built a map of europe with water around the edges (maybe mountains would work too), and it hasn't crashed yet.
Something to try if you are desperate.

 

[[Valhall]]

Yeah same thing happens to me only its when I go into industrial age and civilzation crashes.
Its extremly annoying as I cant find what the problem is and I was having a really good game.

AMD Athlon T-bird 1.2ghz
MSI k7
256 mb 133 mhz sdram
Sound blaster live 5.1
GeForce 4 Ti4400
Windows XP pro
patch 1.29f

 

[emmanuel]

Hi folks.

I've just managed to fix a stupid bug of this kind for the 1.29f version. This is caused by the displaying of the settler unit at industrial age. On W2K, this gives a `` civilization3.e.exe crash''. If you have MS visual studio, this becomes a ``memory cannot be read'' crash. On other versions of W$, you get other variants.

In the ``art\units\<BLAH> industrial'' directory, ** where <BLAH> is the translation in your local language of the word ``settler'' **, you find a ``<BLAH> industrial.ini'' file. This file contains reference to NONEXISTING files in the directory ``..\<BLAH> modern\'', named ``settlerModernRun.flc'' for instance. These files are located in ANOTHER directory, which is ``..\Settler Modern\'' (untranslated !). Edit the .ini file and your game works again.

This is appalling. Unfortunately, the very nature of this bug makes me suspect that TONS of bugs of the same kind exist...

E.

 

[edor]

In reference to:

<<<<In the ``art\units\<BLAH> industrial'' directory, ** where <BLAH> is the translation in your local language of the word ``settler'' **, you find a ``<BLAH> industrial.ini'' file. This file contains reference to NONEXISTING files in the directory ``..\<BLAH> modern\'', named ``settlerModernRun.flc'' for instance. These files are located in ANOTHER directory, which is ``..\Settler Modern\'' (untranslated !). Edit the .ini file and your game works again.>>>>>>>

I checked this and my English version of the game seems not to have this problem.

STATS:

I run Windows 2000 SP3 with Nvidia Riva TNT2 with v4.1.0.9 drivers, 8.1 DirectX, 196 RAM, 2 700mhz processors.

I have Civ III "myth" pirated version plus 1.29f patch and a cracked NO-CD EXE for the 1.29f patch which you can get here:

Moderator Action: URL DELETED!
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

PROBLEM SYMPTOMS:

Now, my problem after applying the 1.29f patch was if I clicked on Military Advisor the game would crash with Civilization.e.exe error. Also sometimes it would do this for no apparent reason. I checked the Civil Disorder dialog, original Infogrames path, and other solutions here, but they did not work for me.

CAUSE:

I traced the problem to a stray Worker. Whenever I would manually try to activate him, or the game would try to activate him, the game would crash. The worker was set on Automate, and when he finally stopped working, i could not get past that turn AT ALL. I went back a couple of Saved games, but even if the Worker was in a different spot, clicking on him specifically at any time would crash the game.

SOLUTION:

So, I got a Civ SaveGame Editor by Gramphos here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=7787

I noticed the tile the faulty Worker was standing on, loaded the saved game in the SaveGame Editor, exported the BIC file, loaded the BIC file in the official Civ3Edit Civilization world editor, turned Grid coordinates on and found the coordinate of the tile. Then in the SaveGame Editor I used the filter to input the coordinates and filter units only by those coordinates.

Eureka! I find my Worker on those coordinates, and check this out, the Worker is NOT aligned with any Civilization in the game....it says something to the effect of "Free non-aligned Worker" But, of course, in the game the damn Worker looks Roman (mine) and acts Roman. So that's why the game crashed.
Also, I think when in Military Advisor it would try to display the Non-aligned worker it would crash.

I use the Delete button in the SaveGame editor and kill the Worker and save my changes. When I go back to the game, the Worker is gone and I can play fine. Even the Military Advisor does not crash the game. I haven't finished the game yet (knock on wood), but so far after 50+ turns after that it works good.

CONCLUSION:

So, this is pure speculation, but I think the patched game (1.29f) introduces random corruption in the Saved game files. For some people it's the Civil Disorder dialog, for others it's something else. But it IS a game bug, and NOT an OS/driver bug. At first I thought it's because I have a cracked EXE, but some of you here have a legit version, and you run it on different OSs.

Hope this helps,
Edor

Moderator Action: We DO NOT post links to warez sites! --Padma
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[TerraHero]

i use too have that prob...but when i reinstalled..it was okay again..so i dunno, what Civ3 are u running..Cracked?