Game intermittently freezing

[Justy0711]

I am not sure if this is a technical issue with my pc or a game issue but on the 2nd scenario of the grand campaign the game starts 'stuttering'. It freezes and unfreezes every couple of seconds. This seems to happen when I am 2 loads of limestone away from finishing my pyramid. The labourers then all go home and nothing happens. Left the game running for 15 years (game time!) and the pyramid still was not built and the game was go stop go stop.

Just before this I had a problem with the delivery of the limestone where all my labourers got 'stuck' in the barge landing. The only thing I could do was delete the landing. This then led to a huge amount of limestone expanding across the ground and loads and loads of labourers (far more than I actually had) jumping into reed boats and sailing away. All very strange.

I am running the game with the patch loaded and I am pretty sure my system is up to scratch (see dxdiag). Any ideas? I am desperate to finish this level and all I have to do is get 60 prestige and I am done so pyramid would be very useful.

[Keith]

Things look like they should be okay. You have relatively up to date video and sound drivers. You don't have a lot of RAM but it meets the minimums. Your page file cache is about 1247MB, which is twice what your physical RAM is and should be fine.

The only thing I see is that you have just 5GB of free space on your C: drive and you may need more space for system caching and for the game to run smoothly.

I had problems with my system a year or so ago where it was freezing at odd moments randomly. Eventually it was tracked down to bad RAM strips, and since they were replaced my system hasn't locked up since.

[Justy0711]

thanks guys - I am downloading current drivers at the moment. Can't believe we have reached the day when half gig of memory and 5 gig hard drive space are on the dodgy side! My first proper PC had 28mb of ram and only 1gb disk and that is less than 10 years ago.

I will see if this clears the problem but I have a niggly feeling that it is a bug in the game rather than a tech issue with PC.

thanks for your help.

Justine

[Justy0711]

followed all advice above and then went back a few save games to try and sort out the problem but no go. It still starts playing up at exactly the same point during the pyramid building. I am pretty sure that this is a game issue. I am ending up with labourers 'stuck' all over the place and then the game stop starts and all the rest of the labourers go home even though the pyramid isn't finished and there are still resources to use.

It is really getting on my nerves now and I am losing interest in the game because I am fed up of keep doing the same bit over and over. I have attached the save file in the hopes that someone may be able to guide me in the right direction!

[Keith]

Ok, from your first post, it sounded like you had a problem with your computer, much like I had with my RAM strips.

Now I see you are playing Bubastis. It's a large map and your city is pretty spread out. The save file you posted runs in fits and starts on my system too and I have more hardware resources than your computer does (mine: 1GB RAM, 40GB free space HD, 3Ghz processor, etc.)

The problem is that when cities in CotN start to get large the computer has alot to keep track of and the game starts to slow down and then starts to exhibit starts and stops as it tries to update everything on the map.

Your city is pretty spread out. My city of Bubastis is a little more compact and may be smaller than yours, because mine doesn't do what your save if doing. So it may be that you have just made your city too big on a large map.

I have a similar experience in a city I was building and it got too large too. You can see it if you download the saves in the "11 Overseers and no one works (http://www.tiltedmill.com/forums/showthread.php?t=7783&highlight=overseers)" thread that I posted. The saves posted near the bottom of that thread may not even load on your system due to the amount of system resources required to run them.

Then again it could be that your save file may have been corrupted somewhat by the lack of space on the hard drive while playing and that is causing some problems. You may have to start the city over after you freed up space on the hard drive that contains CotN. Have you defragged your hard drive lately?

If curious you can see if my Bubastis save will load on your system and run any better. It runs fine on my system.

[Justy0711]

thanks for all advice. Nothing seemed to work so I started the scenario again and it worked fine and whole thing was done in couple of hours. I think that something had triggered a bug when I tried it before.