Occasional crashes to desktop

[Herodotus]

Are occasional crashes to desktop some things that most people experience from time to time?

I played the whole easy campaign without any crashes, but now I've had a couple. This is not a lack of PC resources issue or wrong drivers issue like other similar posts.
Could it be something to do with particular maps? In each case I was not actually doing anything, but just letting the city get on with it for a while.

The other thing I thought of was the PC doing some other task at the same time. On another game (It might even have been Pharoah) It didn't like it if Norton did a live update. So could it be something like this, checking for live updates?

All I've done is to change the save frequency so I don't lose too much. Do the numbers represent minutes between autosave? (Is there a quicksave hot key?)

[Keith]

I'll get a crash on some huge maps when I have a large city when the game lags. If I move the scroll the screen over my city in those cases it will usually trigger a crash. I had that problem in the Ahketaten city I was building months ago, where I had a dozen pyramids and a hug city. The scroll thing would crash me, I had severe lag, and when I used the mini-map to jump to a spot near my great pyramid underconstruction the game would crash every time.

I've had an occasional CTD while playing some of the other small map missions too but they are usually very rare.

Quicksave is the F4 function key. All the hotkeys are listed near the end of the manual PDF file.

[Herodotus]

Quicksave is the F4 function key. All the hotkeys are listed near the end of the manual PDF file.

Thanks
So they are. I'd printed the whole manual once and read it through many times, but then the pages spilled all over the place so I recycled them. I've now put a shortcut to the manual on my desktop

[MarkDuffy]

I had my second CTD last week, Herodotus. It was on Max's HUGE Pretty city of Diospolis. The first was Keith's massive one in Akhetaten.

In Max's, I was still online & had everything open in the background. I knew I was pushing the envelope there. I had been in the city for about one hour before it happened. I knew I was tempting fate.

:)

[Herodotus]

Well, I settle down to play COTN again, 15 minutes later another crash to desktop. It isn't fun. :mad: I am going to abandon this map (Nubt) and start a new one.
I guess it means I will have to abandon the campaign and play as scenarios instead.

[MarkDuffy]

You think it is Campaign related, Herodotus?

That's weird. I refuse to play a lagging scenario & that is over 2000 people with me.

Both of my CTD were in HUGEly lagging cities. Max's was fine when I got off the internet & closed down my background.

Keith's, well THAT one was one for the Record Book! :D

I have not had any CTD while playing my scenarios that I started & this includes everything possible. :)

[Herodotus]

I think you misunderstood me.
I am going to give up on Nubt in the campaign, in case it is the map.
If I start another map and still get crashes I will know it is not the map but something else.

I don't think I can choose another map on the campaign until I win Nubt can I? So I will have to play the maps as scenarios.

[MarkDuffy]

I'm not sure how the Campaign exceptions work, Herodotus. In your save section you will find Campaign autosaves & game autosaves. The Campaign autosaves get you to the Campaign selection World Map.

Perhaps find the one & retry your Nubt?

Or do the Play a Scenario thingie.

[Keith]

I think you misunderstood me.
I am going to give up on Nubt in the campaign, in case it is the map.
If I start another map and still get crashes I will know it is not the map but something else.

I don't think I can choose another map on the campaign until I win Nubt can I? So I will have to play the maps as scenarios.

I've played all the campaign maps and and all the individual maps and I don't recall much difference between them if any at all.

Nubt should not be causing this problem for you. I noticed problems early on in my campaign play of Bubastis and when I played it as a individual map. My city was quite small and I was having lag problems with it in both cases.

You may have some corrupted map files.

Have you tried lower the screen resolution to 1024x768 or 800x600 to see if that helps. Try lowering the other in-game settings or turn them off to see if that helps.

How new are your video and audio drivers? Can you post your dxdiag.txt file so we can look at it? Just attach it to the next message.

[Herodotus]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "lag" problems. I've not noticed anything that fits this description during game play. Guess I'll know it when I see it.

I don't believe it to be the graphics settings, drivers, memory etc, I already went through all of that with Civ 4 which runs fine, and in any case I've been playing COTN for 3 weeks with no crashes. (Sorry Keith, no can do DXDiag, but for the record I have 2 Gb RAM and a Radeon 9200 AGP with 128Mb memory and latest drivers)

I was looking for a reason other than this, maybe a corrupted map, or possibly, another program kicking in such as Norton Update, or something else. I will try to solve this for myself by trying to notice a pattern.

Thanks for your help on this. I'll post here eventually if I find out.

[Keith]

When the city gets large, or when you build on a huge map, the game will start to respond more slowly to things like the mouse movement screen scroll, characters will hesitate as they walk, and mouse clicks are somewhat delayed in responding, etc.

The fact that CIV 4 runs fine, cannot be used as a gauge in this case. CotN is a totally different game engine with different demands on the system.

If the game is suddenly crashing you may have picked up something on your system you didn't have the past three weeks, i.e., Spyware, virus, new software or hardware installs, etc.

It may require uninstalling the game, doing a cleanup and defrag (even if you don't need it,) and possibly running a registry cleaner. Then reinstall the game and the patch.

[Jodet]

Towards the end. When I'm about 30 minutes away from winning, it crashes to desktop. Very frustrating.

I suspect a memory leak of some kind.

I'm using a 7800 GT and creative X-FI with latest drivers, a gig of memory and a very clean install of XP (No starforce, no other internet related nonsence, etc).

Not encouraging. I hope C4 is more stable.

-J

[Keith]

From my experience I would not say that CotN is unstable, but it does have some problems, which tend to occur under known circumstances, at least for me anyway.

I don't recall ever having a problem with the Nubt mission. It is one of the more simpler missions in the game and campaign. I'm running CotN on a P4 3Ghz, 1GB, Windows XP Pro, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB system here.

I do have some instances of Starforce on my system from other games.

[Nakia]

Even on my old machine I had no problems with CotN except for lagging in the larger cities.

I have a slight problem now but that is because Windows doesn't like my current video card. It occasionally crashes me but with other games as well. I plan on getting a better card soon.

[Herodotus]

Well I gave Nubt another try from where I left off and I've been playing for over an hour with no problems :) Unfortunately we are none the wiser :rolleyes:

[Keith]

Are you still in the campaign or are you playing them individually?

[Herodotus]

Are you still in the campaign or are you playing them individually?

Gone back to the campaign from my last save as if nothing had happened. I had a theory about the crashes which turned out to be wrong, so am just carrying on as normal

[MarkDuffy]

Gone back to the campaign from my last save as if nothing had happened. I had a theory about the crashes which turned out to be wrong, so am just carrying on as normal

Good luck, Herodotus! :)

While I can play the game with everything on max (graphics & resolution) while stuff is running in the background & online also w/o lag, I do not, except when I am checking a player's save or various short Labs.

I settle down with just COTN running & enjoy myself. :)

[Keith]

There are times when I've run into problems with a game or program after I have run other programs prior to it. It seems that quitting the previous program would leave things behind in memory causing problerms with the game or program I wanted to run next. It doesn't happen often but on occasions a restart clears up the situation.

Good luck. When you get to Bubastis you might notice some lag soon after your start to expand your city there.

[Herodotus]

I don't think you meant Bubastis. It's one of the "easy campaign" cities and I already finished it. It was only the third map I played, and I didn't notice lag.

[MarkDuffy]

I don't think you meant Bubastis. It's one of the "easy campaign" cities and I already finished it. It was only the third map I played, and I didn't notice lag.

I have no idea what Keith is talking about, either.

EDIT: On second thought, I did hear something about the Original game producing HUGE game save files. I also remember loading saves from what I think were unpatched games that ran slower than they should have. They did many weird things. Part of the problem might have been the differences between saved versions & version of the game in which those saves were loaded.

Keith has memories of his very early travels with COTN & perhaps confuses memories of the Beta versions with those of today.

The game, today, has no lag problems in ANY scenario (in-game nor user-created) until you make a HUGE city on a large map (depending on your computer of course). Definitely nothing that you need to win the scenario with. Lag occurs when you go crazy with continuing play.

FYI & YMMV

[Keith]

I'm pretty sure it's Bubastis. It has a huge map with all those river channels and islands.

[MarkDuffy]

Well, I had a lotta reed boats, cuz I kinda did some island hopping. ;)

I just loaded Bubastis ~ Med Map ~ 1313 people win screen ~ Also building a Great Pyramid there

Iunu ~ Med Map ~ 1325 people win screen

No difference.

[Herodotus]

I finished this scenario with no further crashes. Guess it's something that just happens, or Gremlins

[MarkDuffy]

I finished this scenario with no further crashes.

Yeah!

Guess it's something that just happens, or Gremlins

Gremlins

The game works! :)

[Keith]

I finished this scenario with no further crashes. Guess it's something that just happens, or Gremlins

Crashes are hard to nail down unless they are occurring in a predictable manner or specific moments. At least you got throught it. :)

[Herodotus]

I'm beginning to see what you mean about lag. (I thought you meant something different) That happens in all these map games whenever they get large.

I've also played 3 or 4 more maps and had Zero crashes :) :) :) :) :)