End of battle CTD's

EB1.2 installed as follows:

RTW (empires edition? - one with STW, MTW, RTW including all expansions inc Alex - I just installed the RTW\BI bit of it) installed in root of hard drive: D\RTW
RTW folder coppied to D:\EB
EB1.1 + 1.2 upgrade installed using the instalation path: D:\EB
Minimod installed into D:\EB or is it D:\EB\EB (cant remember as I'm not at my PC but I installed it to the path that the Minimod asked for).

On many battles, usually on the second or third after loading the game the game CTD when i click on end battle. Now I've read to leave clicking on this for 1-2 minutes so thats what I do but I'm still getting the instability and its driving me nuts! Fighting 3-4000 guy's just to have to do it again is upsetting.

BTW, I had EB, the same instalation as above on my old PC with the same CTD's, and since then the PC has been totally rebuit so I'm guessing it isnt a computer issue (everything else works fine) but a game one.

BTW, after upgrading the PC (9550 phenom and good graphics card) the game looks totally beautiful on the 21" widescreen!:2thumbsup:

Having the same issue in the last two weeks and not seen this before, always at the end of a battle be it siege or not.

EB alex install with all the fixes in place .....I'm wondering if its related to a windows/graphic driver update issue....but then I may be grasping at straws

Patience is the key. For some reason RTW really needs to cool down for a couple of seconds after a battle before you go back to the campaign if it is stability you want. Virtually all CTD's seem to be cured by simply waiting 15 seconds or so.

Still, it doesn't help in his case. How much RAM do you have? I gather it happens a lot less frequently on rigs with at least 2 GB memory.

I have 4gb of 1066mhz memory. I think that should be enough, runnning XP! I read somewhere on this forum to download a program and alter RTW.exe to accept more than 2gb of memory. Think this is the way to go. I just did a seach for the thread but couldnt find it again.

Ah............ found the link. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...3&postcount=11. Seems its not a problem with amount of memory as so much as RTW.exe not being a very good memory manager.

Absolutely, it should be enough. I'm afraid I can't give any other advice than what is already in the frequent issues.

Have not been able to recreate since moving all battles away from cities.....these CTDs could have been related to my sallies, or computer sallies against me. I have been able to recreate when sallying or being sallied.

As before EB 1.2 with Alex (AI not full mod) and all bug fixes

Have you noticed any difference between the Alex and RTW engine in this regard?

To be honest I am not sure.......this is a fresh game with a complete recent reinstall (three weeks ago) but .......I think previously I had a cocked up installation anyway....(there's another post from me in here about that from about a month ago).....so that is why I can't definitely say its Alex related....I think it is Alex related because in several years of playing this mod I have never seen this in just an EB install....but this is a guess

what I can say is:

1. These ctds became more prevalent as the game progressed
2. They seem to be related with sallies
3. Certain battles around cities caused a ctd every time (well as far as my patience would let me test, about 3-4 times); when I subsequently withdraw and then fight the ensuing battle away from the city there is no ctd
4. Playing the Averni and current squishing the romani which seem to be the most frequent ctd (if not all, also current fighting the sweboz but can't remember a ctd with them)

Hope this helps....know this mod isn't supported so hope this is of help somewhere

In my experience these crashes are completely random (in terms of location/situation) and are more likely to have something to do with memory leaks or something similar than anything else. I have only run into this type of CTD on a few occasions, and if I recall correctly, in each case I had a Torrent client running in the background, or had recently done an Alt-Tab to a web browser window previous to the post-battle CTD.

nope cos other than windows XP home, at the moment RTW/EB is the only program on the machine and it isnt on the internet.

I can only play this game when i save and exit after or before every battle or else it always just CTD. am about to give up on the thing as im just so frustrated now. I've followed the >2gb thing, im about to look into the boot.ini part and update video drivers to the latest. fail that and its going to have to go from my system as the game is just unplayable for me at the moment.

As of yesterday I have had about ten turns without a repeat of this......:juggle2:

All I did was retreat from certain battles and fight away from cities........this may have negated something trait?? or victory/defeat condition related.....in these battles I removed a couple of romani family members that were involved in the earlier sallies against me.....that's all I can think of but its probably a redus herringi

...baffled

I followed the info on the link i posted - changing the memory limit of RTW.exe and also the boot ini line. Much better working effect to the program. I played last night and it crashed after the 5th or 6th battle I fought.

Bloody annoying actually as that battle was one of those rare beasts - I thought I was in for an easy fight but I had under estimated the general who with about 10 stars made his troops real tough. my gold chevron cavalry litraly bounced off many of his units with little effect. Anyway, the usual, wait a minute or so, end battle, CTD. Christ! I have to go through all that again!:furious3:

Setting the 'use >2GB' flag would only set the threshold for crashes due to memory leaks higher. It seems people using 32Bit OS do not get the full benefit, since they are still limited at about 3GB user memory (instead of 2GB). I doubt people with up to 2GB would even benefit at all.

Maybe WoW64 (the 32 Bit emulation on x64) is more tolerant concerning the memory managers of 32Bit programs in general (some other programs also seem to benefit from setting that flag (semi-official advice for 'The Witcher'; of great use for ETW versions prior to March 16, which game is plagued by memory leaks even on the campaign map). Somewhere I read, that WoW64 would provide up to 4GB user memory (the limit for 32Bit addressing).

I never tried my suggestion with the Rome_TW.exe. I used the Rome_BI.exe from the Barbarian Invasion Addon. I used Vista x64 (maybe I used it on XP prof 64Bit, which I had before Vista64).

The Rome_BI.exe seems more stable than Rome_TW.exe and Rome_ALX.exe seems more stable than the other versions without a need for modification.

I cannot remember having any after battle CTD after setting the 'use >2GB ' flag on Rome_BI.exe . With Rome_ALX.exe I can remember 1 after setting the flag for this exe.

If people posted their configuration (OS, physical RAM, which '.exe'[TW,BI,ALX; modified for >2GB or not]) perhaps one could guess what is a stable configuration.

OS: Vista64 SP1
RAM: 8Gbyte
modified BI and ALX (unit scale large)
no after battle CTDs

Wait more than a minute, at least until the battle music end, or just to try ...wait 5 min or so. This thing solved all my ctds. It can helps also reducing the unit size to normal, since CTDs are more frequent with more than 2500 soldiers in my case.

Also between "one after other" battles in the AI turn, wait some time to accept the next battle.

Even yesterday I did not this and pressed fast the end battle key, I was lucky since I didnt get CTD but in the next consequent battle I pressed also fast the start battle resulting in a BSOD lol, the first BSOD I have had with EB in years of playing, it was related to cmedia.sys - audio drivers so I think perhaps there is some problem with sound drivers involved... probably the music of the end of previous battle didnt finish and then crashed with the began of the next battle or something like that.

EB stress to much the machines, so always be patient :egypt:

Had another occurrence of this after a long period of non.

This happened while besieging Rome, and being sallied against, winning and several members of the Roman family fleeing.

The common themes are the sallie itself, city in the back ground, roman generals fleeing the battle.

This is probably not much help but.......

I get this crashes also on server 2008 64bit, e8500 cpu, 4gb ram, hd4850 graphics..
also sometimes crashes before battle but thats not as annoying..
so anyways it crashes when changing from battle map and campaign map..

if what you say is true regarding RTW-BI.exe then could you or anyone else post a link to good clear details of how one is to set up their game using the RTW-BI.exe engine instead of RTW.exe? Or Alex for that matter (just using the engine). Also, my campaign is quite a way in.. if im just using the EXE then it should be save game compatable right?


I might add that, yes ive looked myself for details to do this but it seems complicated in the posts ive viewed.

for BI look here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=95664 OR for the download itself here: http://www.freeformatics.com/store/show/4 for ferromancers tool


for ALX look here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=94861 . The "engine files" is what you need.
http://www.zshare.net/download/51697518abdc7e31/ or
http://files.filefront.com/EB12+on+A.../fileinfo.html


Both should be save compatible, since they only add traits and do not remove them.

thanks for that.......

I finally got XP64 on my system last night, updated drivers 64bit etc. Installed EB1.2 + minimod for Alex, installed the Alex files, changed the EB line to point to Alex. Fired up EB:

In the past i've always used the 'play single player' shortcut but the Alex instructions were to alter the 'Run EB' shortcut. The 'play single player' shortcut points to the trivial script, not the EXE. When I clicked on 'start EB main campaign' it told me to click on something else (sos, cant remember the exact wording). So, I loaded my save games into the saves folder in folder 'EB'. Fired it up once again and fought a battle straight away as had one pending.

The battle was fine, I noticed a strange thing going on with double clicking a unit, it would move to the unit but if i moved my mouse it would shoot back to the place i was before. Very annoying if one unit is on one side of the map and the one your clicking on is at the other!

Near the end of the battle my mouse curser turned to the normal windows one and the game froze, not the mouse though so i alt/tab to desktop and the game wasnt in the taskbar - it just, er, went.... confusing.

I've yet to implement the >3gb rule to the exe's - do you think thats the problem? Also, i installed the game on a seperate drive, not in the folder 'program files (x86), is that a problem? Does it matter what shortcut I use to fire up the game?

in the hope to bump this thread and get some resolve to the now bloody annoying problem.........

Problem: crashing after battles or crashing mid battle

Steps taken:

1. Rebuilt PC (not for EB reason), reinstalled XP - different hardware - problem persists
2. reinstalled EB - thinking I may have made mistake. I also use the mini mod for RTW.EXE - EB1.1 and 1.2 update was installed to the following folder D:\Rome\EB\ (thats the folder where RTW.exe resides) - outcome: no change to the crashes
3. Downloaded systeminspector tool and changed RTW.exe to recieve more than 2gb of memory - outcome: no change, game still crashes
4. changed boot.ini line as sugested in a previous thread - outcome: initially I thought it had worked as I fought 5/6 battles back to back without a crash, then it just went back to every other or every battle CTD after
5. Installed windows again but this time using XP64 - something i'd wanted to do ever since I upgraded the PC - upgraded with 64bit drivers etc. Installed RTW to the same directory as above: D:\Rome\EB - this time i installed the Alex files to see if Alex would be any more stable: Outcome: stability was worse and there were issues with the way the mouse worked and troops moved
6. Redid the system inspector thing to make Alex and RTW exe's capable of more than 2gb. Outcome: had no effect on stability, this time choosing to CTD mid battle instead of the end
7. Made a copy of RTW folder and installed EB again along with minimod for RTW to see if there was improvement over Alex. Outcome: No difference or better although the wierd issue with the mouse and troop movement improved.
8. Thats it.... after countless hours and headaches later I'm no nearer to figuring this problem. The only thing I can think to do now is try and change boot.ini file again to see if it improves any. other than that... well, thats why im here, to ask for some help!

for the first time i've been able to have internet connection on the Pc in question so i was able to validate the install. I'm not on said computer at the moment so i can't post the result. However, what I can say is that there were a lot of changed' files due to me doing the validation after installing the 'mini mod' that my current campaign was started with. There was also 1 missing file: pack or pak file (?) I've seen a thread about this earlier but cannot for the life of me find it now. What does this file do? why havent i got it in my legit copy of RTW and will installing it solve the type of problems im experiencing?

If it would solve anything could someone post a link please?

The target line of the shortcut used to start EB with ALX should read something like "D:\Games\The Creative Assembly\EB12 mod\RomeTW-ALX.exe" -mod:eb -show_err -nm -noalexander

"D:\Games\The Creative Assembly\EB12 mod\" ist my path to the directory where all the .exe reside

Do not use trivial script, since its not ALX (and BI?)-aware. This may corrupt your install since it may copy the files of standard EB over the ALX or BI altered files.

Clicking on START EB CAMPAIGN in not resulting to start campaign normally shows errors in some files

You really should deinstall everything and reinstall from scratch. Are you using the gold edition of rome?
install eg to D:\GAMES\ROME:
1. ROME
2. BI
3. official patches, if not Rome Gold
4. ALX
5. startup rome and apply all settings (graphics, resolution etc), startup BI and afterwards ALX to verify that vanilla versions are working
5. copy the the whole installation folder with subdirs to something like D:\GAMES\EB
6. install EB1.1 to D:\GAMES\EB (I recommend without Trivial Script)
7. install eb patch 1.2 to D:\GAMES\EB and install hotfixes
8. start EB with a shortcup using rometw.exe and start campaign to verify it is working
9. copy the whole D:\GAMES\EB to a folder like D:\GAMES\EBmod
10. Install ALX "engine files" or Ferromancer's BI in this copy
11. make a shortcup using ROME_ALX /BI respectively

Using this method of multiple copies ensures that you can revert to a clean version by again copying the D:\GAMES\EB or even D:\GAMES\ROME to a new directory. This saves a lot of time if anything goes wrong with modifications to D:\GAMES\EBmod.


"The battle was fine, I noticed a strange thing going on with double clicking a unit, it would move to the unit but if i moved my mouse it would shoot back to the place i was before."
This is a 'feature' of the ALX-exe. You have to wait until the screen is centered over the unit. With BI it is the same behaviour as with RomeTW (moving mouse immediatly pats you at destination).


With a x64 OS no boot.ini alteration is necessary. For a X64 OS you should at least have 4GByte RAM. After battle crashes or mostly due to memory leaks. The program is simply running out of available RAM to continue working. Also try a smaller unit size.

mid-battle crashes normally have other causes (graphic driver errors etc).

if you vaildate after using the BIinstaller or ALX engine files you will get alot of changed files, since the validator assumes vanilla EB.
The missing file is 'patch_1.pak'. Everyone using Rome Gold version does not have this file, since the contents seem to have been integrated in the 'patch_0.pak' (?).

You can get the pak file from the validation post. It has helped some people get EB to work, but likely it won't affect end of battle CTDs.

After I started playing with alex and did >2gb thing I almost didn't have any crashes..It crashed once during battle and it was using 3.3gb ram so that was some leak or something..

By using the Alex.exe the game seems to be a lot more stable, and the "End Battle CTD's" are severely reduced or maybe entirely gone. And allowing the game to use 2gb, also helped a lot by reducing load time and probably adding to the stability.

Now there is only the occasional random crash, but they are few and far apart, and if you have tried playing "Empire Total war", then you will not even mind the few times "Europa Barbaroum" crashes.

So to everybody facing the same problem with the after battle CTD's, i would advise doing these two things.