RTW on Mac: chariot combat causing CTD

Hi All,

I apologize in advance if this is the wrong place to post a support question. Moderators, please let me know where I should post this.

Having crash-to-desktop issues in battles with chariots when playing Rome: Total War on my mid-2012 MacBook Pro using OS X El Capitan 10.11.3.

Processor: 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 4000 1536 MB

In terms of mods, I'm using player1's Bugfixer and Barbarossa82's Vanilla Balance Mod. I have also made some minor tweaks to text files to increase artillery pieces from 2-4 for ballistas and scorpions for all factions and give onagers to all factions that didn't already have them. Sincerely hoping these changes, which are pretty light, aren't the origin of this problem. All the VBM does to chariots is lower their morale via editing text files, and the others don't touch chariots at all.

Crash is common in battles involving chariots of any kind, usually occurring once they engage in combat but sometimes well into the battle or even when enemy starts to rout. Turning graphics settings all the way down has a noticeable impact in reducing the frequency of crashes, but does not totally eliminate them and reduces the quality of the game experience. I've been stuck in chariot battles that continuously crash no matter how much I reload or turn graphics settings to minimum. Crash is reproducible in custom battles with chariots as well.

This is mainly a problem when fighting against Britannia, Egypt, and any other civilization that commonly uses chariots (including the easter egg Amazon Chariots in Themiskyra).

I have posted on the official Total War support thread here and have also found an old 2015 thread with the exact same problem here. No help has come to either of us yet :(

Please let me know if I need to provide crash data, and if so how I can post it without exceeding character limits.

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

Update: Crash only occurs when AI is using chariots - they work just fine when I'm using them.

Uninstalling mods didn't help, and clean install of entire game didn't help. At a loss what to do, other than re-buy the game on Steam in my Bootcamp partition (anyone know if copying save files from Mac to PC works?)

Another update:

I've also tried disabling System Integrity Protection on my Macbook, since I heard that can cause crashing with older apps and games. It seemed to have an impact on reducing crash frequency as I was able to play several chariot battles without issues, but I'm not totally sure and at this point it could just be in my head. Naturally, the crashing resumed pretty quickly. (Note: I do not recommend disabling SIP unless you're really desperate, as it can put your Mac at risk of catching a virus)

Finally, I've e-mailed Feral support with attached RTW Report text file that includes crash logs and such (had to point out to them some crash logs occur when i just quit the game normally; my OS seems to think it crashes. Another frustrating issue but not one I'm complaining about here). I've yet to hear from Feral, and am concerned that I won't at all.

I've totally exhausted my options at this point, so if anyone in the community here can help I'd greatly appreciate it! You guys often know better than developers anyway.

Hello demon9675. The .Org has its own tech support forum, but it's somewhat hidden and there is barely any activity (as you may have noticed :shame:), so you may be better of asking over at the TW center. However, since this crash involves the Mac version of R:TW running several old mods, I don't think anybody other than Feral can help out at this point.

What version of Rome: Total War are you using?