Has anything really changed from CA?

[oldpiker]

My first computer was a VIC-20 and my first gaming machine was a C-64. I am not new to gaming. I felt I needed to comment here. Your points are all well-taken. I agree with most. At some point in every game you become aware of the compromises and lack-of-reality of the whole shebang. My immersion in disbelief is usually over at that point. Up til that time I enjoy being part of the deception. After that I can frequently get many more miles out of just finding ways to "outsmart" the AI. It becomes an interesting challenge all its own. In a sense...figuring out how to "break" the game. In spite of its many and obvious flaws, I have found ETW to be one of the most engaging startegy titles I have ever owned. Its tactical battle engine is pretty impressive overall. Anybody who ever set up toy soldiers or "marble armies" as a child, would certainly find it amazing. Still, what I'm not getting is how so many players are able to run this monster, seemingly without technical difficulties (constant CTDs, migrating to the inability to eventually load saves and even finish the game). I don't usually have a cutting edge box, but I do roll my own, and normally have a machine that is lean enough and mean enough to run just about anything succesfully at some level. I have researched the forums and now think the game's memory address issues may be what have finally halted my ability to run ETW at all. How are so many you able to run this software long enough and hard enough to even discuss AI issues without it crashing constantly? Seems to me that this game's conceptual and AI issues rank far below its stability problems. This is one of the most unstable pieces of software I have ever run.

[jsberry]

My first computer was a VIC-20 and my first gaming machine was a C-64. I am not new to gaming. I felt I needed to comment here. Your points are all well-taken. I agree with most. At some point in every game you become aware of the compromises and lack-of-reality of the whole shebang. My immersion in disbelief is usually over at that point. Up til that time I enjoy being part of the deception. After that I can frequently get many more miles out of just finding ways to "outsmart" the AI. It becomes an interesting challenge all its own. In a sense...figuring out how to "break" the game. In spite of its many and obvious flaws, I have found ETW to be one of the most engaging startegy titles I have ever owned. Its tactical battle engine is pretty impressive overall. Anybody who ever set up toy soldiers or "marble armies" as a child, would certainly find it amazing. Still, what I'm not getting is how so many players are able to run this monster, seemingly without technical difficulties (constant CTDs, migrating to the inability to eventually load saves and even finish the game). I don't usually have a cutting edge box, but I do roll my own, and normally have a machine that is lean enough and mean enough to run just about anything succesfully at some level. I have researched the forums and now think the game's memory address issues may be what have finally halted my ability to run ETW at all. How are so many you able to run this software long enough and hard enough to even discuss AI issues without it crashing constantly? Seems to me that this game's conceptual and AI issues rank far below its stability problems. This is one of the most unstable pieces of software I have ever run.

You answered your own question. Figuring out how to outsmart the CTD is the MOST FUN thing about Total War games. Save every turn! Still crashes? Don't move the ship into the port. Now save again! Try a saved game from 3 years ago. This time, auto-calc that battle. The strategies are endless, as is the CTD frustration. Turn the CTD frustration into your ally, by making it part of the game. That's what Total War is all about.

[oldpiker]

I'm in synch with that. Trouble with ETW though, is that you can get to a place where none of the saves will load, or, if you find one that will, and play a battle through again from that point, you get a CTD immediately after, especially if you are going through an end-of-turn. It becomes impossible to get any of the saves to play through to a point where the game will advance and offer up a new save point. I don't keep more than a handfull of saves (at a gig or so of disk space apiece), so my options quickly become limited. This is obviously turning out to be a bad strategy with ETW! After quite a bit of research, I believe most of the issues commonly being experienced are due to the well-documented large memory space issues. I tried the suggestion by "Mad Boris," to no avail. Also have tried totally minimizing all settings just to see if I could get one of the saves to load up and play. No joy there. I do wonder if there is some corruption issue with the save games. I'm pretty much at the wall now. About the only option, if I want to keep running this software, is to start a new campaign, play it through till the memory problems bring everything to a halt again, and accept that I will never be able see a campaign through to the end. Bummer, since a lot of the research goodies don't become available til near the end game. BTW...I am running: Gigabyte GA-M59SLI, AMD\A64x2-4600,2GB Corsair 6400C4, 9600GT 512MB on Win XP SP3. I shut down all uneccessary processes before running ETW