Frustrated with CTDs when I select captured settlement's fate after a long battle

[Stelios]

Hi all,
I'm having CTD issues with my 1.1 version of EB. I had help installing a 1.2 version on my desktop at home, but now that I've moved to college I installed a new version on my laptop. I kept having issues with 1.2, and I think it is becaue I could never install the fixes right. So I installed 1.1 instead, and left it. Until recently, things were going swimmingly, but now I've had my first few CTD's, which are always after I have fought a long, hard won battle and select a settlement's fate. I could keep reloading old saves, but this guarantees I have to do everything twice, because now it is inevitable that it crashes no matter what I do. I do not save before battles, and I give the game lots of time after the post-battle scroll pops up before I hit "continue" to return to the campaign map. Until today, I didn't even know there were fixes for version 1.1, but I have a feeling I will encounter the same issues with installing them as I did with 1.2 (not knowing where to install them or what I'm doing wrong). I looked at the Commonly asked questions thread, and I saw Lusted's trick for correcting regions, but even after reading Bovi's toned down version further down in the post, I cannot understand some of the steps. Would anyone be willing to help me solve this problem, given my lack of computer finesse? Thanks in advance,
Stelios

[FriendlyFire]

I find that the chance of a post-battle CTD increases the longer I've been playing and the more battles I've fought in a session. So I've got in the habit of doing a quicksave before every battle, and of quitting and restarting EB completely after 2-3 long battles.

When a CTD does occur, I reload from the quicksave, type 'auto_win attacker' (or defender, as appropriate) into the console on the pre-battle screen, and just auto-resolve it. Yes, you'll typically take more casualties, but it's better than 30-60 minutes of your life

IMO the advice never to save before a battle and never to use a quicksave is less than helpful. The post-battle CTDs have all the hallmarks of a memory leak growing to the point where the process cannot allocate more memory when it's trying to switch modes from "battle" from "campaign". Saving or not saving should have little or no impact on this. I diagnose this sort of stuff in my day job, so I've been meaning to hook up the process to some tools and figure out what's happening. The problem is playing to the point where I can reliably trigger a post-battle CTD. Repros are always the hardest!

[Stelios]

FriendlyFire, I agree with your first point, that sounds like a good idea and I will try that. However, it is usually after two or three normal, decent length battles, then a big one. I guess it is all the same to the game engine. As for autoresolving, I would, but it's one of those where I want to guarantee certain outcomes (i.e. five Makedonian family members dying in one battle!), so that's out. I still want to diagnose the issue and install fixes, if that is possilbe while keeping my current game.

[jirisys]

1. Delete your map.rwm (.../EB/Data/world/maps/base/ - make a backup)

2. Create a shortcut ".../Activision/Rome - Total War/RomeTW.exe" -mod:eb -nm -show_err -ne note the position of the "

3. Start EB via that shortcut, start or continue a campaign, and quit the game

4. Go back to .../EB/Data/world/maps/base, and copy the newly generated map.rwm to .../EB/sp game edu backup and say "Yes" to overwrite again

5. Before you do anything else. Go to .../Activision/Rome - Total War, and copy the corrected_regions.tga to .../EB/Data/world/maps/base. Rename the file to REGIONS.tga (delete the old one first)

6. Use the same shortcut, fight the battle (or auto-resolve), choose the settlement's fate. If it didn't CTD: congratulations! You have done what I did

7. Use your regular EB shortcut

8. Enjoy... (Until you CTD again)

~Jirisys (At least I'm helping)

[Stelios]

Thanks jirisys, but I have to take this somewhat slow, again, I'm sorry for my technical incomptence. I navigated to C:games/EB/Data/world/maps/base, and I see a list of DESCR files and tga files, and the abovementioned map.rwm. How do I make a backup of that file, exactly?

[jirisys]

Thanks jirisys, but I have to take this somewhat slow, again, I'm sorry for my technical incomptence. I navigated to C:games/EB/Data/world/maps/base, and I see a list of DESCR files and tga files, and the abovementioned map.rwm. How do I make a backup of that file, exactly?

Make a backup = Store somewhere else (cutting is better so you don't go back and delete it); Change the name (MapBackup.rwm; Map.rwm.backup; etc), send it to the recycler bin and restore if it didn't work ( needs some skills to do that)

~Jirisys (Talk to me if you encounter any other problem)

[Stelios]

Ok, I understand step 1, now I do not understand step 2. You want me to create a shortcut to vanilla RTW, with ( -mod:eb -nm -show_err -ne ) on the end? Also, your RTW directory is under Activision, mine is under Games, so my path looks like ( C:\Games\RomeTW.exe ). I assume that doesn't matter? I am slightly unclear how to create a shortcut. I went to "Properties" of my RTW.exe, added ( -mod:eb -nm -show_err -ne ) to the end of it, and came up with ( C:\Games\RomeTW.exe-mod:eb -nm -show_err -ne ). I then copied this, and tried to "paste shortcut" to the desktop, but it didn't work. Am I doing something wrong, as far as you can tell? And what is this corrected_regions tga? Where do I find this file?

[jirisys]

No, it doesn't matter at all, just put your own path.
No, first MAKE THE SHORTCUT, then edit the shortcut.
It's a .tga file and it will appear in... .../Activision/Rome - Total War (or your own) as soon as you finish step 3 and 4

~Jirisys (Any more questions)

[AstroCat]

I had this problem a lot running the game under Vista both straight up rtw.exe and my current config listed below. Almost made me give up on EB! But, when I switched over to my XP OS it is tons more stable. My Vista install is super stable with everything else, just EB had the crashing after battles problem.

So for me with the below current setup EB is tons more stable under XP than Vista.

BUT it still does happen just not as much and is still very frustrating when it does. I have to use the auto_win "cheat" when it does happen though. Here's to hoping for a much more stable EBII one day!

Europa Barbarorum 1.2 submod pack 3.1 which includes:
* ALEXANDER.exe; thanks to maksimus for the wonderful instructions on how to make the swap between exes.
* AI Battle Formation Mods* ; by --Sinhuet and special thanks to Lysander13 for the compilation
* Spoils of Victory; by V.T. Marvin
* Some trait changes (command stars & cursus honorum) by konny.
* Win Conditions; originally by JRMC and special thanks to konny for making a new 1.2 version
* Roman Allied Legions; by konny
* Aquilifer unit; by lt1956, creator of the SPQR mod
* Force Diplomacy Minimod; by DimeBagHo , update byJarardo
* Darth Stalin's 1.1 Romani Fix with "corrected" Gallic Helm
* MP Swapper; by ||Lz3||

I added:
* Phalanx mod (above mod pack compatible version)
* Marcus Camillus Player Formations
* RS Textures
* Getting rid of the giant trees mod
* Archer Skymod BI
* Some custom music added

[Stelios]

Hey jirisys, thanks for all the help. I believe I managed to do everything the way you suggested, and hopefully things work out now. I had one CTD after fixing, but I think it was due to playing for a long time. Otherwise, so far so good.

[Atraphoenix]

1. Delete your map.rwm (.../EB/Data/world/maps/base/ - make a backup)

2. Create a shortcut ".../Activision/Rome - Total War/RomeTW.exe" -mod:eb -nm -show_err -ne note the position of the "

jirisys; if you do not want to make a new shortcut, you can simply delete the map.rwm "FILES" one in "C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\EB\Data\world\maps\base"
the other one is on "C:\Program Files\Activision\Rome - Total War\EB\sp game edu backup"
if you delete both files trivialscript will show an error but click to continue
EB will open then follow your procedure if you do not delete both map.rwm files when you start EB with trivial script EB will overwrite the new map.rwm file with the one on sp game edu backup folder.

in this way you do not have to create a different shortcut either, do not forget you have to copy the new map rwm file on sp game edu backup folder as well.