[CTDs] kind of sick of it

[Jikot]

>Epic battle with two enemy armies containing about seven or so of their generals.
>Pick off all of their generals early on, routing their armies for my horses to mop up.
>Thousands of their dead (plus all of their generals) against dozens of casualties on my side.
>Battle over, load screen, desktop.

DID NOT COMPUTE PLEASE TRY AGAIN

This happens WAY too regularly, and frankly it's disgusting. It's making me auto 99% of all battles, and even then I go in half-assed knowing all may be undone by another CTD.

Other minor quibbles:

- troops won't pursue enemies fleeing towards their city walls
(sallying enemies flee, send horses to mop up, horses kiss the fleeing enemies' backs and stop dead in their tracks, not killing a single soldier and allowing the fleeing unit containing 5 soldiers to return, flee, return over and over and over until the clock runs out)

- I keep "losing turns" at the most critical of moments
(need army to cover ground quickly, no more moves captain, next turn, still no more moves captain)

- Squalor in cities with all sanitary buildings and a single unit will keep spiralling out of control until ultimately the city rebels (unless you stack the city full of units, enhancing squalor).

Just thought I'd vent.

[AstroCat]

Yes, I think EB is an awesome mod but I am being totally pushed away because of the after battles CTDs. I have tried a lot of things to fix it, including installing on XP instead of Vista which helped some but really I can only hope that one day EBII comes out and it is more stable. For now I'm mostly back to TW:M2 and EUIII for my strategy gaming. I need a break from the CTDs in EB. :(

[bobbin]

>Epic battle with two enemy armies containing about seven or so of their generals.
>Pick off all of their generals early on, routing their armies for my horses to mop up.
>Thousands of their dead (plus all of their generals) against dozens of casualties on my side.
>Battle over, load screen, desktop.

DID NOT COMPUTE PLEASE TRY AGAIN

This happens WAY too regularly, and frankly it's disgusting. It's making me auto 99% of all battles, and even then I go in half-assed knowing all may be undone by another CTD.

This is a memory leak problem of the RTW game, so we can't do anything about it. It appears more commonly on EB because the mod requires a lot more computer power to run.
It is recommended that you wait about 30 seconds at the victory screen before closing it to allow your computer time to recover. It won't completely eliminate the problem but it does help a lot.
Restarting RTW every 2-3 hours of game play is also supposed to help.

Other minor quibbles:

- troops won't pursue enemies fleeing towards their city walls
(sallying enemies flee, send horses to mop up, horses kiss the fleeing enemies' backs and stop dead in their tracks, not killing a single soldier and allowing the fleeing unit containing 5 soldiers to return, flee, return over and over and over until the clock runs out)

Again, a RTW problem so not our fault.

- I keep "losing turns" at the most critical of moments
(need army to cover ground quickly, no more moves captain, next turn, still no more moves captain)

If you use up all the movement points of army with a family member in it they will become exhausted begin to get movement penalties, if a character isn't very energetic he will tire very quickly, use characters with the "vigorous" trait instead.
Finally, marching in winter or summer will give movement penalties also depending on where you are (and what faction you are playing).

- Squalor in cities with all sanitary buildings and a single unit will keep spiralling out of control until ultimately the city rebels (unless you stack the city full of units, enhancing squalor).

You just have to learn how to balance the population, it is entirely possible to have huge cities with good public order and small garrisons.

A few basic tips are:
Never build higher level farms unless you are absolutely sure you can manage the extra population they will give, you can't destroy them so once they are built you will be stuck with them.

Once you reach Large or Huge city sizes destroy any granaries and agricultural estates, as they only add to growth and in the case of the latter actually reduce public order.

Build as much public order buildings as you can, pretty obvious this one.

Destroy any buildings that were not built by your factions culture, these will give public order penalties. Be careful though when destroying public order buildings though, as it might make things worse in the short term until you can replace them with your own.

Have around 2-4 units garrisoning your larger cities, one unit just isn't enough.

[Jikot]

Hey Bobbin, thanks for the input!

I had a massive response all written up, and just lost it all by clicking the wrong button.

What it came down to was this: I do know that most of my issues with the game are due to the original RTW code, so I hope you didn't take offence (wuv you guys). I was just venting after a very frustrating CTD.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I never realized a lot of the things you suggested, and I guess I still have a lot to learn even after all these years of casual and less casual gaming. Just shows how deep the game is

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

VERY

.

PS: while I'm here; what do schools do?

[Jikot]

Just did the battle again, with similar results. Waited a minute in the victory screen, waited everywhere I could; CTD at exactly the same time.
Seems the computer won't let me win this battle in this way. Oh well, autobattle it is.

[AstroCat]

@bobbin - Oh I was not playing the EB crew at all. I know it is an RTW engine issue. I have nothing but respect for what the people have accomplished with EB. That is why I am hoping the engine upgrades in MTW2 will help the stability, at least sometwhat.

@Jikot - When that happens you probably just need to reload and use the auto win "cheat" and move on in your game.

[Rien]

hey,


i had the same problem, something that made it better was to insall eb outside program files, never save before a battle, wait for 30+ sec after a battle and never play eb longer then 1hour30min (just close game and start over)

hope it helps

[Jikot]

hey,


i had the same problem, something that made it better was to insall eb outside program files, never save before a battle, wait for 30+ sec after a battle and never play eb longer then 1hour30min (just close game and start over)

hope it helps

That's interesting what you wrote about never saving before a battle. It adds to the risk of losing progress when the game does CTD, but if it works it works!

[Ludens]

PS: while I'm here; what do schools do?

Mostly they provide your characters with ancillaries. There is also an effect on your characters' traits, but this is more subtle. The basic personality traits (intelligence, charisma, etc.) are set, but you can get learning-related traits such as philosopher or rhetorician. You also can get the pedantic-trait, so it's not all good. Obviously, an intelligent character is more likely to learn something; not sure if the other personality traits have an effect here.

[Folgore]

I think crashes also differ per faction a lot. I remember I had the same problem in my Makedonia campaign, whereas in my current Qart Hadastim campaign, I still do have crashes, but not nearly as many. In fact, I would even go as far as to say it crashes an equal amount of times as vanilla RTW, which does also crash a lot, mind you. I've only had 1 crash as a result of a rebelling settlement (solved by the population cheat) and only a few crashes after battles (even though I never wait with clicking the 'ok' button after winning). Most crashes were during loading.

Come to think of it though, I did play my Makedonia campaign on a different PC, so that is also likely to be a factor.

[Jikot]

Thanks Ludens, I kind of figured they did something along those lines (although I was hoping schools would teach people to freaking wash themselves and thus keep squalor down :)

Just fyi; my homebuilt system:
i7 920 @ 4GHz
6GB ram @ 1600 MHz
ati 5870
intel SSD (cut load times down to 1/4th by my subjective observations)

With these specs it probably shouldn't be crashing at all (my components don't seem to be taxed hard at all during heavy play), so there definitely is a coding issue here on CA's part.

@Folgore: I'm in a Makedon campaign as well, don't know if that's a factor, it's been a while since I played and I mostly play Makedonian.

(another aside question if you'll permit: are the Agrianians better at killing units than their "melee attack" figures suggest? I remember reading a lot on here about units with axes actually killing units as opposed to spearmen merely holding them at bay)