A most unnatractive situation...

[bretwalda]

Keep it up! :) Managed to recover the savegame?

[Tomcat]

EYG - Always save the game with your own savename after every turn or before clicking "End of Year". That way, the most you lose if something goes wrong is simply the last turn.

Tomcat

[EatYerGreens]

Keep it up! :) Managed to recover the savegame?

In spite of anticipated trouble, I restored from 'Last Autosave' and refought the two European battles, again autocalcing the crusader battle.

In Flanders my starting position was different, middle-left of the map, facing diagonally downwards this time but I still had trees to my right to keep cav at bay. I shuffled my units to give me a fourth unit of archers and one less inf unit and went ahead. This time killed 1293, captured 647, lost 367, again killed their king but this time kept mine out of trouble.

In Navarre, the map looked somewhat different and the AI started in a different place and behaved differently too. Instead of their whole force coming to me, I had to tease units to come down the slope before I could engage them properly. After a bit of work, I won again K:348 C:91 L:242.

Then, after getting the results of three naval battles, the next click sent the thing crashing to desktop once more, so I'm going to have to fight these yet again!

Things were working fine in MTW prior to this. In spite of me setting Windows Update to only download and install when I ask it to, and have hitherto avoided fetching SP2, M$ have somehow forced SP2 to download itself to my machine and I went ahead with the install because there seemed to be no way to avoid doing so. This is within the last week and suddenly MTW is messing about. Anybody have any idea if there's a connection?


Tomcat,

I take your point about gamesaves but it was pressing escape to reach the save menu which caused the first CTD anyway. I can certainly make a point of doing quicksaves before every 'end year' but, as you might understand, I'm a bit wary of the escape key at the moment.

If it turns out that the autosave I restored from is corrupted, then I have a 'proper' game save for 1301, which is the year before the Spanish attack one of my ships. If all else fails, I can go back to that, even if it gives me the unfair advantage of knowing "what happens next".

Thanks,

[Tomcat]

EYG - If you think SP2 is at fault, then you could try a restore to a previous save point. If you want to try this I suggest you read this post in the Apothecary before trying the "roll back" since there are lessons to be learnt:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37572

I also see Kraellin has just started a new "sticky" on SP2 in the Apothecary.

SP2 probably found its way onto your PC because you may have selected "Express Update" where Windows takes all the update "decisions" ie it installs everything (including probably SP2), as opposed to "Custom Update" where you make the decisions as to what to install. For example, I updated today the latest 5 (I think) WindowsXP Security Updates through a custom install that first strongly suggested I install SP2 - which I naturally refused!

Tomcat

[Kraellin]

you can also use control-s to save. this will do a 'quicksave' and aave you the need to hit the escape key.

also, one note on mtw/vi and saving... some folks highly recommend you save ONLY at the beginning of a turn and not at the end of a turn. the rationale for this seems to be that you dont get as many corrupted saves and mtw/vi is rather bad about corrupting saves.

K.

[EatYerGreens]

you can also use control-s to save. this will do a 'quicksave' and aave you the need to hit the escape key.

also, one note on mtw/vi and saving... some folks highly recommend you save ONLY at the beginning of a turn and not at the end of a turn. the rationale for this seems to be that you dont get as many corrupted saves and mtw/vi is rather bad about corrupting saves.

K.

Thanks for the tip Kraellin. I do have that habit of doing Ctrl-S a number of times as I make moves on the strat map, so mine are the end-of-turn type that you warn against.

If saving after battles are resolved but before making moves, as you say, I presume you still have to wait for the various dialogues about kings dying, events occurring and so forth to finish before you get the chance to do Ctrl-S?

Incidentally, there must have been some kind of long-term fault in my English campaign. I recall seeing the message about discovery of the compass, allowing boats to sail outside coastal areas but first I discovered that Barque and Caravel are coastal-only, with or without compass (some Egyptian boats could elude me through the parts of the Med where I couldn't go and short-cut to Gibraltar Straits) and second, even after completing Citadel and Fortress, it still wouldn't give me the opportunity to upgrade the Dockyard to the next level of shipbuilder. According to the info parchment, it seems that the higher buildings are conditional on the discovery of the compass. Even though the event has occurred, it's like the game hasn't registered that fact properly. Gunpowder weapons are available but I can't move up to the more advanced ships, even though it's past 1300.

This last bit ought to be a separate thread really...

[Tomcat]

EYG - Read the Byzantine thread from the MTW Guides section:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=31248 Lots of good ideas there.

Like you I started mt first Early Campaign as the Byzantines at the weekend and I have the Egyptian Sultan cornered in Antioch. Managed to get a fort built in Naples after quashing a couple of uprisings. Also, touch and go in Sicily. I move my Byz Infantry there every other turn but the Sicilians keep retreating to their Keep and not fighting. Then back to Naples to quell the next uprising with a several starred General now. I do not think I have ever wanted to get Peasants built so badly to get some loyalty in that Province lol!

Tomcat

[HopAlongBunny]

Sounds like you have a great game going!

cntl-s is your friend; there is nothing worse than playing for hours and having a ctd.

are you playing 1.0 or 1.1; the patch fixed a lot of the annoying "features" of the original MTW. the "event" message for compass comes long before you can actually begin building caravels; beyond caravels you will also need gunpowder to build the next dock upgrades.

have fun with the Byz some of the most seriously overpowered units in the game (Early) make them a steamroller...just gotta get the killing machine moving first

I agree with Tomcat ; check the guides, no point trying to reinvent the wheel

[EatYerGreens]

EYG - If you think SP2 is at fault, then you could try a restore to a previous save point. If you want to try this I suggest you read this post in the Apothecary before trying the "roll back" since there are lessons to be learnt:
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=37572

I also see Kraellin has just started a new "sticky" on SP2 in the Apothecary.

SP2 probably found its way onto your PC because you may have selected "Express Update" where Windows takes all the update "decisions" ie it installs everything (including probably SP2), as opposed to "Custom Update" where you make the decisions as to what to install. For example, I updated today the latest 5 (I think) WindowsXP Security Updates through a custom install that first strongly suggested I install SP2 - which I naturally refused!

Tomcat

I checked out that thread you linked to. Reads like a catalogue of disasters... fortunately my system's not in that bad a state, post SP2, though I have experienced worse symptoms - like a PC which wouldn't even find the HDD in the BIOS. HDD only about 10 months old, ended up replaced under warranty.

I was genuinely puzzled about how SP2 snuck its way onto my machine because I HAD selected the option to just notify me when updates were available and let me fetch and install them manually. Like I said before, given the opportunity, I would have skipped it having seen some warnings about TW series vs SP2.

Anyway, this time, I just saw a yellow shield icon appear on my taskbar, telling me 'download xx% complete' when I put the cursor on it. I would rather have been doing something else (offline) on the PC at the time but I just watched some telly for a while and let it complete the download. It then went straight to the install process. Fortunately I remembered to create a restore point before pressing the button to proceed, but I've not felt the need to go back to it yet.

I'm not actually sure what goes into a restore point anyway. Would I lose all recent gamesaves and other recently changed data files by doing a Windows restore or does it only save the condition of system exe's dll's, registry and so forth?

For the time being, I'm assuming that my problems with this campaign are down to the autosave file and I'll go back to the last conventional save.

In the meantime, having repeated these battles three times now and tired of that campaign completely, I've started a whole new Early campaign, as the Byzantines. In my English campaign they've ended up confined to Rhodes, with more Katanks than they can afford to support and I'm trying to find out why things went so wrong. The game says they are easier than the difficulty level chosen but Naples rebelled on the first turn. Beat them off with no trouble but wasted two years on building WT/BF's and before I could complete a town watch (no ships to move extra troops in) the Sicilians caught me off guard and stole it with about 400 troops to less than 100 of mine. (harumph!)