A most unnatractive situation...

[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

[mfberg]

I have had no problems with SP2 and MTW, but I started from scratch. Save all the stuff you need (saved games, documents, those pictures of your grandkids), format and install XP, then update and install SP2 and then re-installed all your other programs. Its a long way to go, but it really cleans out the computer.

mfberg

ps My 40G hd is 90% full, my 10G hd is full. Total war is going to force me to invest in a 120G hd.

[EatYerGreens]

HopalongBunny,

well it was going well (English campaign) until that CTD thing but I still haven't gone back to it just yet. If I wait long enough I can come back to the last decent game save with renewed enthusiasm.

In the meantime the Byz campaign is going great but was touch and go in the early stages. If the Turks and Eggys had worked together, I would have been a goner but they beat each other up and later on I'd built up enough to finish the Turks and the Almos did for the Eggys. The trouble is, having allied to the Almos, I was kept busy looking after the T & E re-emergences whilst the Almos set about all the places I couldn't yet reach, polishing off the Spanish and Aragonese, pushing the French and a section of the HRE to the Baltic coast and my northern border respectively, then the Italians and Sicilians.

I never did have enough dough to bribe the Irish and still go on building. They had cannily left some units in their fort, separate from the main stack, requiring two separate bribes (ludicrously large for mostly Kerns and just 2 Gallowglasses) if I was to avoid an immediate battle. Somehow they had afforded a port and some buildings, so I bided my time. Of course the Almos beat me to grabbing Ireland and they took many years to rebuild the port, losing me trade in the interim. The English had to re-emerge twice to end up with just Wales and Wessex; the French held onto Scotland until recently, with the Almos in between. I grabbed Norway whilst I still had the chance, which is a useful boost to trade. The Danes had Sweden at the time but had built up their farmlands instead of ships and were evidently too poor to build enough troops to take it for themselves. The Baltic is now the only region not plastered in Almo ships....

End of year animations are entertaining, to say the least. Almo stacks flying from one side of the world to the other in every conceivable direction, they attack with 9 or 10 full stacks at once and it's only the repeated rebellions which are inflicting any casualties and keeping them at bay. I need enough in the bank to be able to survive with a negative profit margin for a decade or two before I can really get to grips with the Almo beast. I think a blockade on their trade will hit them even harder than me due to the sheer number of troops they have. If I time it right and all their stacks are in one province in mainland Europe, I can storm across Africa and meet them in Spain in the time it will take them to march there on land to meet me - sea battle successes permitting.

Stuff about the Golden Horde is going in a separate thread. I strated on it here but it was going way off topic.

[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!)