mid-battle crashes and freezes

**UltimaGecko** · 10-27-2007, 10:59

I'm playing as the Romans and it's probably around 12 turns in or so (269 - also happened in 271; on Normal/Normal); however I've got a consistent problem which - based on the fact no one else is complaining about it - is probably somehow limited to my game...

The big thing: any battle involving a cityscape crashes mid-battle without fail. In this save ([which I can't post because all of my posts from the former forum are missing so I have a post count of 0...])I'm trying to siege Rhegion, but I've tried it with Segestica (you might be wondering how I took Tarentum/Taras...but some army came out of no where, attacking me away from the city and somehow I captured it anyway).

The crash is either a frozen image, or a loss of video signal (as in, my CPU is still on, but there's no image going to my monitor anymore), or occasionally returning to the desktop (which leads me to believe it might actually be a driver problem, so feel free to recommend a driver that works with EB and R:TW).

Generally it happens when I order one of my units to attack another unit (although I'm never really keeping track of which unit is actually causing the problem). Other notable crashes were: once when I was selecting 3 units (one each of hastati, pricepes and triarii, I think), once when I was changing the battle speed. Those are the only two crashes when I was initiating some sort of combat.

The timing seems to be completely random...some are right at the middle, one was when I was inside the walls fighting towards the town center.

Field battles went off without a hitch (in one I was going against the one Greek faction that holds Taras; the other was rebels from around Venice that ventured down towards Arminium).

Potentially useful information:
Windows XP
768mb or RAM
256mb ATi Radeon x700 pro (Omega 3.8.360 driver)
Athlon 2400+

fresh install of R:TW from 1.0 to 1.3 to 1.5
EB v1.0
(I also added those permanent fixes to no effect)
I've tried city battles 10+ times, some with background script, some without.

I'd really like to try out the mod to its full potential, but the prolonged start-ups coupled with the inability to play any battle involving a city pretty much cripples the experience and makes it unplayable. So, help would be appreciated.

**UltimaGecko** · 10-27-2007, 11:00

Because I should no be able to post it with my requisite '1' post:
the save file should be at http://www.axifile.com?9649711 if it's necessary.

Thank you forums, for requiring me to double post...

[edit]Upon retrospect, it probably would have let me edit that into the previous post, but oh well[/edit]

**bovi** · 10-27-2007, 11:11

Your rig or the drivers may indeed be the problem.

768 MB RAM is in the lower end of what can work for EB, and I would expect it to be further taxed when playing on a map with lots of buildings. You could try to borrow a chip from a friend to see if it fixes the problem. Anyway you should consider upgrading your memory as it's in the lower end of pretty much anything these days. I experienced a big increase in performance when upgrading from 1GB to 3GB, to put it in perspective (that is, once I tweaked the BIOS settings to run on a lower mem frequency so it was stable). You should run Memtest overnight to see if there is a problem with your memory.

I see you're using the Omega drivers for your graphics. You should try to use the official drivers, and there may also be a newer Omega version available. Although I'm sure you have good reason to use the Omega ones in the first place, it can't hurt to see if the official makes a difference. Also try an older driver of both kinds to see if it can work at all. If there is no luck with different drivers, you could borrow a graphics card from a friend to see if your card itself is faulty.

I'll take a look at your savegame sometime, but I initially think this problem is specific to your computer.

Oh, and I would say welcome to the forum, but you've been lurking a really long time it seems.

**Sygrod** · 10-28-2007, 00:39

I also get CTDs mid battle. Some persistent, others go away with a fresh start of the computer. I have 1.5 Gig RAM and a decent video card. I have tried updating drivers, but seem to have the latest. Is there a program around that would be able to catch CTDs and report what actually triggered them (Which device, that is)?

**bovi** · 10-28-2007, 00:48

Well, there is Filemon, but I think the game reads all it's going to need before starting the battle. Also there is a windows setting that will give you bluescreens instead of automatically rebooting, but it's not rebooting but rather crashing to the desktop.

So no, I don't know anything

to catch it. However, you should also try memtest overnight to be sure your RAM is fine.

**UltimaGecko** · 10-28-2007, 00:56

Okay, I've managed to notice which unit I was using this time:

I was sending some Equites Romani that were engaged with some archers against some Camillian Skirmishers (of some sort) and it crashed (I'm pretty sure a few of the other crashes were also related to me having my cavalry attack something).

I'm confident it's not my RAM, because no other game gives me problems and it's been solid for quite a long time. The game also runs very fluidly when it's not freezing...I also turned down building detail and grass detail and such - aside from looking much uglier it didn't run any different. This is the same computer I had a 9200 in before, and I could play vanilla Rome's city battles without any problems back then with the same amount of ram.

I tried it again with both newer drivers; I tried the newest catalyst from ...October 11th, 2007, I think...and I was quickly reminded why I don't use them when half of my full screen applications didn't run. I tried the newest Omega drivers (3.8.421) and it's the same as the .360s...as in, stuff runs well, except EB freezes/crashes mid-battle).

I'll try playing it without using cavalry...see how that works out, I guess.