CTDs - many many CTDs!

**.:DeeK:.** · April 04, 2008, 10:05 AM

I hadn't played RTW in ages, so I thought I'd have some empire-building fun with a new mod and came across RS. Promptly installed vanilla, patched to 1.5, then installed RS 1.5a. So far so good. Have now played Pergamum for a couple days and having a great time, currently carving gaping holes into Macedons defences and preparing a full scale assault of the Ptolemaic mainland after a long naval blockade.

BUT: I'm having regular CTDs that are slowly but surely taking the pleasure out of the battle shenanigans ( = really starting to piss me off

). It seems to happen with every other battle and I've not been able to figure out why. After restarting RS the first battle is always guaranteed to work, but after that it's fingers crossed. My specs aren't that great (3yr old laptop??)

, P4 3 Ghz, 512 RAM, ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, however I have played both vanilla and other mods (EB, Troy, and others..) and never had any problems. Up until yesterday it always happened while the battle was loading, which is frustrating, but at least you don't spend ages battling it out and then finding you have to do it all over again...well, until yesterday that is. I had a small contingent of my Macedon-smashing armies lay siege on a Greek Cities settlement and was duly attacked by an army 3 times my size. Result: My Pergamum hoplites and archers successfully fought off the advancing Greek hoplites (many militia, but also normal and Athenian!) and I earned my first and long-awaited heroic victory!

or so I thought: Settlement taken, population massacred (which I do 9/10 times anyway), then everything goes black...

Right, enough of this. The problem's obvious, any suggestions? I really like this mod, but having to restart every 3rd battle or so is a pain in the arse.

Hope you can help

Peace, DeeK

**century x** · April 04, 2008, 10:10 AM

Your going to have to give more description of the CTD. Do they give you a error message when they happen or do they just CTD without any message. What are the usual compositions of your army and the enemy armies. I had alot of CTD at the start but was told it was my video card over heating. I just moved my computer to have better air and since then I have never had a CTD again. But your saying your Specs are not the greatest sp that can't be the reason.

So yea tell more about the CTDs.

**.:DeeK:.** · April 04, 2008, 10:51 AM

It happens in pretty much any battle setup and has been a problem since I first started the campaign. Both with small skirmishes in the "countryside" and huge city sieges, and everything in between. I like my archers and my main infantry contingent is hoplites (often Pergamum hoplites), some sword hoplites, no peltasts, rarely milita hoplites, rarely greek infantry (forget their name?), as I said, different setups, different situations. I don't think it has anything to do with a specific unit type, rather with an "information overload" or something, since the first battle after startup (no matter what scale, condition, location...) is always fine. And I usually get a second, rarely a third and fourth battle in, before CTD. As if it just can't cope with too many loading screens (i.e loading and shifting data), does that make sense?? Anything I can try to improve things?

Cheers, DeeK

**Squid** · April 04, 2008, 11:55 AM

Which faction are you fighting? What units a present on both sides of the battle?

**HMonk** · April 04, 2008, 01:15 PM

Sounds like a computer issue ie:memory issues, or over heating issue due to the amount of high system resources RS needs. (just a thought):hmmm:

**century x** · April 04, 2008, 01:25 PM

It has to do with your video card just crappng out on you. Your card is a little old and it probaly can't handle that many battles without having to rest.

**.:DeeK:.** · April 04, 2008, 02:23 PM

@ SquidSK: Well, as I mentioned, I'm playing as Pergamum and have been fighting the Free People, Ptolemaics, Pontus, Seleucids, Macedonians and Greek Cities so far. CTDs are occurring with every type of setup and every enemy, it's a general issue, not faction or unit specific. Which kinda makes it worse

@ HMonk and Century X: Is there really that big a difference between RS and vanilla that would cause these crashes? I know the vid card is crap, but short of buying a new laptop there's nothing I can do about it (and I'm very pleased with this piece of kit in all other aspects + don't really have that kind of money right now). I've never had these problems with vanilla (no CTDs ever as far as I can remember!), but I'll try setting everything at its lowest setting and see what happens.

BTW, I just tried to replay the battle mentioned above and it crashed again after I got the settlement (turns still to be completed by other factions). So I'm now stuck with a savegame that is unplayable.

If it truly is the video card I will have to bite the bullet and say 'adios' to RS for now. Can anyone suggest another mod that they enjoyed playing besides EB and Troy?

**century x** · April 04, 2008, 02:31 PM

Well wait a little longer for the higher ups to respond to this issue. Maybe i'm wrong. I'm just saying what I have learned from other peoples issues that are similar to yours.

**Wolfstorm** · April 06, 2008, 02:54 PM

I guess I known what kind of CTD is. Is that one that leaves no error reported by the show_err switch in the shortcut. It happens while the loading bar is near its half, and the loading bar sometimes turns back a little bit before the crash. Its happening as you play Pergamum because it happens mostly in desert areas. It dont happens in the first battle after loading the game, but can happens after that. If you reload the game and play the battle before which the CTD happened, it dont crash because its the first battle after reloading. Lol I have this crash everytime I play RS. I even known when it will happen, usually at the second desert battle, but can happens in the first if there was already three other battles in other terrains. The other CTD you describe is after you capture a settlement during AI turn. For example: you are in a siege, the AI sally out to attack in its turn, you defeat it, enters the city, then comes the next AI faction turn, and after that it appears the captured settlement screen, and when you click in one of the options a CTD can happen.
Do you known how to open the console? Its the first key below "esc". After that you write this command "auto_win attacker" or "auto_win defender" (without the ""). It will cause a automatic victory for you in case you already played the battle and won it.

**HMonk** · April 06, 2008, 04:34 PM

1) How much computer memory?
2) Is Auto save set to false?
3) RS is way different (better) than vanilla, but it dose require more (power)mostly graphics speed plus system memory than vanilla./
A P4 3.0 ghz is ok.
But there are others who will know more than I about this. Good Luck!

**tone** · April 06, 2008, 05:13 PM

Important that Auto_Save is set to False

**nich** · April 14, 2008, 01:53 PM

Hey, deek. I've got the same problem as well, so take consolation in that. I also have a laptop, an Acer Aspire model which can run vanilla and other mods but *always* crashes on the second battle with RS. I posted a topic on it some time ago but unfortunately we couldn't resolve it, I'm resigned to the fact now that its the graphics card, or lack of. If you find a fix I'd be delighted if you could inform me, and vice versa.