Campaign Battles Crashing

[Sandrew]

My game crashes regularly during campaign battles, independent of size. The battle runs smooth, no stuttering or anything but suddenly the game just freezes and crashes to desktop. I have had minor skirmishes crash as well as large pitched battles. The thing is that it only happens in campaign mode. In single player battles everything works just fine, I have even had battles twice the size of those I fought in campaign mode (some 2600 russians v.s. 1700 swedes) run smoothly without any problems or crashes, but campaign battles can crash even at 400v400, probably even at smaller scale.

So I was wondering wether this is a bug, or it's just my PC giving me the finger as it can't cope with simultanously running a campaign and a battle.

[Xwhyzed]

Do you use any sub mods like Fife and Drum?

[Sandrew]

I use DMCore with reduced extra units, 25% faster artillery reload and light enhanced smoke. I also have DMUC sounds enabled.

[Tango12345]

Does the problem happen if you start a new campaign?

[Sandrew]

Yes, I started another campaign (as Russia, the previous one as Sweden) and the crashes persist. I also forgot to mention, but sometimes battles don't even start. As in, the loading screen finishes loading, the small rotating pocketwatch turns into the cursor again and nothing else happens (the loading screen is still there).

edit; By the way, can I still play vanilla ETW with DM installed? Because I might just try out a campaign in vanilla to see if that crashes as well.

[Tango12345]

If you installed Darthmod Empire (rather than DMUC) then you go to your ETW scripts folder (application data/the creative assembly/empire/scripts) and take out the empire_preferences script. (DO NOT delete it-you may want to put it back later!) Removing that script will revert the game to vanilla, putting it back will reactivate darthmod

If you are using DMUC (the huge 7 gig supermod) then just launch empire via the normal etw shortcut and it will be vanilla.

[Sandrew]

Hey, just dropping by to say that I probably fixed it. Appearantly I was missing a service pack. I also dropped the fancy graphics a bit, down to medium. Have been playing for seven hours straight yesterday without a single crash and some fairly large battles (4000 v 3200, larger than any I've ever played before).

Thanks anyway, you've been very helpful.

edit; might as well post some other minor nuisances/bugs.

- An attacking Ottoman army (superior in both numbers and troop quality) didn't engage. I simply mauled a small portion of their forces with firelock populace and townguards (Gorszkje Strelzy or something) while the rest of their army stood by until the battle ended.
- Enemy rakes keep sabotaging the same building. Which is good, because otherwise they would do much more damage.
- Enemies (Swedes and Ottomans) occasionally mass-charge my lines. Swedes usually go for my artillery so from a tactical point of view it makes some sense (as there is no way they could outgun my guns).


On a positive note, I have managed to force three surrenders! In one case it was weird as their force along with reïnforcements was superior to mine, and the surrender left their forces divided. In both other cases I faced only garisson and armed populace so the surrender made sense as they would have been wiped out otherwise.

[Tango12345]

Hey, just dropping by to say that I probably fixed it. Appearantly I was missing a service pack. I also dropped the fancy graphics a bit, down to medium. Have been playing for seven hours straight yesterday without a single crash and some fairly large battles (4000 v 3200, larger than any I've ever played before).

Thanks anyway, you've been very helpful.

Glad you sorted.

- An attacking Ottoman army (superior in both numbers and troop quality) didn't engage. I simply mauled a small portion of their forces with firelock populace and townguards (Gorszkje Strelzy or something) while the rest of their army stood by until the battle ended.

Were you playing with fort battles disabled?

- Enemy rakes keep sabotaging the same building. Which is good, because otherwise they would do much more damage.

I've seen that as well, I don't know how far it is possible to mod that behaviour, if at all...

- Enemies (Swedes and Ottomans) occasionally mass-charge my lines. Swedes usually go for my artillery so from a tactical point of view it makes some sense (as there is no way they could outgun my guns).

Well, the AI is much cleverer in DarthMod, so they may well have realised that melee was their best hope of beating you.

On a positive note, I have managed to force three surrenders! In one case it was weird as their force along with reïnforcements was superior to mine, and the surrender left their forces divided. In both other cases I faced only garisson and armed populace so the surrender made sense as they would have been wiped out otherwise.

Nice! Its amazing what fixing a CA typo will do! (I kid you not, there was a typo in the surrender code)