Experiencing graphics error when in battle.

**Agesilas** · August 13, 2008, 11:42 PM

First time poster here and I didn't find the solution after about 10 pages of reading so i'll see if you guys can point me to the solution

mtw2 has worked fine for me since i purchased the game on steam over a year and a half ago. Steam patched kingdoms last week and now all hell as broken loose. First launcher.exe screws up and says it can't connect to the internet so i'm stuck with an error right off the bat. Game still launches though so i'm patient and willing to deal with the launcher music blaring for the first 5 minutes of play. Now every time i go into combat I experience a "fatal graphics error". It keeps telling me to lower my settings but I have a new machine with high end vid card and cpu so there should be no issues there as there weren't any in the past. I've been fidling with this sucker all day and its driving me bananas. Any ideas on how I can get back to playing this game without every single fight crashing on me?

**D.B. Cooper** · August 14, 2008, 12:05 AM

Finally, someone else experiencing the same problems as me with the launcher. I asked this in another thread not too long ago and supposedly my firewall settings are interfering, so I had to go into the game files and launch the game from the medieval2 application. That solved all the problems. Or make a shortcut from the medieval2 application, though it isn't working for me. Maybe it's Vista.

**Agesilas** · August 14, 2008, 12:15 AM

I have avast and spybot resident running in the background, that's it. I bypassed the launcher.exe glitch by deleting launcher and renaming medieval.exe to launcher.exe. (I backed up the original) I've since put the original back and have gone back to launcher.exe to see if this was the issue. I debugged the files thru the steam tools in properties for both mtw2 and kingdoms. No good. I dropped the settings down substantially, also no good.

**irishron** · August 14, 2008, 12:22 AM

Agesilas, welcome to the forums. I assume new machine also means Vista. In my opinion, whatever the specs are for Kingdoms doulble them for Vista Basic. Premium, ultimate, 64-bit, up them some more. Vista is power hungry. Lower your settings and if it works blame it onto Microsoft.

To both of you, in my opinion, the launcher that came out with version 1.2 is a piece of crap. Put the blame at Sega's door for not adding enough servers for the load. I use desktop shortcuts for everything and my launcher never gets touched. To get rid of the desktop shortcut for the launcher, right click the icon, and click properties. In the command line box you'll see this: "C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\Launcher.exe". Change launcher.exe to medieval2.exe, click okay and have fun.

**Agesilas** · August 14, 2008, 11:45 AM

Well I finally was able to fight a full length battle today but only after ditching the steam version of the game and installing my old rip from 2-3 years ago. I am playing version 1.0 and will play a full campaign to see if it works. I have 1.2 ready to install for when things check out (which they should, there's no reason for the error I was experiencing other than a craptastic steam experience). I won't buy any more games off of steam due to this shoddy update that totally screwed me over. Total War deserves every penny I spent on their product, its a shame a 3rd party had to screw it up and force a customer off the legit copy.

**irishron** · August 14, 2008, 12:05 PM

That's why I love my dvds and cds. I have bought programs download before and had them close up shop right behind me.

**verena xeventus** · August 14, 2008, 01:08 PM

I have also had problems with the launcher not connecting to the internet, causing long loading times. I seem to be able to fight battles ok at the moment, I will try it again later to see what happens. You're not alone guys... it seems medieval 2 was never meant to be released (because of its many MANY flaws and incompatibilities)

**irishron** · August 15, 2008, 03:42 AM

Originally Posted by verena xeventus

I have also had problems with the launcher not connecting to the internet, causing long loading times. I seem to be able to fight battles ok at the moment, I will try it again later to see what happens. You're not alone guys... it seems medieval 2 was never meant to be released (because of its many MANY flaws and incompatibilities)

Did you read my note in post #4 about end running the launcher? I refuse to use it because of such things.

**verena xeventus** · August 15, 2008, 02:19 PM

Sorry Irishron I missed your earlier post... must be going cenile or something. Thats actually a great help.. thank you. +1 rep for getting rid of annoying launcher.