What makes save games corrupt/how can I avoid save games getting unloadable?

[Cpt.Kawa]

I posted this in the offical ETW forums as well. Maybe here is someone who can help me out with this issue.

Yesterday I started a GC with Marathes (don't know how to spell it right) on the highest difficulty level in campaign and battle. ATM I am in the year 1749 round 99 and I can't load the save game any more. I tried every save game and I can load all save games until 1740 round 82 or something form then on no other save game will load only thing it produces while trying is a CTD. As I am able to load some save games maybe the save games aren't corrupted it self IDK. Does anybody know how I can avoid that my save games will crash the game. Finally I made India mine and as soon as I took the last province form the Mogul's I can't get further in the game. Some advice would be very much appreciated

So basically all save games larger than 95 MB will result in a CTD.

[Brusilov]

I think there is a problem with ETW in the later years. I had an Austrian game playing OK until 1777 when it decided that it would not go past a certain point. Maybe, at the moment in order to win we need to finish the campaign sooner.

[Cpt.Kawa]

Can you maybe quick check how large your crashing save game is? For me I can't load any save game which is bigger than 95 MB this could be a flaw.

[jegui]

Auto-save and Quick-save functionality is bugged and they (devs) have done nothing to resolve it since RTW... by experience most campaigns past a certain size (100M in ETW and 4M in RTW) get corrupted if you load the quick/auto-save version at any time since campaign start-up.

I got my first ETW corrupted past 100M because I loaded a quick/auto save file an carried on the campaign until it got stuck... Then I loaded one of the earlier manual saves and it worked like a charm until the end and past 100M... the same happens in RTW...

My advice is ALWAYS manually save your campaign and load only the one file you have manually saved, keeping several saves if you need to roll back... DO NOT quicksave or load autosave files as they get currupted very easy.

[Brusilov]

My largest save from the Austrian campaign I lost was 85.5Mb - under the 100Mb suggested previously.

I know at least with RTW there was a way to stop autosaving - but there is no entry in the preferences file.

[jegui]

My largest save from the Austrian campaign I lost was 85.5Mb - under the 100Mb suggested previously.

I know at least with RTW there was a way to stop autosaving - but there is no entry in the preferences file.

No there is no way to disable the auto-save afaik however someone on another thread found a way to avoid crashes in AI turn by pressing 'end of turn' button followed by ESC key and selecting load from the menu... if the king and saved games do not appear then one should ctrl+alt+del and manually delete the auto-save file before hitting ESC again and carrying on with AI turn...

I haven't tried but it apparently works for CTD prone saved files

[Paulverisor64]

The point where my campaign froze was on year 1771, and the save file size was 85 meg.

I do wonder whether loading auto-saves in the long campaign is causing the campaign ending bug. It's just that crashes were so frequent that the loading of auto-saves seemed like a good idea at the time.

The short campaigns don't seem to be as plagued. I've completed 2 50 year campaigns. Yet it could just be a coincidence that they aren't as problematic; because they are smaller files.

If I get a chance I will try a long campaign without loading auto-saves.

[Sinjen]

The two I have corrupted are around 80 mb

[Cpt.Kawa]

I tried now a campaign without loading any auto or quick saves, but I can't still get further than 1746.

[MagnumForce]

You know how some games come bundled with say a joystick(IL2), well ETW should come bundled with a 100gig harddrive to hold the savegames.

[Cpt.Kawa]

You know how some games come bundled with say a joystick(IL2), well ETW should come bundled with a 100gig hard drive to hold the savegames.

I would gladly provide even 200GB of hard disk space, if the save games would load and not result in a CTD.

They should have delivered with the game some tools for anger management, like something to punch.

Oh my, I think it is time to uninstall ETW and forget about this game.

[Brusilov]

I was able to play a Swedish campaign all the way up to 1826 when I put it aside for a while. The only CTD I got was something to do with an admiral. I sent a fleet of three ships to take out a Russian fleet somewhere up in the icy north. Whenever I clicked on the fleet I got an instant CTD. I waited for the admiral to die and then was able to use the fleet again. Something must have been messed up with that character.

I don't load from the autosave at all. I deleted it once in the hope that it would not be recreated but it was.

@pegui - Thanks for that. There appears to be a number of things that CA dropped from previous TW games. I am really pleased that it's possible to save replays of campaign battles.