CTD on all siege battles

[AwesomeKevo]

Hi, I'm new to the total war forum the only real reason I am here is to see if I can get any info or help on this problem that hinders game play immensely.
Ok so I've had CTD's on any siege battle NO exceptions I've tried about 10 and all I get is a CTD about half way through load, I've tried re-installing medieval, kingdoms and SS6.3 and SS6.4 several times. If its any use it also did this for the third age mod to so its not the mod obviously but maybe somebody knows whats wrong like some files i have to delete or what.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

[Losthief]

Hi, I'm new to the total war forum the only real reason I am here is to see if I can get any info or help on this problem that hinders game play immensely.
Ok so I've had CTD's on any siege battle NO exceptions I've tried about 10 and all I get is a CTD about half way through load, I've tried re-installing medieval, kingdoms and SS6.3 and SS6.4 several times. If its any use it also did this for the third age mod to so its not the mod obviously but maybe somebody knows whats wrong like some files i have to delete or what.
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

can you post your operating system and log file.

[AwesomeKevo]

can you post your operating system and log file.

its a windows vista 32 bit
heres the system.log file

[bɑne]

00:39:02.236 [system.rpt] [always] CPU: SSE2
00:39:02.236 [system.rpt] [always] ==== system log start, build date: Aug 3 2007 version bld-medieval2-kingdoms-104 (45562) ===
00:39:02.236 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_0.pack
00:39:02.236 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_1.pack
00:39:02.236 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_2.pack
00:39:02.236 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_3.pack
00:39:02.237 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_4.pack
00:39:02.238 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/localized.pack

Hm... log didn't catch the error.
Can you crash it again and upload the new log if it is actually displaying more lines than that? Should be in your SS6.3 folder.

[AwesomeKevo]

Hm... log didn't catch the error.
Can you crash it again and upload the new log if it is actually displaying more lines than that? Should be in your SS6.3 folder.

Sure, here it is.

[bɑne]

15:13:19.387 [system.rpt] [always] CPU: SSE2
15:13:19.387 [system.rpt] [always] ==== system log start, build date: Aug 3 2007 version bld-medieval2-kingdoms-104 (45562) ===
15:13:19.476 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_0.pack
15:13:19.489 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_1.pack
15:13:19.560 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_2.pack
15:13:19.562 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_3.pack
15:13:19.620 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/data_4.pack
15:13:19.620 [system.io] [always] mounted pack packs/localized.pack
15:15:08.955 [system.rpt] [error] Medieval 2: Total War encountered an unspecified error and will now exit.

Great... unspecified error. Please try the solution below regarding siege battles (reduced city textures)

A few things

• I also had crash issues with a battle resolution different from the campaign map resolution. That's been there since MTW1, so maybe I'm biased on that.
• The RSII forum mentions that waiting at any end of battle question and statistic screen until the "work" leds have stopped reduces the chances of crashes, pointing to a general memory issue.
• Battles played on different systems fail to reproduce the crashes on others. Maybe that's caused by a different BAI used, maybe it's hardware. Seems like some driver versions work to prevent the issue in one system and fail in the next. It's my understanding that using the default.bat to start the game will disable BAI switiching so you will default to only one BAI. So if you experience a end of battle CTD for whatever reason try starting the game with the .bat and playing the battle. Note that afaik the BAI data is cached and not switched in battle.
• Unless I'm wrong on that, quite a few of those crashes seem to happen in siege battles. There is a tool Creating a World - Reduced City Textures that will install reduced city textures for the basic M2TW game. As it installs into the root directory of the original game, these changes will affect all games - unless a mod provides custom textures. More info can be found in the linked topic and Gigantus topic for TATW. Obviously you don't need the TATW Reduced City Textures 2.1.01.rar for SS6.3 but before anyone asks I better mention it. Some texture expert will have to post how much of an impact is to be expected from that, I couldn't find anything that quick on custom textures in SS6.3.
• Installing DX9 on a DX11 Win7 or similar adds to & updates the directx dll library where needed (nothing gets overwritten, installing earlier DX9 versions doesn't downgrade your DX). Remember that M2TW is a DX9 game so that's what you're going for, earlier versions are of no use. For example you can use this link to install or google for direct x9, it's recommended to download from microsoft.
• From the FAQ: If you have an older computer, you may want to your SS directory, and inside default.cfg change "unit_detail=highest", to "unit_detail=low". Why is this by default set to highest? because when using the highest option MTW2 is forced to use models at any distance, instead of using spirites. What were the spirites you might ask? The little funny-looking images of soldiers when you zoom out a little.

Post before edit: One out of 300 that viewed this topic. Now thats a good number... and yes you can be sure thats what he meant

[AwesomeKevo]

Ok so about the reduced city textures does it just plain go in the Medieval II folder or in Medieval II/data or in SS6.4/data?

[AwesomeKevo]

I believe I found were its suppose to go its Medieval II/data/data right?
Either way it didn't work, thanks for the help though.

[Losthief]

I believe I found were its suppose to go its Medieval II/data/data right?
Either way it didn't work, thanks for the help though.

do you crash on basic kingdoms/vinalla, or just on mods?

[AwesomeKevo]

do you crash on basic kingdoms/vinalla, or just on mods?

just on mods never had any problem with medieval or kingdoms before

[Losthief]

just on mods never had any problem with medieval or kingdoms before

ok....well try 6.3 and don't patch up to 6.4 yet and let me know if it crashes still

[AwesomeKevo]

ok....well try 6.3 and don't patch up to 6.4 yet and let me know if it crashes still

Sadly it is still crashing, maybe its a bad download in general and I should re-download the whole torrent?

[bɑne]

I believe I found were its suppose to go its Medieval II/data/data right?
Either way it didn't work, thanks for the help though.

Just to be safe here are the instructions from the topic.

Installation
It is (as usual) vital to follow the listed steps below, please don't do custom stuff and then come complaining.

Step 1 not needed for us, continue with 2.

Step 2 - a taste of vanilla

Download and extract Creating a World - Reduced City Textures into the root of your M2TW installation. This will install reduced city textures for the basic M2TW game. As it installs into the root directory of the original game, these changes will affect all games - unless a mod provides custom textures like TATW does.

Same for Step 3.

Step 4 - use your options

Optional - It appears (not confirmed) that setting your graphics option to 'shader 2' will improve the effect as well.

[bɑne]

Half an hour seems a bit much. When did you last defrag your drive? Can never hurt.

[AwesomeKevo]

Half an hour seems a bit much. When did you last defrag your drive? Can never hurt.

I don't believe I've ever defraged my drive whenever I click on disk defragmenter nothing happens

[Losthief]

also did you restart your computer after turning off uac, otherwise its actually still on. And make sure whenever you run any of the installers or setup programs (so ss6.3.exe and ss6.4.exe and ss_setup.exe) that you right click it and run it as administrator (with or w/o being on an admin account or with uac on/off) this is for some reason very important. Also, I would recommend running ss_setup after installing ss6.3 and then making sure you can get in game. Then run the ss6.4.exe and then ss_setup once again.

also go here: 37. Is there any way to check what version of M2TW I'm running?
If you go to the "options" screen and look in the top right, you'll see the version number there.

and tell me what it says.

finally: go to c:/users/(your username here)/appdata/local/virtualstore (it may be hidden so either show hidden files or manually type it in, and tell me if there is a folder for mtw2 or ss in there somewhere (check all the subfolders)).

[AwesomeKevo]

also did you restart your computer after turning off uac, otherwise its actually still on. And make sure whenever you run any of the installers or setup programs (so ss6.3.exe and ss6.4.exe and ss_setup.exe) that you right click it and run it as administrator (with or w/o being on an admin account or with uac on/off) this is for some reason very important. Also, I would recommend running ss_setup after installing ss6.3 and then making sure you can get in game. Then run the ss6.4.exe and then ss_setup once again.

also go here: 37. Is there any way to check what version of M2TW I'm running?
If you go to the "options" screen and look in the top right, you'll see the version number there.

and tell me what it says.

Ok, well I haven't tried running the .exe as admin I've just been double clicking on it so i'll try that,
also for SS6.3 it comes up as ver.1.04

[AwesomeKevo]

finally: go to c:/users/(your username here)/appdata/local/virtualstore (it may be hidden so either show hidden files or manually type it in, and tell me if there is a folder for mtw2 or ss in there somewhere (check all the subfolders)).

Ok i found the local folder and i found one for Medieval II Total War located in local/virutalstorage/programfiles/SEGA

[Losthief]

Ok i found the local folder and i found one for Medieval II Total War located in local/virutalstorage/programfiles/SEGA

ok thats actually good news...there's your problem. So...go into UAC and turn it all the way off manually (so control panel, security, action center? (its that on win7) and then change user account control settings. Then go to never notify me when.

Reboot your computer. ***must reboot to set UAC as off***

***remember to run all of these exe's as 'right click, run as admin'***
Install mtw2 into a folder called c:/games (this eliminates any chance of virtual store)
Install kingdoms to same folder
Install patch 1.05 (do run as admin here)
Install ss6.3 to the c:/games path (may have to manually enter, browse for it) (remember to do run as admin)
Run ss_setup.exe (as admin) ***not totally necessary but better safe than sorry***
Install ss6.4 (remember to do run as admin)
Run ss_setup.exe (as admin)

Try to play the game
report back good luck!

-losty-

[AwesomeKevo]

ok thats actually good news...there's your problem. So...go into UAC and turn it all the way off manually (so control panel, security, action center? (its that on win7) and then change user account control settings. Then go to never notify me when.

Reboot your computer. ***must reboot to set UAC as off***

***remember to run all of these exe's as 'right click, run as admin'***
Install mtw2 into a folder called c:/games (this eliminates any chance of virtual store)
Install kingdoms to same folder
Install patch 1.05 (do run as admin here)
Install ss6.3 to the c:/games path (may have to manually enter, browse for it) (remember to do run as admin)
Run ss_setup.exe (as admin) ***not totally necessary but better safe than sorry***
Install ss6.4 (remember to do run as admin)
Run ss_setup.exe (as admin)

Try to play the game
report back good luck!

-losty-

It appears to be working perfectly now, thanks for all the help especially since it wasn't the mod's problem it was just my vista being a vista.