Saving during AI turn

[Kenny Works]

I'm playing into my current campaign (about 40 hours) and I've managed to keep the script running all the time. But last night, during the AI turn, I was attacked, fought the battle, but the game crashed at the end of the battle. I loaded again and this time saved when the AI attacked (at the battle screen), fought the battle, and the game crashed again. I couldn't spend any more time on it, so I left it as it was.

This morning, I loaded from the save (in the middle of the AI turn), autoresolved the battle, and everything was fine - except that the script wasn't turned on. When the AI finished, I turned the script back on, and proceeded from there.

But now I'm wondering - will saving and reloading during the AI turn break my game in any way?

(Also, playing as Rome and the crashes occurred while taking Carthage).

Thanks!

[romanius24]

Crash might be related to mod path length.
I would suggest you dont save during AI turn(i assume you saved right before entering the battle) and just use normal saves.

[Kenny Works]

Crash might be related to mod path length.
I would suggest you dont save during AI turn(i assume you saved right before entering the battle) and just use normal saves.

So how do you do that? Most turns, sure, it's not a problem, but what if you on your third battle of the turn and you don't have time to fight it. You just auto-resolve?

[ur-Lord Tedric]

So how do you do that? Most turns, sure, it's not a problem, but what if you on your third battle of the turn and you don't have time to fight it. You just auto-resolve?

Honestly - no. In short I always save at the point before I end turn to avoid all of this. If there isn't a free hour left at that point, then I don't press end turn. Then I always load, activate script and press End Turn.

Crashing at the end of a battle is almost definitely Anti-Virus related.

[romanius24]

Yeah, never end turn if you plan on ending the session. Just save and continue next turn.
I would not recommend auto resolving, its broken. I use it but not on stack battles.

[Alavaria]

The biggest thing is I think garrison scripts don't appear if the script is off. They seem to be inserted into the settlement only after its owner faction has finished moving (perhaps only after all AI turns have finished)

[Kenny Works]

Honestly - no. In short I always save at the point before I end turn to avoid all of this. If there isn't a free hour left at that point, then I don't press end turn. Then I always load, activate script and press End Turn.

Crashing at the end of a battle is almost definitely Anti-Virus related.

Thanks for the help. I was trying to do that but got impatient. I'm not running any anti-virus software but I'll check windows.

The biggest thing is I think garrison scripts don't appear if the script is off. They seem to be inserted into the settlement only after its owner faction has finished moving (perhaps only after all AI turns have finished)

Okay, good to know. The thing is, I've already invested a lot of time in this campaign. Is there anything that will break my game later, just because I didn't have the script running for what would be half of an AI turn?

[ur-Lord Tedric]

....................
Okay, good to know. The thing is, I've already invested a lot of time in this campaign. Is there anything that will break my game later, just because I didn't have the script running for what would be half of an AI turn?

As long as you activate the script at the earliest possible moment, then you might get away with it. The big issue, however, with not activating the script is an action happening, or not happening during the very end of the End Turn/AI phase - which in script terms is actually 'AtTurnStart' - when some things are checked.

The biggest thing that can trip you up is a double character instance - which the script prevents. This can screw your game up several turns after the incident happens, and thus even going back to the last save can be problematical - even a 10 year save.

In short - either save during your own turn (and activate upon re-loading as normal); or only at the start of a battle you don't have time to fight. I would never go from a save in the middle of the EndTurn/AI phase. At the very worst I would always ensure the script is active before pressing End Turn. To be fair, if something happens and you have to stop during the middle of that phase, then I always restart from the Save I make before every End Turn and not from half-way through.

Applying that has ensured I have never had, iirc, a corrupted game.

[Kenny Works]

This mod is extremely stable. You always have to worry about memory leak crashes. If you play for like 2 to 3 hours straight you will get a random CTD no matter what.

And that's the answer, I think.

As long as you activate the script at the earliest possible moment, then you might get away with it. The big issue, however, with not activating the script is an action happening, or not happening during the very end of the End Turn/AI phase - which in script terms is actually 'AtTurnStart' - when some things are checked.

The biggest thing that can trip you up is a double character instance - which the script prevents. This can screw your game up several turns after the incident happens, and thus even going back to the last save can be problematical - even a 10 year save.

In short - either save during your own turn (and activate upon re-loading as normal); or only at the start of a battle you don't have time to fight. I would never go from a save in the middle of the EndTurn/AI phase. At the very worst I would always ensure the script is active before pressing End Turn. To be fair, if something happens and you have to stop during the middle of that phase, then I always restart from the Save I make before every End Turn and not from half-way through.

Applying that has ensured I have never had, iirc, a corrupted game.

Thanks, that makes more sense now. I generally run a number of saves, but I'll start saving at the end of every turn - just to be safe. Thanks for the info [+ rep].

[century x]

This mod is extremely stable. You always have to worry about memory leak crashes. If you play for like 2 to 3 hours straight you will get a random CTD no matter what.

[Alavaria]

Basically, save and quit.

Then restart, start the script and press end turn. It's the best you can do. If there's like 5 massive battles there's no real way around it but to magically run away for reasons or let the script be broken.

[century x]

Basically, save and quit.

Then restart, start the script and press end turn. It's the best you can do. If there's like 5 massive battles there's no real way around it but to magically run away for reasons or let the script be broken.

If I play over two hours no matter what I save and quit to desktop and restart it.

[Alavaria]

Nice. The one time I had like 4 massive battles ...

[century x]

Nice. The one time I had like 4 massive battles ...

It's sorta like a catch-22.
Since RS2 is designed to have VERY VERY long battles in an ideal setting you will do one big battle a turn. But then when your empire grows and grows you will have more and more battles per turn. Since modding RTW adds these memory leaks it is unavoidable.
At the least I use the altered files that shortens battle lengths a bit and it makes a difference. My battles last shorter and I do not have to worry about the memory leaks.

[romanius24]

The submod definitely helps against the memory leaks.Thats one of the reasons why i use it too.
Good news is that trees and city size will be reduced in 2.7 so that will also help.

The biggest problem is of course 0 turn campaigns.You can be fighting 10 giant battles per turn once you have a large empire.

[Alavaria]

It definitely helps that I constantly am using settlement assaults and fort traps, as those are done on the player turn.

But having a (wall-less) settlement assaulted and then three different armies on rivers being attacked is too much. Even with good troops, it isn't easy to murder 4 full stacks quickly enough.

[Yerevan]

About after battle CTDs, this fix helped me a lot and I don't have anymore :


I also experienced after battle CTDs quite often. My system has 8GB RAM. I am using Vista x64. Rome therefore runs in 32 emulation mode ('WOW64'). I use the BI - exe.

A standard 32Bit program on a 32Bit OS can only use 2GB ('User RAM') The rest is for system. On Windows Server 2003 there is a recommendation to alter the boot.ini to set the ratio to 3:1 instead of 2:2 for applications like Exchange Server 2003, which can use more than 2GB. In the header of each exe-file there is an entry specifying if the program can use more then 2GB.

A previous poster in this thread suggensted that the after battle CTDs are due to memory management problems. That seems to be true.

Some time ago in some forum thread I can't remember (I can't even remember which game it concerned) I stumbled over a comment, that it could be generally useful to set the exe-file to be able to use >2GB RAM when using Vista 64 or Windows XP x64.

So I tried that on the BI-exe. The result was, that after battle CTDs occur much, much fewer times.

So I suggest that everyone who is plagued by after battle CTDs and uses a 64Bit Windows tries the same. The following instructions are based on using the BI-exe. But it should also work with RomeTW.exe and RomeTW-ALX.exe.
1. get 'Explorer Suite' from www.ntcore.com (freeware)
2. install it
3. make a copy of RomeTW-BI.exe'
3. right click on 'RomeTW-BI.exe'
4. choose 'Open with CFF Explorer'
5. in the left tree click on 'File Header'
6. in the right window click on 'click here' in the 'Characteristics' row
7. in the appearing window check the box in the line 'App can handle >2gb address space'
8. click 'OK' - button
9. click on 'save' icon
10. Run the game as usual.