CTD defending a siege

[King Ramses]

I did post this in the tech help thread, but after scouring it I've found no answer, so I thought I'd post my own thread for this issue.

I was progressing through my Rome campaign almost entirely unhindered by CTD issues until now. I took Carthage a few turns ago and since then 3 large armies appeared in the vicinity (there was little sign of them when I scouted North Africa as most of there military was defending their territories in Spain from my advancing armies and various rebel groups, so they may have been spawned as a result of my capturing Carthage.


Anyway they lay siege for a couple of turns and then attack. However, due to the fact that there is a big gap in the wall that my onager made when I captured it, they abandon most of the siege equipment. Anyway, a few minutes in, I always get a CTD, I have tried six times and at roughly the same point I always crash.

I doubt it has to do with graphics as I have played field battles with five or six full armies and of course it lags but never crashes. Also, the game isn't lagging much if at all when it crashes at the EXACT same point, so I suspect it is a script error rather than my GPU overheating.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

I am almost entirely sure that none of the scripts function that way - they can't. Certainly not from my previous experience of scripting.

As it has happened, sadly, at the same time - can you give a more detailed description of what's happening? It could be an issue with the new Carthage model that dvk' can address.

[King Ramses]

I don't know much or really anything at all about scripting, I just thought that because it is always the same point and there doesn't appear to be much strain on my rig, it might be a unit script bugging out in relation to siege equipment or something. I don't know what would cause this to happen, but my suspicions are that it is shutting down due to an game error rather than because my PC can't handle it.

I will try to recall the exact circumstances as I don't think I have a save from the time (autoresolved and moved on). I will look through all my saves to see if I can find one though

Campaign: three massive armies (i think) spawned after I captured Carthage and laid siege for a couple turns. I have tried a save where they attack after two turns, and one where they attack after three with the same result. Two stacks are directly laying siege and have an inordinate amount of siege equipment. The armies themselves seem like more experienced versions of typical Carthaginian armies - lots of libyan spear men (late and early), a couple of sacred bands and such. One of them was led by the faction leader and the other one had no family member. I have roughly 3,000 men - 1 general, Polybian 10 cohorts, 2 triarii, 3 cavalry, 3 cretan archers and a stone throwing siege ballista. They have between 5-6,000 shared between two armies.

The Battle: I put a few men on the walls, guarding the points where they attack with towers and guard the big gap in the wall I left when I took the city with my triarii and two cohorts. Predictably, the AI abandons most of its siege equipment (not all) and tries to overwhelm me at the choke point. At this point I send either a couple spare infantry, my Cretans, my cavalry, or some combination of the three to attack the rear of the attackers in the choke point. All of the siege equipment that was not dropped (ladders and siege equipment) is at the walls by now. The other army has a ram and some ladders, they always drop the ladder after it reaches the wall and attack with the ram, which gets destroyed by towers because to get to the gate you have to walk towards the gatehouse and parallel to a wall. After this a few units from the second army begin walking around the city, past the big harbour (which is roughly where one of the siege towers from the main army stops along the wall). They never manage to get all the way round as the game crashes a couple minutes after I start attacking the back of the main army.

Also worthy of note is that I enabled the garrison script (less) when I was initially besieging Carthage. It didn't fire so I lifted the siege and tried again. Still didn't fire so I just attacked and killed of the four units they had in the city.

If it is the model that is causing the crash, I'm afraid I don't know much as the battle never reached a point where I'm fighting in the streets. Contrary to where they are on the campaign map, the first army attacks from what I presume is North (if we assume that the harbour is facing North out to sea) and the other is coming from exactly the opposite direction, there is only ever fighting on the walls or at the gap in the wall.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

You playing on 'Huge' with no limits on men on field?

[King Ramses]

Yeah, it hasn't caused issues before. Is that known to cause this kind of thing?

[ur-Lord Tedric]

The big thing here is that vanilla RTW simply wasn't designed for what PCs can do nowadays.

For example - the graphics processing load is completely handled by the main CPU and the onboard (MB) graphics. It knows nothing at all about separate GPUs.

Try this same battle on 'Large' (which is the maximum I use - and note that vanilla RTW had 'Medium' as 'Normal'!). I also don't use the 'no limit to men on battlefield' setting.

You have to bear in mind that RTW was written for Windows XP and before nVidea appeared......