Inexplicable crash at exactly the same point every time - Messana broken?

Okay I hate to spam threads (I have another one going about my woes regarding the cfg file) but this seems like a serious game-breaking issue which may or may not affect other users.Anyway I crash at exactly the same time in every campaign. Namely, when fighting for Messana. If I besiege the city and attack, I crash when the battle ends and I click to leave. If I wait until they sally out, I crash during loading with a fatal graphics error. The odd thing is that I have fought larger battles with the same settings without difficulty, or even an fps hit. I have tried lowering the resolution (I have a fairly large monitor so I figured that might be the cause of graphical problems) but it did nothing. Weirder still is that I have reinstalled the entire mod (twice) and restarted my campaign and the exact same issue arises in the same way at the exact same time in the same circumstances - Carthage has just besieged Messana, initiating the First Punic War, they attack and take next turn, by which point my army has crossed and lays siege.

The fact that this happens in multiple fresh installations, when I have only had one other crash in the entire campaign (a total of 28 turns) leads me to believe the settlement may be broken somehow or something.

Almost forgot, the log: system.log.rar

There is absolutely nothing in that log - no terminating error, nothing. It also has the wrong number of errors in it for a 2.2f game.

Did you correctly install 2.2b, then patch to 2.2f?

Originally Posted by QuintusSertorius

There is absolutely nothing in that log - no terminating error, nothing. It also has the wrong number of errors in it for a 2.2f game.

Did you correctly install 2.2b, then patch to 2.2f?

It is the system log found in the medieval II folder as the ebii logs folder doesn't work for whatever reason. I followed the install instructions to the letter for 2.2b - I installed Med II in a new directory outside program files, started a campaign and quit to check it was working fine which it was. I moved the contents of the 2.2b zip folder into a new folder and ran the installer, which copied all the files successfully. I used the steam user shortcut to start a campaign then quit. I checked ebii.cfg, it says what it is meant to say, but it doesn't work and I have no idea why, different issue I assume. I run the game in borderless window (edited medieval2.preferences.cfg). There is no autosave. I set the launch options and deleted map.rwm.

For 2.2f I extracted the contents of the zip file and clicked yes when asked to overwrite, then replaced the pack and skeleton files in the animations folder in ebii.

Did I do anything wrong? If not, is there a console command to autoresolve without losing half my army for no reason? The balance of power is about 70-80% in my favour, but the AI would probably manage to lose more than kill.

Hmmm, sounds like you did everything correctly. Though with Steam it's always hard to tell; most of the issues seem to come from people with Steam installations.

There may be a dodgy map tile there or something.

Anyway, you can use auto_win attacker before clicking to autoresolve.

Thanks, seemed to work out okay.

Hopefully no similar issues pop up in the meantime and I'll avoid fighting around that area for now and let you know if anything else happens that might give a clue as to what is going on.

UPDATE: I'm crashing all the time now, loads of unspecified errors. Here's the latest:

system.log.rar

I think 2.2f might be a bit unstable. The majority of battles are now unplayable; either I get an unspecified error when entering a battle, or if I could fight it it will often crash upon exit (the battles themselves go very smoothly). Tried three campaigns, each time reinstalling, with no luck - unspecified errors everywhere. If that log doesn't show any clues I'll either revert to 2.2b or give up entirely.

My congratulations to the EB II team, it's a great mod, has real atmosphere, but unfortunately it is unplayable for me. The AI was fierce but not pointlessly aggressive; the Punic wars (which were as far as I got) felt real. As Rome I was juggling armies with a single navy, easily taking Sicily and defeating Carthage on land but being utterly crushed at sea, which is how the First Punic War actually played out. Shame I can't continue, but I'll keep an eye out for more stable updates.