CTD after large battle (I know...)

[Spartan 666]

Hi guys! Hope you are all fine in this bad and worrying period.

First of all, I know this is a question that has plagued all of us RTW players for at least 15 (!!!) years. I remember swearing against it when I was in high school, and I hoped I could finally enjoy mods when I changed my laptop a few months ago. Indeed, I managed to actually play some huge battles without having the infamous post-battle CTD, so I got the illusion I managed to fix it, but reality is that still there, no matter what I do.

I am currently playing on a Windows 10 x64 laptop. CPU is i7-9750, GPU is Nvidia GTX 1660Ti 6GB, 16GB Ram. I have tested both on a retail RTW and on a Steam copy of the game, and over the years on a desktop and 3 different laptops.



So, my idea is trying to determine which kind of battle statistics are more likely to cause it to crash. This thread might serve as a place where to discuss personal experiences, and to eventually sum up all the fixes that have been found over the years.

I have been testing extensively in the last few days, and I can say with a good amount of certainty that it's not a matter of using core affinity, of the 4gb patch, or waiting for 30 seconds on the battle results battle. It's a matter of odds, and how the game calculates if it's a clear or a heroic victory, and if there are survivors from the enemy army.



This is the tested situation: a campaign open field battle, two armies on each side, 2800+2400 reinforcements on my side, 3700+3100 reinforcements on the enemy side (first scenario) or 3700+3700 (secondo scenario). That makes around 12000-13000 men on the battlefield. I play with huge unit size, but with scaled-down graphics (I don't really care about it).

First scenario: if forces involved have a ratio of 7:10 or higher you will very likely get a clear victory, even if you completely annihilated the enemy. Now, if you keep kills below 90%, you have a really great chance to make it back to the campaign map, some enemy units that have escaped will still be around and that's fine. You have a good chance also with a kill percentage between 90% and 95%. But with a percentage above 95%, the CTD is guaranteed.

Second scenario: if forces involved have a ratio of 7:10 or lower, it will be more likely for you to get a heroic victory. If kills are below 90%, or even better below 85%, there's a good chance that you will to continue with the campaign without CTD. But if kills are above 85-90%, no fix will save you from a CTD.



Here I posted some battle results with the applied settings\fixes.

Forces Ratio below 7:10

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

STEAM version
triple buffer off
no nvidia optimizations
no 4gb patch
no affinity fix
kills =<85%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, OK

STEAM version
triple buffer off
no nvidia optimizations
no 4gb patch
no affinity fix
85 < kills < 90
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, OK

STEAM version
triple buffer off
no nvidia optimizations
no 4gb patch
Manual affinity fix
90 < kills < 95
VERY UNSTABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, CRASH

STEAM version
triple buffer off
no nvidia optimizations
no 4gb patch
no affinity fix
kills >95%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, CRASH

Forces Ratio above 7:10

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

STEAM version
triple buffer off
no nvidia optimizations
no 4gb patch
no affinity fix
kills =<85%
“STABLE”, HEROIC VICTORY, OK

RETAIL version
triple buffer on
nvidia optimizations
4gb patch
Lasso affinity fix
kills =<85%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, OK

RETAIL version
triple buffer on
nvidia optimizations
4gb patch
Lasso affinity fix
85 < kills < 90%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, OK

RETAIL version
triple buffer on
nvidia optimizations
4gb patch
Lasso affinity fix
Kills => 90%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, OK

RETAIL version
triple buffer on
nvidia optimizations
4gb patch
Lasso affinity fix
Kills < 95%
STABLE, CLEAR VICTORY, CRASH

Here's a brief list of all known fixes and workarounds that you can find online and I have tried in various combinations:

-"no quotes": it basically removes all loading screen quotes, it's someone's opinion that it removes burden from the CPU. But I always get the CTD at the end of the loading bar, so quotes are not importan in my case.

-"4gb patch": it allows the game to use more than 2 GB or RAM. It requires you to edit the .exe. I have tested a lot of battles without this patch, so I guess it's not that important either.

-"core allocation": it forces the game to use only one core on multi-core machines. To me, sometimes it leads to severe system instability, and when it works it doesn't prevent CTDs.

-waiting 30-60 seconds on the battle results scroll: this has long been rumored as the "miracle solution". Never worked for me.

-running the game as administrator or in Windows XP/7 compatibility mode: no difference noticed, it even leads to some instability sometimes.

-scaling graphics down: self-explanatory

-tweaks to Nvidia Control Panel: no difference noticed, it even leads to some instability sometimes.

As you can see, I have not mentioned the scenario in which there's a besieged city that gets conquered or even worse the case in which a faction's last family member is in that city. That's a completely different story, not the point here



So, everyone feel free to post their own experience