Game crashing to desktop: suggestions?

[knowlto]

I have the latest drivers for my ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and whenever I play the game, it will crash at random intervals. At first I didn't care because of the autosaves, but it's become a major nuisance, especially since my computer will restart sometimes when it happens.

Does anyone have any idea about what to do?

[noptov52]

No idea, I have the same problem.

[Danibal]

Mine does the same thing. Last night I was playing for about 3 hours or so when all of a sudden it just kicked me out of the game. I had the auto save files, but that's beside the point. It shouldn't be kicking me out.

[OutFlanked]

Same here, different points in the game.

[Bal Ur]

I have the same problem. The time before it kicks me out varies between 30 minutes to 2 hours, with an average around 45 minutes.

[nindustrial]

Same problem here; Happened after about 1-2 hours..?

Haven't played the game extensively yet, so that was the first time, but it was in my first and only session.

[Iamsparticus]

I was having these problems also. Here is what I have been able to do to stop the hard crashing.

under options:
Game: only sid's tips checked
Graphics: 1024 X 768 all set to low
single unit graphics, No combat zoom, Animations frozen, Effects Disabled, Globe view Buildings disable are all checked

Next open your civilizationiv.ini (civ4config) file
Set the following
; Set to 1 for no in-game movies
NoMovies = 1

; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 0

At this point I have been able to run Civ IV without crashing on the Dual and tiny planet mode only. The large the planet size, more problems were happening.

I took the autosaves off because it would hard crash my computer to reboot. It wasn't everytime but maybe when a movie was going to play also, I don't know for sure. You can save yourself by pushing shift-F5. I do it every 5 turns.

Anyways playing on dual and tiny planet size isn't great but does let me see the game.

I am sure your cards are better than mine geforce2 mx400
so you'll need to play with those settings until it works for you

good luck hope this helps

[Danibal]

I don't have any other problems other than being kicked out. I'm running a fairly decent machine (Athlon 64 3000 (approx 2 MHz), 2 Gigs of Ram, ATI x800 128 Meg Video) and haven't had anything else happen. Everything loads fune and runs smoothly. It just kicks me out when I'm about to win it seems like.

I'm thinking this may be some 'bonus feature' that they've given us so that we'll get frustrated and go actually have a life instead of playing 24/7?