How to avoid crashes!!

[ml_4da3]

I have played maybe 4-5 games. At first the game was crash free on vanilla maps and only crashed during mid-game on out-of-spec maps.

The crashes in question is of three types, but I believe they are caused by the same problem:

* Crash to desktop
* Crash to reboot / bios
* Crash to broken desktop

Later games I have played yesteday crashed even on huge vanilla maps. After I used "Windows Task Manager" for determine how much RAM Civ IV would use, it would go up to 750 MB. I played around a bit with page files, etc to see if I could get Civ IV to use my full 1 GB RAM before crash.

Well I did not succeed; so one might think that it was not too little RAM that caused the crashes - since at the time of crash I had avaliable RAM.

I had a savegame that was near a crash, all I needed to do to reproduce the crash was to load the game and scroll around on the map a little.

Since I suspected too little RAM (I heard lots of swapping before crash), I went to my workplace and borrowed 700 MB more RAM; so now I have 1.7GB total RAM. And the crashes stopped. I could load my save game and I could play a long time after. I have probably played 50-100 turns further in this game - without a single crash!

Also, something intresting, when I have more RAM civ IV will use far more than 750 MB right after the same save game is loaded! So obviously civ IV wanted to use more than 750 MB before, but did not / could not.

SO! My guess is that these bugs are memory related. Maybe Civ IV cant handle swapping so good, maybe some parts of its memory must reside in RAM? I dont know, but this might be fixed in a future patch, I guess; they should be able to do lots of optimizations IMO - since the > 1 GB requirement to play a long game on huge map is a bit to much.

But until they fix it; you can upgrade your RAM as much as you can afford - if you want to finish some of your started games; and perhaps also play on out-of-spec mapsizes.

RAM is cheap and civ is worth it! It would be great if others who have this crash problem could test upgrade their RAM and report here!


(BTW when I upgraded my RAM I went from DDR400 dualchannel to DDR266 singlechannel, but that did not impact civ IV performance much; and the crashfree gameplay is easily worth the little slower RAM).

[alva]

(BTW when I upgraded my RAM I went from DDR400 dualchannel to DDR266 singlechannel, but that did not impact civ IV performance much; and the crashfree gameplay is easily worth the little slower RAM).

You should even see an improvement compared to your previous situation.
Before it was probably constantly swapping to and from your HD which is slower than any RAM, a lot slower.

[ml_4da3]

Originally posted by alva
You should even see an improvement compared to your previous situation.
Before it was probably constantly swapping to and from your HD which is slower than any RAM, a lot slower.

Yeah, the problem with Civ IV is that, at least for me, just a little time after swapping becomes significant the game crashes. SO the most improvement I see / experience is that the game does not crash anymore.

[Shadowlord]

It uses that much RAM? The minimum req is 256 MB and the recommended is 512.

Maybe it has objects which are never deallocated and which get saved in the saved games?

[ml_4da3]

Yes it does. If you play on a tiny/small/normal map you can probably play an entire game on 256 / 512 MB RAM. But for seruous civ gaming you must have above 1 gig, at least in my experience.

However that is a small problem since RAM is dirt cheap nowadays. I bet you can find a 512 MB module for 40 USD or so.

[Shadowlord]

I've never needed more than 512 for ANY game or program, I don't see why I should go and buy more for just one game. Paying $90 for a game, and more if it turns out not to like my video card, would be ridiculous.

[ml_4da3]

Originally posted by Shadowlord
I don't see why I should go and buy more for just one game.

This is not just one game. This is civilization.

[alva]

Originally posted by Shadowlord
I've never needed more than 512 for ANY game or program, I don't see why I should go and buy more for just one game. Paying $90 for a game, and more if it turns out not to like my video card, would be ridiculous.

I've seen plenty of games using more than 500MB. Actually IIRC, even Civ3 often came close and then some, in modern times.
That doesn't mean you need that much RAM as that's where the swap file(virtual memory) comes.
It works the same, just a heck of a lot slower.

[ml_4da3]

Originally posted by alva


It works the same, just a heck of a lot slower.

However, it seemes as if Civ IV becomes more crash prone when it starts using harddisc swap.

[ml_4da3]

*bump* - so that others can take part of this important information. I bet it is a common problem that the game crashes.

Btw I just finished my earlier crash-prone game with a spaceship victory! Nice feeling to be able to play the game until finish Great game - best civ ever, now when it dosnt crash!

[spy14]

Plenty of games use more then 500 meg. The fact is though, the crashes shouldn't be happening, we're supposed to be purchasing a FINISHED product here??

And the graphics card problems are NOT the fault of NvIdia and ATI - every finished game that comes out works with them.

[Arnelos]

So, basically what you're saying is what we suspected: the 256 MB of memory minimum and 512 MB of memory RECOMMENDED is complete and utter lie.

Wonderful...

[Ninot]

i have a gig, and haven't once crashed. Not even running slow.

[dipollet]

Well I bought the game and originally it was sooooo jumpy and slow. Upgraded my video drivers. Ran a little better but still slow. I got funky video (the map would go blank and have no units, cities etc) then went black and crashed to the desk top. Bought more ram. Now all my games crash at or around year 1850. All different map sizes.

Here is my system set up.
1.04 Gig of RAM PC133
GeForce MX 440 w/ 512 Meg of RAM
Pentium 4 1.6 GHz

All of which are ABOVE the minimum specs and all but my processor is above recomended specs. This is unbelievable. Am I supposed to spend another $360 for another Gig and a half of RAM just to play a $45 game? Never have I ever ran a program so demanding. There has to be a better way to make this program run with machines that most people already have. So far this program has already cost me $165 to only play it half way through the game before it crashes. If the patch dosn't come out before the 30 day return policy the game is going back. I can think of much better ways to spend my money.

[CanuckSoldier]

Originally posted by dipollet
Well I bought the game and originally it was sooooo jumpy and slow. Upgraded my video drivers. Ran a little better but still slow. I got funky video (the map would go blank and have no units, cities etc) then went black and crashed to the desk top. Bought more ram. Now all my games crash at or around year 1850. All different map sizes.

Here is my system set up.
1.04 Gig of RAM PC133
GeForce MX 440 w/ 512 Meg of RAM
Pentium 4 1.6 GHz

All of which are ABOVE the minimum specs and all but my processor is above recomended specs. This is unbelievable. Am I supposed to spend another $360 for another Gig and a half of RAM just to play a $45 game? Never have I ever ran a program so demanding. There has to be a better way to make this program run with machines that most people already have. So far this program has already cost me $165 to only play it half way through the game before it crashes. If the patch dosn't come out before the 30 day return policy the game is going back. I can think of much better ways to spend my money.

Your graphics card is not above the recommeded specs, GeforceMX cards don't have support for hardware shadders, and that is likely a large part of your problem , as DX9 will try and offload what can't be done in hardware to your CPU, and your CPU is not blazingly fast either, and while you have lots of memory, PC133 is not very fast ram these days. I believe your system would be fine though if you just upgraded your video card as that would also take the load of the rest of your system.

CS