Game Crashes / Hangs

[RedShark]

Really ennoyed..

Playing Civ last night, and I have been playing this same game now for about 3 month.

Anyway the year is 2026AD, I have about 450 units myself. I'm under attack by the Germans and the Zulus who probably have the same amount of units as I do. Huge map as well.

I have just finished my turn and the Germans have just started theirs. They carry out an attck with a bomber, it looks like one of my fighters intercepts it (hear the sound affects, however do not see any graphics). Then the game seems to just hang or stop. The display is still fine, the individual units graphics are still working (battleships radar still turns, workers still digging etc.), but nothing is happening, just the "please wait" in the botton right hand corner. I left it waiting for about half an hour before I got fed up. Reloaded the autosave game and the problem still persisted.

This same problem did happen anumber of times a few turns before (about every 2 turns). However I just reloaded the autosave and it was OK.

Anyone else had problems like this?? I can put up with all the small bugs like the fighter not working before, but the whole game hanging is not acceptable.

PS My PC is brand new, 512MB RAM, 64MB grahics card, so there should not be a performance issue here...

[Nym]

I have a similar problem some times too, especially during my turn : I can do what I want (manage a city, scroll the screen, select and manage a unit...) but the game seems unable to find the next unit to move.

[ACooper]

Are you using the 1.17f patch? If not you might want to (or at least 1.16)

Are you using any kind of Mods? Sometimes they can crash the game.

[RedShark]

Game Crashes / Hangs

I've just got the regular game with the latest patch (1.17f). No mods installed, also using Windows XP, if that makes any difference.

[Adm.Naismith]

Redshark, in my last game I have shared the same hang of the game, going in endless loop while a fighter on my carrier try to intercept an incoming bomber.

While the background music still play, the sound of bombing hiccup and play the same small sound endless.

I must terminate the game using CTRL-ALT-DEL and forcing the end of CIV III task.I tried to reload, change the fighter order (no more superiority air mission), then enter the new turn: the bomber free to bombard my carrier completed its missions and the game works just fine. SOme turns later, same game, different carrier, fighter and map position I had the same situation with the same result.

I tried the save on another PC, different OS (Win 2000, instead of Win XP home of my machine), different set of hardware and the game hang again.

I attach the zipped save for any help from Firaxis (official site doesn't manage attach). Simply unzip it, load it and press enter for next turn.

I'm using Civ III english patch 1.17f
with two different notebooks:

1) Intel Celeron 1.2 Gh, 256 MB ram, ATI Radeon Mobility P 32 MB graphic, 6 GB free on the hard disk, with Win XP home italian preinstalled from factory
2) Intel Pentium III 700 Mhz, 128 MB ram, ATI Mobility 8 Mb graphic, 800 MB free on HD, with Win 2000 italian.

Any suggestion?

[RedShark]

I eventually managed to get around the problem by reloading the autosave and cancelling the air superiority mission of my fighter.
This of course meant that the enemy bomber could complete its mission OK.

I also started to cancel all my fighter missions so the problem would not re-occur. After I had done this I never got the problem again.

Also noticed that with jet fighters there is no problem at all, therefore it is only with normal fighters.

Have not sent anything to Firaxis as my saved file is over 5 Meg and my internet connection is too slow.

I guess the workaround in the meantime is just to avoid using fighters etc. Otherwise I do not have any other ideas.

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by RedShark
I eventually managed to get around the problem by reloading the autosave and cancelling the air superiority mission of my fighter.
This of course meant that the enemy bomber could complete its mission OK.

Same workaround I mentioned on message above...

Also noticed that with jet fighters there is no problem at all, therefore it is only with normal fighters.

Nope! If you care to download, unzip and check my save, you'll see I've got the trouble using Jet Fighter.

Have not sent anything to Firaxis as my saved file is over 5 Meg and my internet connection is too slow.

Do you tried to compress the save file with PkZip? It made wonderful squeeze on my fat file (reducing the zip as about 1 tenth of the original .sav).

[jchell]

Ola World Conquerors!

If you had a file with a bug to send to Firaxis, what address would you send it to. I have been suffering from illegal page faults that pop up in the third age, usually when I am severely kicking AI butt, and I want them to address this.

Thanks for any help.

[Raion]

The newest version of the game is 1.21f patch, which now can be downloaded at Infogames or Civ 3.

http://www.civ3.com/

It may have something to do with that version of the patch.
Else, I do not know.

[Raion]

Oh, it also compresses the save game files into a PKZip type compress file format saved game. Saved games are much smaller now.

V1.21f patch that is.