Single Player - Waste of Time !!

[roobin]

I have just "Finished" my 3rd attempt at a single player game of PTW....

When I say "Finish" I mean - PTW hanging between turns.

Game 1 - Hung on 860ad
Game 2 - Hung on 1120ad (Patched)
Game 3 - Hung on 1410ad (Patched)

Total of about 25 Hours wasted time !!

Has anybody actually finished a single player game ??

Has anybody found a way to make it more stable ??

I'm gagging to play it again, but I have lost all confidence in being able to do so.

Any help/advice would be appreciated....

[Aro]

I've just finished two games, one as Carthag and other as Scandinavia. I'm playing now as Celts. In fact, the game crashed a couple of times, but I reloaded it from the autosave, no problems. The military advisor screen is very slow, compared with the Civ3, especially when you are managing more than 200 units (upgrade 120 infantry to mech infantry could be boring with that slow response...), or something around this. My computer is a P4 2GH, with 2GB of RAMBUS, and a Raid 5 with four HD's, each one with 80 GB. I can't understand why the military advisor is so slow. A bug, certainly. I suspect that the system requirements for the game are not what Firaxis said...

[roobin]

Thanks for the reply...

Every game I have had "Hang", I have reloaded earlier saves and it still hangs in the same place.

Even gone back 40mins of gametime - done lot's of things differently, and it stil hangs on the same turn !!

Seems like it's made it's mind up regardless of whats happening in the game.

In my last game, it would always hang if I contacted the Egyptians !, managed to play like this (without talking to them) for a couple of hours, then it just hung on a specific turn again.....

XP
1.4ghz
512Mb
Geforce 3 (Elsa Gladac 920)
40GB Hdisk
Sonic Fury

[NeoStar]

Originally posted by roobin
In my last game, it would always hang if I contacted the Egyptians !, managed to play like this (without talking to them) for a couple of hours, then it just hung on a specific turn again.....

Something horrible like this happened to me three times (pre PTW game) - all three had altered rules. Could be the problem...

[player1]

Nothing of this happend to me.

Exept a little bit slower Miliraty advisor screen.
(yes it's indeed much slower)

[Aro]

Aha! So, there's something wrong with the military advisor, really! Hey, Firaxis... do something!
Btw, roobin, this kind of thing (the slower advisor screen) is a symptom, could be an aspect of a progamming error. This can hang a game, seems to be a genuine major bug... something to do with memory management, or video card.
Hmmm... How many units did you have when the game crashed?
I'm using XP, too.

[Stuie]

I haven't noticed any slowness in the Military Advisor screen.... but admittedly, I don't use it all that often. Then again everything seems faster to me because upgraded from 256mb of SDRAM to 512mb SDRAM at the same time I installed PTW. I know the way the Military Advisor calculates relative military strength (as in "Compared to these guys we have a xxxxxxxx military") was changed... I wonder if the new algorithm could be causing some slowness.

[Sangria]

Some mixes of harware and driver routines makes Civ3 and CivPTW to hang.

The problem dissapeared when I in´stalled the game on a new machine.

[Stuie]

Oops, I should have addressed the original question as well. Of course, it's just your standard tech advice:

1. Uninstall the game (Civ3 and PTW).
2. Run Scandisk and Disk Defrag.
3. Update all your drivers.
4. Install Civ3, then PTW, then the 1.04f patch.

[Master Marcus]

Everything runs fine for me, and I "only" have a PIII 1 Ghz, so the stability of your machine more than its sheer clock speed is to be checked. Reinstall the game ( backup your saves ) in the order like Stuie said, plus: make sure the 1.04f patch is installed in the CIV3PTW folder. Well, I said "everythings runs fine" ...euh with few but still widely confirmed glitches:

- very slow F3 military screen advisor;
- in SP, very scarce .exe crash when making a particular dead-end move like moving your king unit to be drowned in the ocean;
- for my part, same speed and pace between turns than 1.29f - no sped up game than some reported, but no downgrade also;
- altered rules, modded games: NOT eligible to be listed in the Hall of Fame.

[planetfall]

F3 advisor--

For some reason this screen is faster if you show units in each city instead of total units. So if only interested in other's military, sort by city and not by unit type.

== PF

[wilbill]

Originally posted by Aro
... something to do with memory management, or video card.

You may be onto something, Aro. I haven't had any problems with lockups and no slowdowns since I reinstalled both Civ 3 and PTW, but about 25% of the time when I exit PTW I get an "out of memory" message when I try to start another ap.

[Master Marcus]

Originally posted by planetfall
F3 advisor--
For some reason this screen is faster if you show units in each city instead of total units. So if only interested in other's military, sort by city and not by unit type.

== PF

Very true, but I've noticed when sorting MY units by city, the AI ones are scrolling much faster even when sorted by unit types ( still slower than vanilla Civ III ) than the contrary, e.g. when sorting the AI units by city and then check yours by types ( in that case almost as slow as sorting both by types...). Odd, surely a new algorithm/pathing brought by the expansion.

[roobin]

Just a thought....

Does PTW use the base Civ3 files ??

ie. do I need to ensure that my Civ3 installation is patched to the latest version before I install PTW ??

(I just patched to 1.29F, but it took about 1 second - so i'm not conviced that it worked.)

[vmxa1]

roobin post a save and I will see if it hangs on my system, if it is not a modded game. I have had problems with mods in civ3 and ptw. I have finished many games in PTW on XP PRO. I have not noticed any advisor issues, but played on std maps and rarely move massive numbers of troops.