Single Player - Waste of Time !!

roobin · November 19, 2002, 07:12

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 · November 19, 2002, 07:53

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 · November 19, 2002, 08:00

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 · November 19, 2002, 08:14

Quote:

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 · November 19, 2002, 08:26

Nothing of this happend to me.

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

Aro · November 19, 2002, 08:35

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 · November 19, 2002, 09:13

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 · November 19, 2002, 09:18

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 · November 19, 2002, 09:31

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 · November 19, 2002, 10:08

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 · November 19, 2002, 10:51

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 · November 19, 2002, 11:22

Quote:

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 · November 19, 2002, 12:32

Quote:

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 · November 19, 2002, 13:12

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 · November 19, 2002, 13:56

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.

Wittlich · November 19, 2002, 14:34

Well, my PTW games have not crashed or hung-up (either on single player or LAN play) - So far.

I have an 866Mhz with 512Mb memory....of course, I'm using Windows 2000 Professional as my operating system...

MC Hawking · November 19, 2002, 15:46

I've had the same problem as roobin, the game dies (or hands up or whatever you want to call it freezes whatever) on a turn no matter what I do, no matter how many units I have, it just dies at the end of my turn. All that wasted time really pisses me off.
Unlike roobin however this has only happened once and I've completed several games.
I'm on a 1.7GHz Pentium4 512 MBRAM with windows XP.

I've already tryed to upload the save to this message board but it's too large, if anyone wants to try it I can email it to you.

WarpStorm · November 19, 2002, 17:27

FWIW, I've played dozens of single player games of PTW and they haven't hung on me.

Post your save and I'm sure people will look at it.

Alantus · November 19, 2002, 23:58

I've finished all my games so far, no big problems except when I tried MP.

4 games completed so far I think.

Only problem I experience in SP is that sometimes my mouse stops working, usually when trying to scroll on Military Advisor screen. I just save, quit and restart it and it works again, no big deal really. Only happens in late game and it is pretty rare.

Alantus

Inverse Icarus · November 20, 2002, 03:17

i never finished a game in PTW, but i have one thats just entered the industrial era with no crash (yet). too much work to get some quality civin' in.

roobin · November 20, 2002, 05:55

I have just re-installed Civ3, ptached it - Then reinstalled PTW.

I'm up to about 1000ad at the moment, so I'll let you know whether this game hangs or not......

Fingers Crossed !

vmxa1 · November 20, 2002, 14:17

hope it works

Jawa Jocky · November 20, 2002, 17:08

When I have more than 100 units (not sure of the actual #) I can crash the game by hitting F1 and then F3.

I can also crash it by retiring a game and then trying to exit (hardly a problem i know).

star mouse · November 22, 2002, 21:26

I have also noticed crashes on the military advisor screen. I don't have PtW yet, just 1.29f.

This is possibly related to the slowdown bug I have experienced, where a military unit that has just moved will remain selected for a while before the game moves on to the next unit or the End of Turn. If I manually select another unit, the game will crash later, often at the Military Advisor screen.

Zero · November 23, 2002, 00:34

mine doesnt crash but it consumes ridiculous amount of memory

Slax · November 23, 2002, 10:28

For I while mine consumed ridiculous amounts of my time.

roobin · November 25, 2002, 11:32

I have reinstalled Civ3 & PTW, then patched them both.

I am now up to about 1800 in a game - So it's looking good !!