Why my VV2.1/2.2 game Froze - CHECK HERE FIRST, potential fix

[Sordani]

I have been playing Rome for awhile and just installed VV and the patch 2.1 today. I started a new game and after some time ran into a problem where the game and my computer just locked up. Rebooted the computer started from the last autosave and ran into the same problem. BTW the freeze did not happen after a certain period of real time, it would be fine for minutes on end while paused but always occurred on the same game date.

Like many the first thing I thought was that the computer was overheating so waited a while rebooted check my fan control program and started the game and same thing. I then checked the forums, read most of the threads and went back to my savegame file to check for BAR and/or REB cores or owners. No luck. I then started my autosave back up, left it on pause, and started looking for anything out of whack.

In this game the Illyrian province of Taulanti had rebeled and formed a new country of Macedonia. "QMA" in the save file. It had one army named "ARMY_NAME_noculturegroup" and a few more queued up for construction.

I edited the save game file and changed the owner and controller back to Illyria.

Ran the game and voila no freeze, game ran fine right past the crash date.

The crash date may have coincided with the construction of one of the macedonian units.

It appears that there is a bug in the changing of ownership of provinces or new countries appearing.

Hope someone finds this useful.

Great Game.

 

[unmerged(130112)]

That is exactly what happened to me. Different country but same thing with the unit name. Crash always happened when I tried to attack the break away country.

 

[Emperor Leo]

Hmmm, a new nation formed in my crashing game. I'll have to look into this and report back...

It seems I have no idea what I'm supposed to be looking for in the save file. It's about 30Mb in size and is very, very long.

 

[Sute]{h]

I think this is the source of my issues as well.

EDIT: Done a quick search in the save and there indeed seems to be armies belonging to no culture group.

 

[Sute]{h]

After digging a little more into it the problem seemed to be that Cicilia's governor had declared himself independant from Egypt. And for some reason Cicilia didn't have any culture or religion, so when they started building units the game crashed. I edited my save af game them a culture and a religion, then started the game as them and canceled every unit in que and disbanded their noculturegroup army. That made the savegame work again for me.

 

[Sordani]

Sute]{h - Was this new country of yours one of the independent regionals listed in common\countries.txt?

I have had no problems with new countries appearing during my games until the Macedonia "QMA" regional independent appeared.

I am wondering if this problem can be narrowed down to these regional countries. Maybe the lack of a culture tag?

 

[Emperor Leo]

In my game, the region of Mauretania declared independence from Egypt. They are currently building a unit of Militia which will be completed on Oct 1st (when my game crash occurs). Could this be the problem? I have searched my save game file for "ARMY_NAME_noculturegroup" and found an entry. What do I have to change this to to get the game to stop freezing?

EDIT: Ok, so I opened the save game, played as Mauretania, cancelled their current recruitments and proceeded witht he game. I managed to get past Sept 30th (usually when the crash ends) with no freezing. I then saved that game and played as Bithynia (my original nation), but this time I couldn't get past Oct 31st. Could this be the offending army?

 

[Sordani]

You might try what Sute]{h did and add a culture and religion to that country. That way the units will be built without crashing the game.

 

[Emperor Leo]

Ok, I'll try that. Sorry to be such a n00b, but how do I add a religion and culture to this new country?

 

[unmerged(130112)]

I loaded my save game as the nation that went indepent from Rome, which I was playing, I deleted the army_name_noculture and stopped the unit that was queued up. Saved and started the game as Rome again. Before I did this I was locking up on the same day and couldn't progress. I have been able to continue with random freezes but have been able to continue when I loaded from save or autosave.

 

[AndrewT]

OK I've reported this as a bug, thanks all. If someone can develop a procedure for fixing a save game file meanwhile, that'd be great. Preferably one that retains the new country and just adds the missing culture/religion to it.

 

[Sordani]

You need to add the following two lines to the countries information in the save game file:

Primary_Culture=roman
Religion=roman_pantheon

Use whatever particular religion and culture in place of Roman. I believe you can put it anywhere within the lines for that country but I placed them after the line "Capital=x"

Finding the proper country to put the lines in is a pain. You need to know the three letter abbreviation for the country in question. I search for the name of a capital of one of its provinces.

then find the country information for the country which in this case is the region of Magna Graecia:

QMG={
history={
474.1.1={
land_tech=0
naval_tech=0
construction_tech=0
civic_tech=0
religious_tech=0
}
484.7.1={
ruler=100007
}
}
flags={
}
variables={
}
capital=0
Primary_Culture=roman # or whatever
Religion=roman_pantheon # or whatever
technology={
land_tech={1 0.000}
naval_tech={1 0.000}
construction_tech={1 0.000}
civic_tech={1 0.000}
religious_tech={1 0.000}
}
graphical_culture="greekgfx"
stability=1.000
treasury=26.071
current_income=0.000
estimated_monthly_income=21.079

You may need to also delete the army named "ARMY_NAME_noculturegroup" a little further down in the countries info, not absolutely sure tho.

Hope this is clearer than mud

 

[unmerged(68270)]

Thanks Sordani, deleting an army with the "ARMY_NAME_noculturegroup" attribute stopped the crashes for me as well.
This should be stickied.

 

[Emperor Leo]

Excellent work, Sordani! You may have saved many Rome players from throwing their computers out the window in frustration!

EDIT: Just wanted to say that I finally got around to editing my save game file and this fix has worked for me! No more freezes!

 

[AndrewT]

Thanks Sordani, deleting an army with the "ARMY_NAME_noculturegroup" attribute stopped the crashes for me as well.
This should be stickied.

Erm, it is ...

 

[unmerged(9515)]

Anyway to edit this in the revolter files before they get independent. A couple days of game time as noculture means the formation of blank " " last name characters/families and noreligion characters which take forever to clean up.

 

[unmerged(68270)]

Erm, it is ...

Erm... it's not. If you come from Tech Support It was initially posted there, then moved to Bug Reports. Now I'll twist the knife: why was it moved to Bug Reports, when it should be clearly in the Tech Support? I know what QA and tech support are, I do both every day, thank god not for games Maybe it's easy for Paradox to keep track of the issues by picking them from Bug Reports, but the normal users would look for Tech Support.
I'm having fun anyway even with constant crashes

 

[OleOlsen]

Anyway to edit this in the revolter files before they get independent. A couple days of game time as noculture means the formation of blank " " last name characters/families and noreligion characters which take forever to clean up.

is there any way to get around that cleaning? i got the country moesia superior(?) which declared long time ago indipendence from illyria. it got an army with no culture group which crashes the game when it fights - and that happens earlier or later (civil war). is there a way to transform that country and its provinces to another country (f.e. a new country, which doesnt exist anymore like illyria) or could i delete all the characters which they got without getting probs, or could i just add the provinces to my country?

 

[OleOlsen]

some ideas or tips would be cool

 

[Fatboyonadiet]

I understand the gist of this, BUT....

How on earth do I open the save game file in order to edit it?

Is it a *.rome file that we are talking about?

Using Vista by the way.