Crash that happens often and sometimes deletes saves

[NamesJeff]

I have a crash that has happened often since I installed the mod. I am using Imperial Civil War 2.1 with the latest patch. Also, I am using the steam version of Empire at War.

There is an error message that pops up with the game closing. The header for the error message is "Exception!" with the text reading "An exception has occurred. See _logfile.txt and _except.txt for details. Press CANCEL to exit or RETRY to debug". Pressing retry brings up windows trouble shooting which concludes that "a problem caused the program to stop working correctly".

I tried to increase the ram cap of the game because I heard that Empire at War is stuck on 2gb of ram. However, the 4gb patch doesn't work for the steam version. Another solution I tried was running steam as an admin on my pc, however that didn't help because the game still crashed. I read on another forum that having the "override high DPI scaling" option selected in the swfoc application compatibility settings can cause problems. I checked and it was never selected.

This crash happens mostly when starting a space/land battle or after a battle. A few time that game stayed open after the error message appears however the game closes shortly after.

My specs are:
AMD FX-8350 4Ghz
NVidia 1060
8gb ram
Windows 10

I believe a good start to solving this issue is finding the files in the error message. However I checked the whole empire at war folder and found nothing. This crash can happen ever 30 to 80 minutes and sometimes happens even more often.

Thank you for your time. I know this is a very long post but I wanted to give as much information as possible.

[Corey]

When you say the latest patch, do you mean the 2.15 patch, or did you install the 2.2 download on top of it?

[NamesJeff]

2.15

[NamesJeff]

I think I found a fix. Even though I have the steam version of the game, the latest patch for vanilla EaW wasn't installed. I installed one of the updates and so far I haven't had any crashes. I'll reply to this thread if the crashes continue however it appears that they have stopped.

[NamesJeff]

Never mind, I still get the crash.

[NamesJeff]

So this crash happens with other mods as well. I reinstalled EaW and then installed rise of Mandalorians. I still get the exception! error after playing awhile. Earlier I played vanilla for about 4.6 hours straight and got no errors. When installing the ram fix from lucus arts, I am not able to install the FoC fix however I can install the standard empire at war fix.

[NamesJeff]

After uninstalling the game, I found this file in the EaW Corruptions folder. It may be useful because the error is caused by an "exception".

[Corey]

The exception creates that log, however it's not super useful- it's just memory addresses. Unfortunately, especially if it's something that happens everywhere, I'm not sure what your issue could be. It's possible you had a mod that installed some files into the base data folder, which would interfere and make everything have the potential to crash.

[NamesJeff]

Disregard the part about the crash happening in other mods. I been playing 25 hours in two other mods and I have not experienced any crashing. The exception crash I got was only in a very specific situation with happened again. I reinstalled the game and started playing 2.2 demo and I still got the same exception crash as I did in 1.5. I know the crash happens pretty much always then the game saves. This includes manual saving and auto save. This is probably why the save files disappear.

[Corey]

We're aware of a crash in 2.2 that results from the emergent faction events occurring under specific circumstances. We've had no other reports of any crashes in 2.15 since it fixed the old era change issue. We'd need more specific information on what specifically is going on when it crashes. It's possible you installed the patches incorrectly. Any issues in 2.15 and 2.2 would be entirely unconnected. Exception errors don't always mean the same thing, it refers to pretty much any error in the game.

If it's only during instances when it would be saving, you may have permission or filespace issues in your save folder

[NamesJeff]

I double checked and I know I installed 2.2 demo correctly. Also, this was done in an unaltered version of the game. This crash happens on average every 1.5 hours. I know I have plenty of memory on my computer for storage isn't an issue. I did set the .exe of forces of corruption to run as an admin however that didn't help. I also tried running steam as an admin. The crash does make a file named _Exept like the one I posted earlier. All of the above information applied to both ICW 2.1 with and without the patch and 2.2 demo.

[Corey]

So does it only happen when saving, or does it happen at other times? Did you install the 2.2 demo over the 2.15 version? Like I said, there's a known crash issue in the 2.2 demo related to certain spawn events, which is possibly what you're coming across, but that wouldn't apply for 2.15.

As for crashes during 2.1, what's actually going on in the GC when it's happening, what GC you're playing, and who as?

Again, the only crashes that we've ever had reports of from 2.1 at all in the last three years were related to era change events spawning stuff for a dead faction, which is what 2.15 addressed, so it's possible you found an edge case nobody had experienced yet, but there's nothing that should cause such a consistent crash so there's likely something else at play here.

[NamesJeff]

I have no other mods installed when I was playing 2.2 demo and I didn't install 2.15. When installing 2.2, I uninstalled EaW and reinstalled it from steam. When the games crashes when manually saving, my cursor goes to the desktop loading cursor during the saving. This sometimes leads to the save file disappearing. Also, the crash happens when saving inside a battle or in the galaxy view. The other time the game crashes is before and after a battle which is when the game auto saves. The reason why I think the auto save is causing the game to crash is because sometimes the auto save file disappears. This never happens when playing other mods or vanilla. Usually when the game crashes when saving, there is nothing special going on in the GC. It happens in all factions however I am now remembering that it happens more frequently when playing the imperial remnants in the big, multi era GCs in 2.15. When playing the imperial remnants, the crash happened about every 30 minutes. The crash did happen less playing other factions such as the NR. I'm going to start new games in 2.2 and 2.15 and just save several times to see if just saving causes crashes or where I save causes crashes.

[NamesJeff]

I just found out that I have steam cloud enabled for the game and it is doing used. I'm going to see if disabling it will change anything.

[NamesJeff]

I'm starting to remember more about the crashes. They happen less often in smaller GCs. This could be because they are shorter than the GCs like art of war. Also I have never had a crash in a skirmish but I have never saved during a skirmish.

[NamesJeff]

I have been doing some testing and the majority of crashes happen when manually saving. I have been keeping track of things that are happening in the GC when crashes happen in a spreadsheet which I will post when I get more crashes.

[NamesJeff]

I got some more information that could either help this issue or make it more complicated. I few times when I tried to save, a message pops up that says "FAILED TO SAVE GAME. CHECK AVAILABLE DISK SPACE" and the save file disappears. This has happened about 5 time for me and this seems to be related to the whole crash. The game still works after this message pops up however saving doesn't work until the game is reset. What I don't understand is how I have plenty of space on my PC. In the picture, I had about 70GB of free space on my PC. This has only happened in Thrawn's revenge ICW 2.1 and 2.15. In the picture, I was playing as the New Republic in the GC art of war and this message appeared about 2-3 times in about 30 in game weeks.