Gal Civ 3 crashing repeatedly

[jmatta]

My Gal Civ 3 has crashing very repeatedly, and not it's always just before I finish the 1st turn. This started about 4 weeks ago, when it crashed after about 20 turns. Then, after about a week, it started to crash after 4 or 5 turns. For the past 2.5 weeks, it's crashed before the end of the 1st turn. So whatever is going wrong, got worse, real fast.
Now, when I say crash, I mean that the entire system crashes. To a black screen. No keystrokes or mouse clicks accepted. But the fan on the CPU gets really loud, indicating that the CPU started to get very hot. I monitored this a few times by watching the CPU temperature...it is clear that the CPU is being used quite intensively, even though the system is hung. Only turning off the power will stop this.
Note that no other program that I use will exhibit this behavior, and I do a lot of intensive number-crunching at times. I did hardware checks, and everything is functioning smoothly. My hard drive has 230 MB of space available. The drive passes all hardware checks. Since I have ample memory for the game size I am playing, I don't think it is running out of memory... although that's an odd way to do it.
I've been playing Gal Civ 3 since it first was released, and I've seen a few builds that caused crashes, but not like this...and those problems had been fixed by new patches. This most recent behavior is astounding in it's severity and repeatability. To my current problem, the game seems totally broken, but I suspect that there is likely only one or a few things wrong.
What can I do to recover this?

[Rhonin the wizard]

Sorry to hear you are having trouble.

Originally posted by jmatta:

My hard drive has 230 MB of space available.

This indicates to me that the game might not have enough virtual memory. I suggest freeing up some space.

Thank you for your patience and patronage.

[jmatta]

Apologies. I mis-typed. My hard drive has 230 GB of space available.

[Rhonin the wizard]

If you lower the graphics options does it still happen?

[jmatta]

Yes, lowering the graphics does not affect it: the crashes still happen. When it crashes, it completely hangs the computer. Except that the fan on the cpu is still on. It seems that the cpu is being used a great deal during this time.
Note that I have other programs (e.g., Mathematica, spreadsheets, etc.) that are computationally intensive, and use the cpu intensively....but they don't cause this problem.
Since It started about 4 weeks ago (maybe 5, by now), I am questioning if some change was made in Gal Civ 3?

[Rhonin the wizard]

What are your system specs? And what map size and how many AI opponents to you usually play with?

[jmatta]

I have an Intel i7-4770K cpu, @ 3.5 GHz.
Also 16 GB of memory. Running Windows 7, 64-bit..
My hard drive is 1 TB, of which about 230 GB is free.
Display is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti.
I usually run on a Huge map size, with 2 opponents.
Until about 8 months ago, I normally ran on Gigantic or Immense map size, with 3 or 4
opponents, with no issues. But then (again, about 8 months ago), I began to notice
that, towards the end of the game, there would be a lot of slowdowns, and occasional
crashes (although not system crashes... the game just crashed).
In the recent past few weeks, I can't run the game for more than a turn without the
system completely crashing. In fact, just loading the game (without starting one) will
cause a crash in about 2 minutes, if I just click on New game, and look at the game
setup screens. It's very disconcerting.
I did memory checks, hard drive checks, and video checks...everything is normal. All of
my computational and office software runs without a hitch. In fact, other games have no
problems. E.g., I've run Diablo, Master of Orion, Age of Wonder 1,2 and 3, as well as more recent games. No issues.
Only GalCiv3 causes this issue, and it's a complete system crash.
The only clue I have is that the cpu is being utilized intensively when the system
crashes, and after it crashes, the hard drive light comes on for quite a while, although the system is dark and unrecoverable without rebooting.

[MagnumPCI]

If you start a new game, with a small \ medium map, with only 4 players (you and 3 AI), does this happen?

If so, post a shared link to a cloud service (DropBox, OneDrive, etc) where you have uploaded a save of it.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

[jmatta]

Ok, I started a game with a small map, and 4 players. Still crashed within 2 minutes.
https://www.dropbox.com/t/lzcgmEW0ForpyOwY
I have to point out that the game crashes even if I'm still creating the galaxy. It seems to always crash about three minutes after I enter "new game". The timing is pretty much always the same. And the crashes are always a complete system crash...the computer is hung, the screen is black (and turns off), mouse and keyboard are inopterative. And there is still some residual disk access going on. Perhaps writing a debug file? Dunno. It never finishes though. I have to turn off the power and wait a few minutes to reboot (the cpu is very hot by this time, so there was a great deal of cpu involvement just before the crash).

[MagnumPCI]

As you suspected, every time we (any dev really) reads what you are reporting, its nearly always a heat-power issue. With that...

If you are overclocking your video card, undo that.

If you don't have your 'scratch disk' \ Virtual memory managed by Windows itself, make it so. You can see how in the FAQ
https://forums.galciv3.com/486732/galactic-civilizations-iii-support-faq#PageFileSize

Try the low setting in also in the FAQ:
https://forums.galciv3.com/486732/galactic-civilizations-iii-support-faq#DeleteLowPrefs

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

[jmatta]

Ok, I've implemented the changes you suggested. I have to report that the result has not changed: the game still crashes the entire system. I've increased the virtual memory size, I've updated the video driver, run the very low graphics profile, verified the game files, etc. Still the same issue. I've also done a lot of timing on exactly when the hangup occurs. It occurs 4.2 minutes after clicking on a New game. Very reproducible (and thus, many reboots). Also, it is not necessary to actually begin the game. The clock starts ticking as soon as I start defining the galaxy that I want to play in. Thus, the galaxy has not even been created yet. So it's something that occurs as a result of starting to plan a new galaxy. Well, I guess it can be interpreted that this is the CPU warning me that man should not be creating galaxies. But I persevere on.
Any more suggestions?
Also: is it still true that this game runs under Windows 7?
thanks

[MagnumPCI]

I've increased the virtual memory size,

Why are you managing it manually at all? If you are not, please let Windows manage it dynamically.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

[jmatta]

I have been trying to work on verifying the file game files. Every time that I have it verify the game files, it tells me 4 files failed to verify, and will be reacquired. Then it downloads the files. But this really doesn't help, and the game still crashes the system. Then I verify the game files again, and it still tells me that 4 files failed to verify, and will be reacquired. I can do the game file verification over and over, and it still tells me that the files fail to verify.

As far a the virtual memory goes, I was following the instructions in the link that you sent me on May 13. I did exactly what was in those instructions, and the result was the same: system crashed. So I tried experimenting with manually expanding the paging file size. It still fails. I did set it back to let windows manage it, but it still fails. I see no indication that this is related to the problem.

[MagnumPCI]

As far a the virtual memory goes, I was following the instructions in the link that you sent me on May 13. I did exactly what was in those instructions, and the result was the same: system crashed. So I tried experimenting with manually expanding the paging file size. It still fails. I did set it back to let windows manage it, but it still fails. I see no indication that this is related to the problem.

Yes, having Windows manage it is what you want.

I have been trying to work on verifying the file game files. Every time that I have it verify the game files, it tells me 4 files failed to verify, and will be reacquired. Then it downloads the files. But this really doesn't help, and the game still crashes the system. Then I verify the game files again, and it still tells me that 4 files failed to verify, and will be reacquired. I can do the game file verification over and over, and it still tells me that the files fail to verify.

It is expected that 1 file will always show, not 4.

It might be time for a purge \ reinstall:
https://forums.galciv3.com/486732/galactic-civilizations-iii-support-faq#purgegame

While the purge \ reinstall is likely the shortest path to a solution (at least eliminating the file verify issue for 3), it might take the longest depending on your Internet speeds.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Product Lifecycle Manager

[jmatta]

Ok, thanks. I'll try the purge\reinstall.