Crashes and Restores

[Guardsman]

So....I spend 45 minutes or so planning, buying, moving, organizing all my my units and the economy. Then, knowing the game has a tendency to crash, I save the game BEFORE executing the turn. I execute the turn and sure enough, it crashes in the middle of execution. After restarting the game and resuming, nothing I did pre-crash is there. All unit orders are gone, all organization is gone, all purchases are gone, etc, etc.

I specifically save every time before executing the turn, but it's always the same. Everything is gone when I resume. How do I restore the game to so that I don't lose all that work every time? Is there even a point in saving before executing a turn?

[DrPostman]

That's happened to me a few times. I load the previous turn and there are
my orders. I don't know why it's doing that but it does.

[Pocus]

Are you sure that the turn you are viewing, after the crash is not the novel turn that somehow managed to be produced by the engine? Because in this case your old turn is still there, as a backup. What you describe is very weird because the order files are never deleted, so if you saved before processing your turn, there should still be a .ORD file in your directory.

Now, lets be pragmatic, for whatever reason you crash and the order file is removed. You can work around that opening your saved game and putting aside this file, in case off. But that's very strange.

[Captain_Orso]

Guardsman, as Pocus and DrPostman have noted, you turn has more than likely completed and what you are looking at after you restart the game is the start of the next turn.

In the load menu you get a tool-tip of the scenario telling you the date and time when that .hst file was created. The .hst file is the scenario status at the end of each turn; aka the history file.

You can also us MS Windows Explorer to look into the scenario directories directly, or any other file manager with which you are familiar.

Navigate to '..\My Documents\My Games\CivilWarII\Scenario_Name\Saves', which is where you will find the active .hst file. You should also see a number of directories named 'BackupX' where 'X' is a digit or digits between 1 and 12. If you look in 'Backup1' you will probably find your .ord (your orders) file. Check its date and time to see if it corresponds to when you clicked 'Proceed to next turn'. I expect this will be the case. If it is, then the turn you were attempting to execute completed correctly and you can continue normally.

[Guardsman]

I have looked at the backup directory. The .hst file has a time stamp of 07:44 and the .ord files have a time stamp of 08:13. The .tag file also has a time stamp of 08:13. I know the turn did not execute for two reasons: 1 - None of the units moved, none of the units that were ordered are in the production queue., and none of organizational changes (ie forming a division) are there, and: 2 - the game crashes while the turn is executing, since I can see the AI moving certain units that I am aware of.

After previous crashes, at various times, I have deleted either the .hst and .tag files, but that makes it impossible to load the save at all.

[Rod Smart]

if it crashed before the turn started processing, when you reload, it should only have your side as the one that has processed their moves (the little red/blue line/arrows in the bottom right of the leaders faces).
if it crashes during the movement phase, when the opposing side has started moving but before the turn is complete, then both sides will have those icons
if it crashes after completion of the movement phase, before the next turn starts, then neither side will have an icon.


That's how I tell when the turn crashed.
It sounds like you have a bigger problem.

And as you said, save save save. Between this game crashing every 6 turns, and my work drives randomly disconnecting during the day, I'm conditioned to save everything I do every 10 minutes.

[Captain_Orso]

I have looked at the backup directory. The .hst file has a time stamp of 07:44 and the .ord files have a time stamp of 08:13. The .tag file also has a time stamp of 08:13. I know the turn did not execute for two reasons: 1 - None of the units moved, none of the units that were ordered are in the production queue., and none of organizational changes (ie forming a division) are there, and: 2 - the game crashes while the turn is executing, since I can see the AI moving certain units that I am aware of.

After previous crashes, at various times, I have deleted either the .hst and .tag files, but that makes it impossible to load the save at all.

You're mixing things up.

The .hst file in the '..\Saves\Scenario_Name' directory is your scenario's current status. When you plan your turn and click on the 3 1/2" floppy disk icon in the upper right corner with the tool-tip "Save your turn." the game saves your orders to a .ord file in the same directory. When you click on the icon in the upper right corner with the blue arrow pointing to the right, the game saves your orders to the same file, or if you haven't already saved your orders, creates a .ord file. The game then generates order for your AI opponents and executes the turn.

I'm not 100% certain of exactly when, but I imagine once all AI-orders have been generated, the .hst file, all the .ord files and a .tag file with the turn number are all placed in the '..\Saves\Scenario_Name\Backup1' directory. If this directory already existed, it is shifted to Backup2, before which Backup2 is shifted to Backup3, etc. etc.

Once turn execution is completed the .hst file for the new current turn is generated in the Scenario_Name directory.

So if '..\Saves\Scenario_Name\Backup1\Scenario_Name.hst' has the time-stamp 7:44 and your .ord file in the same Backup1 directory has 8:13, that matches up perfectly. The .hst file in '..\Saves\Scenario_Name' should now have a time-stamp from shortly after 8:13 (or maybe the same, but certainly not before that).

If the current .hst file shows that no movement took place, or any other order for that matter, or not all the orders that you plotted, which should have been executed, then turn the game back one turn and re-execute it.

[Guardsman]

Well it happened again. The game crashed during turn execution and when I loaded the backup nothing I did the previous turn was there. (no orders, no reorganization, no purchases, etc). I saved the game before I executed the turn, but still nothing.

I must say that this is extremely frustrating.

[Paule3000]

Well it happened again. The game crashed during turn execution and when I loaded the backup nothing I did the previous turn was there. (no orders, no reorganization, no purchases, etc). I saved the game before I executed the turn, but still nothing.

I must say that this is extremely frustrating.

I experienced the same bug a few times. It crashed at the end of turn execution while/after the cursor had turned into the writing pen. Once or twice I could even hear the new-turn-is-ready-fanfare, then the game crashed with a "a critical error happened..." message. Upon restart the game reloaded the old turn as if it was a new turn. I am 100% sure it was not a novel turn. I did not check any time stamps or .ord/.hst files though. I never understood how this is possible, given the fact that I heard the new-turn-rady-sound...

[Pocus]

Aside from a crash happening when/because of the backup process, files can't be deleted. Perhaps you should move the game to another location, for example C:\Program Files is not the best place.