Game Freeze

[Hota]

In my current game the game freezes when the computer is calculating player 5's turn (the largest comp player). I've let the computer sit there for over an hour and nothing. Each time I've had to kill off the SE4 program. Anybody know any way around this?

Hota

[rdouglass]

I have never had a freeze or a Range Check Error (RCE) in SE4 (you all are probably saying "Rrriiiggghhtt!!!) but have heard / read several threads. The answer seems to be to take over the AI turn at that point, finish the turn, and then make it computer controlled again.

Check the other threads for details...

[Atrocities]

Ok, heres what you need to try to get past the Freeze. You need to set player 5 so that you can play his turn.

IN GAME

Click on the option tab. (the button on the upper left - you know, save game, quite game)

Find where it says players. Click that, count down from the top to player five and click him. That little green light should go out by his name.

Then return to the game. After you make your move, the game should go to player 5. Watch what happens. Then end his turn, and the game should not freeze.

This has how I get past those freezes. In some cases I have to make contact with that race, and order it to surrendar, and then in its turn, after deseleting the minister for politics, agree to surrender. That way I don't have to play to empires.

I don't know why this occures, but it does happen from time to time.

[Daynarr]

Or you can simply wait for next patch where MM has fixed at least 3 bugs that caused RCE errors.

[Barnacle Bill]

It may be that whatever is causing the RCE is when a ship of Player 5's executes an order it received on a previous turn. In this case, setting Player 5 to "human" will let you see what ship is causing the problem, but not change its orders before it does it. To do that, you have to go back to a saved game from the PREVIOUS turn. If you set the game up to auto save every turn, you will have this option. Otherwise, if you don't have a saved game from some earlier turn you may be out of luck.

All RCE's are not caused by "bugs" which MM can fix. Sometimes it is cause by something we modders do.

[Hota]

I'm not getting a RCE, the game would just freeze while computing player 5's turn. I finally got around it by taking over player 5 and hitting end-turn. However the problem returned whenever I reverted player 5 back to computer controlled. Any word on the release date of the next patch?

Hota

[Jubala]

Hota, mail the savegame to MM and tell them about the error. As it's recurring Aron can probably find it and hopefully fix it.