First off, fantastic game. I'm getting the hang of managing my borders with the new 1.10 patch on Normal, basically don't fight Athens until you've systematically reduced the Illyrians and Thracians to a few cowering holdouts. :P

However, every few minutes at this point I get a very distressing crash to desktop. It gives me an error message and lets me save a log dump (I have two ones from my current game, one right after the other).

An error occurred while running Hegemony: Philip of Macedon.

The instruction at 0x7667B7s7 referenced memory at 0x00000000. The memory could not be read

Here's a screen of that dialogue:


Um, what should I do to get this resolved?

EDIT: also, in the short-term, is there a hotkey for quicksaving? I can live with the crashes if I save like a paranoid maniac. :D

Oh yes I encountered that crash too. But only once...
No idea what caused it though I just started and played again.

The quicksave is on F5 by default I think. There's a very nice list of all of the hotkeys under Menu/Options/Gameplay/Controls. (Yeah, I missed it too until someone pointed it out. Note that you can't yet configure them from there: you currently have to edit the XML directly, but it's pretty straightforward.)

From several of the crash messages that people have been posting, it looks to me like there are still a few NULL pointer dereferences floating about.... Time to bring out the static analysis tools, methinks!

For an end-user there's probably precious little that one can do to avoid them in a piece of software as complex as a modern 3D RTS game. Best case, someone notices a pattern to the crashes and says "Aha! Avoid doing X then Y while Z is occurring." But realistically, we'll have to wait on LDA.

From when I was beta testing the game, these sorts of errors generally were the result of a specific combination of actions, or an event that had occurred previously that placed some ai object into an unexpected state.

Is this crashing without making any actions (just load the game and let it sit)? If so, I'd send the save game off to rob with how long before the crash happens so he knows how long he will need to wait.

If not, is there a specific action that you are doing every time that causes the crash (garrisoning a specific unit, making a specific attack, etc.)?

Sure that info would help LDA.

I'll try just letting it run, but I'm not really aware of any patterns to it. I've been fighting the Danube Hill Tribe guys recently and the frequency seems to have increased, maybe relating to sieges? I got one when I ran away from a siege (no catapults vs. 4400 defense = no fun) and also once sort of after I had taken a different city (made sure to get the catapults for that lol).

basically don't fight Athens until you've systematically reduced the Illyrians and Thracians to a few cowering holdouts. :P

Uh oh... I hope that's not bad, but I conquered Penestae and the Athenians landed yet another army in my territory, so I (angrily) marched south to teach them a lesson and have taken Methone & Pystra(?) off them. They did some sort of naval attack, but were entirely out of food so I held them off with a couple of phalangites.

I hope this wasn't a mistake! D:

I think it's Pydna. My problem was I had too many borders with Athens. I had (in a previous game) taken out the Chalcidian league but left the Athenian cities up there, plus I had taken all the Thessalian and Tyrant guys (forgot their name) but that left me with a water border with the main Athenian places. So they would land ships up in the Chalcidian areas, south in my Thessalian provinces, and the customary assaults near Aegae.

With my current game, I only border them at Aegae because I wiped out the Athenian cities on the Chalcidian coastal area. They launch about one or two raids along that coast (but never in much force) and they've mostly stopped trying to assault Aegae.

basically don't fight Athens until you've systematically reduced the Illyrians and Thracians to a few cowering holdouts. :P

Uh oh... I hope that's not bad, but I conquered Penestae and the Athenians landed yet another army in my territory, so I (angrily) marched south to teach them a lesson and have taken Methone & Pystra(?) off them. They did some sort of naval attack, but were entirely out of food so I held them off with a couple of phalangites.

I hope this wasn't a mistake! D:

No its not a mistake. xD Taking Methone & surroundings is a pretty early mission and especially Methone is doing alot of the naval invasions against you. So taking them was no bad move. I myself, after expanding south 2cities further as osoloon, encountered 3naval invasions then I decided enough is enough Methone has to pay xD I needed 2attacks and catapult though to take them...
But yeah he is kinda right the Illyrians are forcing me now to invade into their territory since they are invading and taking cities off me constantly...

Also the paenonians just recently retook Byzalora with a massive army but I am nearly done with preperations for the invasion of illyria and I think I have sufficient troops to both hold off the paeonians as well as advance further into Thessaly. I do not want to go too far into illyria but a better defensive position than the unwalled cities you have in lower macedonia would be preferable.

This game would make for some interesting After Action Reports(AARs) xD

@Alexander. Did you alredy wipe out Methone? Becuase they really are doing alot of naval invasions I think you would get alot relief taking them out if you already taken the chalcidian league out...

This game would make for some interesting After Action Reports(AARs) xD
Absolutely! I've been thinking about starting one at a Total War forum I frequent, but I'm lazy. :P It would be helpful if there was like a "year" counter or something to follow your progress, even though it'll probably just reveal that I'm much more cautious than the historical Philip. :P

@Alexander. Did you alredy wipe out Methone? Becuase they really are doing alot of naval invasions I think you would get alot relief taking them out if you already taken the chalcidian league out...
I think my conquests worked like:

Defeat Bardyllis -> Thessalian League -> Tyrants -> Chalcidean League -> Methone/Pydna/Dion

The Athenians were landing troops at my mostly undefended Chalcidean cities, all along the Thessalian/Tyrant coast, and still at Aegae despite me having Methone. It was mind boggling, and I was still up to my eyeballs in Thracian raiding parties. That was all before the 1.1.0 patch though.

Yeah, taking out Methone and Pydna should be a priority seeing as they are a big threat to your core towns. The AI is not nearly as aggressive in the new patch, and the game is far less frustrating as a result, in fact it's really great.

My game has been quite dynamic. I had some early success pushing into Illyria but ran out of steam and was pushed all the way back to Eordea(?) as I had to withdraw troops to fight elsewhere. I left a couple of units to defend the Illyrian border and used my main army to take on the Thessalian League and Pherae, eventually knocking out both factions. I had to tear down a few walls in coastal Pheraean towns and I hope this doesn't cost me when Athens inevitably comes knocking in the Spring. I took Methone, Pydna and Dione around the same time with a smaller force (not recommended because they are well defended and help each other out).

Currently I'm fed up with Illyria's constant raids, which have been getting more frequent and serious, so I turned my main army around and took three of their towns in quick succession. I've almost pushed them back to the extent of my initial attempt at conquest, but the campaigning season is over and I don't want to overstretch again.

Yeah, taking out Methone and Pydna should be a priority seeing as they are a big threat to your core towns. The AI is not nearly as aggressive in the new patch, and the game is far less frustrating as a result, in fact it's really great.

I took Methone, Pydna and Dione around the same time with a smaller force (not recommended because they are well defended and help each other out).

Currently I'm fed up with Illyria's constant raids, which have been getting more frequent and serious, so I turned my main army around and took three of their towns in quick succession. I've almost pushed them back to the extent of my initial attempt at conquest, but the campaigning season is over and I don't want to overstretch again.

Yeah I hear you man. Tried taking dione pydna and methone without a catapult... ended in my troops having to withdraw, call reeinforcements and build a catapult. Then they were toast =]

I have to invade illyria too becuase they are becoming more and more of a thread even taking cities from me frequently so I am starting invasion there too...
Although I am thinking about starting a new game on expert =]

Just before my game starting crashing out I was just about to take out Methone, Pydna and Dion. I had tried early on when Athens sent only 3 ships to attack, I used the Companions, Hyspasists and a Phalanx but I was forced to withdraw. Later as Athens attacked with more and more ships that I could take out with only a single Phalanx Guarding the coast I realised that to have a chance I needed to attack when they were attacking me. So when Athens sent 7 ships to attack their defence consisted of 2 peltasts in Methone, 2 recovering hoplites in Pydna and 2 spearmen in Dion. I sent the Hyspasists and 2 Phalangites, 1 to siege Methone and the other 2 to defend against the troops from Dion and Pydna (I hadn't noticed at this time pathetic their defences had become). The siege of Methone was going smoothly, the Athenian ships were defeated and the Spearmen had attacked my forces and routed (this was when I noticed the weak defences and sent a Phalanx to capture Dion) but then my game crashes.

I am getting this same error now with the Steam version. I can't load my game anymore, so I've saved the dump file. Do I need to upload it somewhere?

Sorry Rick, I should have been more clear. I mean after I load the game I can play for about 30 seconds before crashing. Typically at the same point every time. So I can actually load the game there is just no point in trying because it crashes on me.
I'll mail the dump to Rob. Thanks.

no - mail the saved game file as Rick said.

If it's related to loading a saved game, you don't need to send the dump, just send the saved game. To find out where your saved games are stored, see this FAQ.

I only had one crush with hegemony gold 1.5 german full version in 17 hours of play and continued to play with latest save
crush followed on taking too many units into a single city fight
I positioned 6 phalangites around a city that was probably too much for the game to take lol

I am just starting Hegemony Rome and the game is often crashing with similar text as the creator of this thread.