CTD - game wont start

[Epic Dave]

Hi all -

Im attempting to return to the game after about a years break after playing about 100hours at launch. (I was hoping to check out your new beta). However, no matter what I try and do (or version I try and play) the game simply wont start up. Either the launcher is fucked, or it is crashing to desktop when initialising or if I am very lucky, it will ctd immediately after pressing sandbox mode. Naturally this is very disappointing.

Drivers all up to date.
I have no mods.
I've tried reinstalling the game multiple times.
I've tried verifying the game multiple times.
I've uninstalled and deleted any/all residual files/folders.
I've tried disabling efficiency cores in bios.
I've tried telling the launcher to play the game at 60fps.
I've tried turning dlc off.


Attached are some crash stuff.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jpd]

The exception log indicates it crashes inside DirectX, when it's decompressing shaders.

For starters, I would try to reinstall/update DirectX by running dxsetup again. Then run dxdiag, let it create an output file, and post that file here so we can take a look at how your system is configured.

 

[Epic Dave]

hi -

Thanks for the reply. Apologies I should have posted an update yesterday. I actually got the game to launch yesterday evening by copying the D3DCompiler_47.dll from windows and putting it directly into the vic3 binaries folder. (Reinstalling directx didnt do anything, either did verifying or reinstalling the game.)

However, now the game crashes to desktop when you click the sandbox button or select any of the countries options.
Crash logs and dxdiag below.

Thanks in advance.

 

[jpd]

I see that you have a Raptor Lake CPU. There is a known issue between the game and Intel CPU's of the Alder and Raptor Lake generation (see sticky thread).

I would suggest, at least for the time being, to either disable the E-cores, or start the game with an affinity setting that prohibits the use of the E-cores.

 

[Epic Dave]

Yeah - I've tried using the programme to see if E-core's were causing the crashes. However, it made no difference.
So, I went into the bios - and I've actually got the option to use my scroll lock key to park the e-core for legacy games (didnt realise I had this option - how awesome is my motherboard) - however, sadly, still no difference - game is still ctd on country select or clicking sandbox.
So, I went into bios and simply disabled e-core and - surprise surprise - game still ctd on country select or clicking sandbox.

Game literally wont work atm for me... which kinda sucks... any other suggestions?

 

[jpd]

Now that you have gotten past the shader compiler crash, what does the current exceptions log show?

As for what to do/test next, I can compare your system with mine. I have a 13600 (an i5) and an NVidia 4060, with 64 GB RAM. And on this system I can run Victoria 3 without trouble.

Have you tried disconnecting the second monitor, so the desktop (and thus the video board) only consists of one monitor. Another thing, your settings indicate you have UI scaling active. Have you tried setting that back to 1.0 ?

If that doesn't work, we probably need to start diving into the hardware. You can use HWMonitor for that. It collects a huge amount of data points regarding your hardware. There might be a temperature or voltage problem somewhere. Victoria 3 is quite taxing on hardware.

 

[Epic Dave]

Yeah, unplugging my second monitor didnt make a difference, and the game itself set the UI scaling to 130% from fresh download. I changed this too as suggested and it has made no difference. Game instantly ctd when you either select one of the suggested countries or if you click the sandbox button.

Looking at your own personal specs - I'm glad you are able to enjoy the game, but the game should run even better on my rig - which as I hope you understand is naturally frustrating.

Attached is latest crash dump - fyi all crash dumps say the same thing every time.

 

[AndrewT]

You are sure you used Affinity to restrict the game to the first 12 cores only(CPU0-CPU11)? Because your problem really seems like the issue @jpd referred to!