Victoria 3 seems to run when it "wants to".

[MonsieurCharles]

I own a copy of Victoria 3 bought from steam along with the following expansions:
- Colossus of the South
- Dawn of Wonder
- the Free Trains Pack
- Victoria II Remastered Soundtrack
- and Voice of the People w/ the French agitators bonus pack (since I preordered).

I also have the following mods installed:
-Better States and Cities
-Cities: Skylines
-Smaller Cities
-Mediterranean Architecture
-Diverse European Architecture
-Convenient Building Categories 1.5
-Headlines
-State Transfer Tool UI 1.6 fix

This is (supposed to be) running on a 6,1 Mac Pro bought in 2019 w/ the following specs:
- a 3.5 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon E5
- with 32 GB of DDR3 RAM,
- dual AMD FirePro D500's w/ 3GB of VRAM each
(though in practice only one is used due to system limitations)
- and all with macOS Monterey v12.7.4 installed (this is the latest major version of macOS the 6,1 Mac Pro can support, security updates are still pushed from Apple).

My issue with the game is that ever since update v1.5.11 hit the shelves, the game just absolutely refused to start. I hoped to find other Mac users with a similar issue but couldn't, so I decided to wait it out for a later update and hope came in the form of v1.6.2 Blackcurrant. But it was not so; and now when I click "play" on the PDX Launcher, one of the following events may transpire:

1) Instant Crash variant 1 (this also occurred with no mods installed)[crash dump provided]:
-The game icon pops up on my dock and starts bouncing, signifying startup.
-The PDX launcher simultaneously closes.
-The game then, in quick succession, instantly disappears from the dock and I am met with the Crash reporter.
-I click send.

2) Instant Crash variant 2 (this also occurred with no mods installed)[Image and raw text of error provided]:
-The game icon pops up on my dock and starts bouncing, signifying startup.
-The PDX launcher remains open.
-The game then, in quick succession, instantly disappears from the dock and I am met with an error message from the launcher.
-I click ok.

3) Hung start (this also occurred with no mods installed) [Activity monitor screenshots provided]:
-The game icon pops up on my dock and starts bouncing, signifying startup.
-The PDX launcher simultaneously closes.
-The game icon just continues bouncing perpetually or remains still on the dock with the white dot underneath signifying activity (though some CPU and no GPU usage could be seen on the Activity Monitor).
-The longest I left it there was 5 minutes. The screen just remained at my desktop with no effect on functionality.
-I force quit the application.

4) Hope? (this also occurred with no mods installed) [crash dump provided]:
-Now in this scenario, the game starts up and runs perfectly after 4-5 startup attempts dealing with the previous 3 events.
-So I managed to get a Japan game going and all was well, until at 3 separate points the game just CTD'd with a red screen flashing before the desktop with no correlation to what was happening in game.
- but I could restart (after some attempts, again dealing with the crashes), load my save and keep on trucking.
- However, around November 1877 the game CTD'd (with the same red screen flash) again, and even after restarting (after some attempts) the game would consistently CTD about 2 weeks after November 2nd 1877 (when the game last saved). So my save was pretty much softlocked.

With this litany of issues, the game has become nearly unplayable and impossible to complete for me. If any assistance can be provided at ALL, I would massively appreciate it.

P.S.: I have also validated my files via steam multiple times.

 

[AndrewT]

We can't help with modded games here I'm afraid, so please disable ALL mods while we work on this.


Please do a full clean re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-Vic3
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Victoria3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3 folders - In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam Victoria3 or Documents Victoria3 locations, before installing again.
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- start the game with no mods active and test with a new campaign, NOT with any existing one.

**File Locations on Mac OS X**
The executable and DLC folder are in Users/USER/Library/Application Support/Steam/SteamApps/common/Victoria3/
To see it go to the Finder, hit command-shift-G (ie Go To) and type in ~/Library/ .
The user files (settings files, error logs, saved games, mods) are in /Users/USER/Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/ .

What problem do you then get launching the game, or running it or playing it, then?

 

[MonsieurCharles]

Thank you so much AndrewT for your quick response.

I am sorry to say that I have already tried this 3 times, even down to manually deleting the files from steamapps and the Paradox Interactive folder in documents. I have verified the files as well and even removed all mods from the game to see if they were the cause, they were not. The same issues persist (at least the first 3) even after a clean install with no mods, only DLC.

P.S: I was able to replicate the save game crash on my Japan campaign even without mods installed. The game was entirely stable even without them but it STILL CTD’d after about 2 weeks of in-game time.

 

[AndrewT]

Just after the next such crash in a completely unmodded campaign:

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/pdx_settings.json .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Victoria3/crashes/ folder, attach here the latest (only!) exceptions.txt

 

[MonsieurCharles]

Okay, will do.
And I’ll do a full clean reinstall as well just to be safe