A problem could be that multiplayer needs some attention.

I was asked by Sean Drohan to post here after I wrote a bad review about this game, so I am.

Here is the current situation:

On a normal 6 player map, saving a game takes over 10 minutes and uses up all 16GB of memory (@2400MHz) from my PC. During normal game play, GC3 take about 5-8GB of ram, but doubles when saving and even sometimes pages out to disk. If I try to load a game, same issue, all memory gets used and the game eventually crashes. And yes, I did submit the crash reports multiple times.

I did check to make sure paging was set to automatic, disable windows defender on GC3 game files in both locations and disable Steam Cloud saving. I even updated Windows10 and the nVidia drivers. Doesn't help. Same problem happened over and over.

Also, when verifying game file integrity after I play GC3 (after a crash or quitting the game), Steam always says that 6 files are corrupted.

If you want my games files, let me know where I can uploaded them to.

Yes, I also received a message from Steam that my files were corrupted.  The only solution I have found to the Saving/Loading problem is to play and only save every 15 turns or so and disable Automatic Save option.  Which sucks.

I'm sorry I can't provide any help, but I'm curious...

When you all say you have problems like this, is this single player or multiplayer?

Because I have a similar setup to yours, albeit only 16gb ram, but I don't have this problem on single player games, 20-22 opponents, turn times are below 2 minutes mid-game, below 30sec late game when most of the players are gone.

I wonder if increasing the difficulty settings makes the game slower (more AI thinking?).  I'm playing on gifted right now, finishing my game.

I hope Stardock can track this issue (and some others too!) and fix it quickly.

If you can, upload a save to a cloud service (Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive) and post a link here please.

Sean Drohan
Stardock Support Manager

My issues with Saving/Loading is with Single-Player mode.

Here are 2 different saves that have the issue.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/kxop7w3rzcjozrt/new2.GC3Crusade?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/a1x3hypedmefpas/new3.GC3Crusade?dl=0

After about a 2-3 min load time, they both crashed for me as well.  Ill get them looked at.

I don't have anything under your f********@gmail.com account (what you have in your forum profile).  Private Message me under what email address you are submitting them with.

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Sean Drohan
Stardock Customer Service Manager

I just tried loading both of these into Intrigue 3.05 without mods.  New3 crashed after 2:33.  A crash report was sent in.  After restarting GalCiv3, new 2 crashed after 0:41.  Another crash report was sent in.  I have never had a problem with long saving and loading times with my computer and certainly no crashes like this with my saves.

I decided to check RAM usage while loading new3.  This time it crashed at 2:20.  I got a screenshot of RAM usage right after the crash.  A third crash report was sent in.

After restarting GalCiv3 without mods, I loaded one of my saves that had a lot of mods.  It loaded in 0:29.  I got a screenshot of RAM usage right after it loaded.

As the screenshots show, I have 16 GB of RAM.  My page file is controlled by Windows, which shows 2432 MB allocated.

Maybe this information will be of some use.

Yes, your first screenshot is exactly the memory behavior when I too load or save my games.

Loading a game just balloons until it crashes. Saving a game takes over 10 minutes. In both cases, all 16GB are used.

One thing to note is that these saves are a lot smaller. The last good save I had was about 55MB, these ones (much later in the game) are 36MB.

I am not overly concerned about the loading of a save eating up memory - it would be more of a concern were it to continue to thrash memory after it loads, however.

That said, that it crashes loading each is a problem.  The devs have my report and will let you know when I do.

Thanks for your help here.

----------------
Sean Drohan
Stardock Customer Service Manager

I think my saving and loading times fixed when I stopped saving so often. If i saved like 3 times per turn, they would grow to very long times. If i saved like once per turn or every 3rd turn with autosave it was fine.

this is still a huge problem.

an autosave at start of turn hung for 30 minutes eating over 14g of memory until the entire system wouldn't respond. 

this is a major design flaw that needs to be addressed. 

I had a similar problem - saving and loading started to take 5 mins plus instead of the 15 secs it had been taking. Turned out my game was corrupt. If I load an earlier game it loads fine and saves fine; any save game from the current game takes ages to load and save.

This may not be your problem, but I just abandoned current game, started again, and all is well

It is the same. If I load a previous save, it will load. However, as I play, all subsequent saves take longer and longer to complete. If I try to load any of those saves, the game crashes.

The only way is to start a new game, but the same problem happens all over again. So basically GC3 is still an unplayable game.

Bump.

New game with 3.2. 130 turns in, 14 AI on a Huge map, turns times already 2mins long and this is on a 2700x with 32gig ddr4 3200 RAM and RX580.

Here is a good solution, at least until developers of the GGIII solve the true problem. 

I play a lot this game, many hours.

I started to see that saving a game or loading a saved games take many minutes.   As game goes on, it takes more and more minutes saving or loading a game.  As much I play the game each time saving maps or loading then takes more time.  So I had to finish the game since it is no nice waiting for 5 or more minutes just to save or loading one map.

It happens many times each time I play a new game.

But then I started to see that the problem does not happen at the beginning of  a game but after some turns were going.   Like 40 or 50 or 70 or 100.

Then I made some test looking the turns issues and finally found the problem.

The problem is this:

When you start a new game, usually you save the map to load the map later to see if you get planets bonus (like ideology more points or research extra capacities etc) or to make changes in the decisions you make.  That is ok, but the game only allows you to do that like 15 times maybe less or may be more.

But after you save and load the map more than 15 or 20 or 25 times, the game gets a bug.  And that bug makes (after it appears) that saving a game or loading a game takes a little more time.  But the time taking increase exponentially. I mean each additional turn you make in the game, the more time it takes to save or to load a map.  The more turns you execute once the bug appeared the more times it will take to saving or loading a game.  After some 10 or 20 turns you cannot play the game because not only it takes a lot of time to save a game or to load a game but each turn takes forever.

After I found the problem I have played many times this game and no more saving or loading problems.  Still it takes long turn in huge galaxies but they are normal since huge galaxies take many decisions (this game still need to be more improved). But no more saving or loading problems. 

Saving a game takes little time the same for loading games.

How to solve the problem?

When you start a game, try no to save and load so many times. remember that you can only do it like 20 times.  A little less or little more.

If you want save or load a game more times, you need to do as follow:

1. Save the game.

2. Exit the game.

3. Restart the game.  (I am not sure if just going to the main menu before loading the games works too).

4. Load the game.

In you exit the game and load the game, the bug does not appear.  I have noted that doing that give you more saving and loading chances.

If you load a game that you see takes time longer to save or to load.  Exit the game and get a saved game that has not the bug problem.  The game will work fine if the bug has not appeared.

Developers of this game should solve this bug, since it makes a very good game unplayable.

Tell me if this help.

Developers will you solve this problem so we can save games as many times we want?

I am not sure if they will focus this problem.....

I bought Crusader, I will see if the bug still there.

Horemvore, have you seen any improvement with this issue since you last posted? Also, are you running Win10 or Win7? Thanks!

Windows 10. I noticed a small improvement after adding GC3 folder to Windows Defenders exeption list, but it still can happen, also the UI gets laggy first, which has resulted in me saving and closing the game, rebooting and reloading to fix the lag, which probably happens to semi fix the loading issue?

I got not problem any more. And I have play more than 2000 hours but, remember, do not save and load a game too many times.  If you save and load more than 15 times you first must save game.  Leaves the game, then get in the game and load the game you saved.  In that way no bug.....

The game has been unplayable even on the smallest map sandbox's. After so many turns the save time is insane til it crashes and saved games when loading back up crash.

I have a pretty decent gaming rig and its just unplayable. I am really sad as I love the game but until I see a fix posted I just cant bring myself to invest the time in playing it let alone buying new DLC's.

Please post a fix when you can.

There is a solution read here....

If you want save or load a game more times, you need to do as follow:

1. Save the game.

2. Exit the game.

3. Restart the game.  (I am not sure if just going to the main menu before loading the games works too).

4. Load the game.

I'm sorry this isnt a solution this is a very inconvenient work around. This is not how the game is meant to be played.