are you going to upload the mod when finished?

@Jey: I'm actually planning to revisit the religions in North America. I have an amazing new source for religious distributions that I will use. If you rework the cultures and religions, I'd actually be quite happy to add them fully into my mod, since it's only improving on accuracy. Would you be ok with that?

I would be ok with you incorporating what I end up doing in your mod, and even delighted if my contribution was worthwhile. I can only achieve so much accuracy, and the most accurate would end up being the areas around where I live. Religions are also more difficult to set boundaries on than cultures given the way the map is divided, so I've been shooting for "close enough".

The main thing that I am attempting to work on is actually having the United States be 50 separate nations that influence the federal government and have moderate independence (no declaration of wars or such). I don't think you have an interest in that due to how time consuming it would be, but it sounds like a fun long-term challege for a guy who is still trying to learn how to mod the game.

@lucasgregorio I intend to upload the mod *if* I ever finish it. Changing cultures and religions in provinces is far easier than building a reasonable facsimile of the United States government in a video game.

Edit: Until I can actually figure out what is causing my crashes, I can't do much. The game will not actually load in during the era where I can easily view most of what I am trying to change.

I test my mod in the present day bookmark and I have not gotten any sort of crash. Since I can't replicate this, I will just advise you on what to do but follow this carefully:

- See if everything works without my mod activated (Just ET)
- If it does, go into the files and remove one folder at a time (for instance you can start with the common folder), and turn on the game again and see if it still crashes. Do not do this with the "map" folder as that will break it anyway.
- If the game still crashes with the common folder removed, the problem is not there. Continue to do this for the next folder (I think "decisions") and see if it crashes.
- If the game does not crash, the problem is in that folder. Then come back to me and I'll give you further instructions
- If you got through all of them and the game still crashes with one of each folder removed, again come back to me and I'll give you further instructions.

Let me know what happens

Deleting history folder worked. Also, was recieving error: ACCESS VIOLATION read attempt to address 0x00000064 so I tried to solve that.

Deleting history folder also showed something interesting: there are tons of provinces that are uninhabited without it AND some countries end up owning things they probably shouldn't, like this:https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/811055404666883135/3ED301F1478289792C9D064BD14E5A114631BE55/

I don't know if it is relevant to anything, but Poland, Romania, India, Czechia, Indonesia, Germany, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Norway, and Italy end up owning sections of Canada. Madagascar also has some territory near the Strait of Gibralter.

Update: Put all of the other folders back and ran it again. Works fine. For some reason it doesn't like the history files.
Update 2: Managed to "narrow it down" to the provinces folder, which was pretty obviously the one that had the biggest chance of being the problem.

Maybe it only downloaded the .mod file without the zip for me and as a result I have old files that aren't compatible, but I don't know for sure. I think the only alternatives are 1) the game isn't accessing ram correctly (based on other error) 2) There is some sort of conflict that can only occur later in the timeline (can start early games without issue, but didn't check every bookmark) or 3) the files did not correctly get uploaded to the workshop. I'm more inclined to believe the error is on my end if nobody else has the problem, but I'm not sure how to solve it.

@Jey: I've found what I think was the problem. Try see if the game works now

@Challenger It still crashes when I try to start at the last bookmark.

Update: Whatever is causing the crash only shows up after the 1508 bookmark. After that, I cannot load from any bookmarks and before has no problems starting.

Update: I tried to narrow down about what time marks the beginning of being unplayable, and it *might* be at some point in 1528. I say "might" because I didn't check any other time than the default day/month for 1528 AND it was actually playable 1 out of the 3 times I tried it. So there might be an event around 1528 that causes the crashing for every later date.

Update 3: I removed all province files that had a history event in 1526-2528. That seems to have solved the crashing for that timeframe and only that timeframe.

@Jey: Try to narrow down specific province files, if you give me a step by step of what you do to make the game crash, i'll try to replicate it and then I might be able to fix it

As for steps:
1)Open Launcher (ET and your mod active, no DLC active)
2)Launch Game (No problems on loading screen
3)Game reaches main menu
4) Select SIngle player
5)Select Bookmark after 1508 or time of 1528-onward (1508 or before does not crash as of yet)
6)Select Nation
7)Play Game, normal mode
8)Game begins loading process. During Initializing, sound hangs for a moment, resumes with banner UI sounds and/or music briefly before CTD.

In regard to provinces, I have no idea as of yet how to narrow them down. Going by year was decent enough, but it seems that additional provices continue to cause crashes as their colonial regions continue to expand. My guess would be that either something is conflicting with the newest provinces you added beginning around the 1500s or that there was a syntax change for some property set for those provinces with the 1.20/1.21 update. Currently trying to see which provinces exactly are involved. For the newest, I think I've found a few: #5016,3282,5029, 5031, 4951, 4952, 4949, 4948. Those are just the newest ones. I'm going to slowly re-add all of the other ones and see if it still works.

Edit: Looked into 5016 and 4952 files. The only thing that seemed odd was that there was a " revolt = {}" in each, but far later in the timeline than the game begins crashing at.

Edit 2: I think I found it. In 1528, a few provinces become owned and controlled by tag JOH, but apparently there is no JOH tag in the country tag file. I know it is in the base file, but would it be overwritten by the mod files?

Edit 3: Scratch that. Guess not. Back to looking again.

Alright, using 1528 as a starting point I successfully returned all non-Indonesian province history files and was able to actually start the game. The provinces that didn't make it back in are listed in the last post, but that is obviously not all of them since the game still crashes after that point in the timeline.

Edit: So much for that... I missed a few files that weren't added in and now one of them seems to make it crash. Still, it is at least narrowed down drastically from being over 200 files.

Edit 2: Re-added a couple of the Indonesian files and it still loads.One of the files causing the crash is Dal (4863) which I thought was Indonesian because of that high number. It becomes protestant in 1527 and the game crashes in 1528 when the file is added. Going to look for more.

UPDATE: Province #4863 will guarantee a crash at 1528 for me. Game still crashes at later dates.Attempted a search for it both by name and number throughout the mod and didn't find anything that even looks close to a possible problem.

That single province is the entire reason that the game will crash in a 1528 start and I have no idea why. Worse, it isn't the sole reason that the game keeps crashing either.

I wonder if this is actually an issue with settings or configuration, but I am easily above spec and can't figure out why it keeps throwing" EXCEPTION: 0xC0000005 at address: 0x00801CAE: ACCESS VIOLATION read attempt to address 0x00000064 " in the exception log.

Further update: I looked into several solutions and am continuing to try them. For some reason, it could just be a problem with being unable to reach that section of memory. I don't seem to have any hardware problems, but at the same time the game should not be crashing at a specific date due to a specific province. I have tried multiple times and crashing at 1528 is due to province 4863, which only has an error with the date list that is not causing the crash. After that point, the game begins to crash again as other provinces are the cause, but the fact that province history files which should be prefectly clean cause crashes.

I've attempted to see what could be wrong with the one province in question, but I still have no idea what could be wrong with it. I've checked my own hardware for faults and can't find any thusfar. There does not seem to be a logical explination other than it cannot read/write from memory properly if the province history exists, which does not even make sense. Beyond 4863, there are even more provinces that have some sort of error, but I do not know which ones yet. I'm wondering if maybe the file encoding is the issue, but I really have no idea.

Hmmmm that's very odd, I just fired up my game and started a game in February 1528 and I had no crash :/

Find what fixes the crash for you and I'll implement your changes into my mod anyway. Hope you can get it working, your work on the US would be very appreciated

@challenger - An Idea I had: SInce I think the compressed version of the mod has increased ~1mb since the 1.19 version, maybe you should think about splitting the mod up into parts. While the mod might only be partially functional, maybe it is having problems due to the way that the files are compressed. Other people have done the same thing for mods, which are usually in the hundreds of mb range, but you might need to split it up. If the mod works for you as is, then everything below this might be totally irrelevant if it is an issue with the file integrity due to compression.


----the longer pre-split idea post------

You could try specifically December 10 1528 or later, but I suspect you will get no crash. As for changes, there is nothing that has worked so far. Even small tweaks to the line format don't help, but so long as Dal is in the folder it will crash for me. Even then, that is only part of the problem.

Did you do anything to change how the game operates in the settings? I know there are some ways to change things such as how many cores are used in other games, but I don't know where such things are done.

It could also be architecture-based processing problems. My hardware is AMD and that *might* affect how it is handling memory addressing, therefore causing the crash, but I don't have enough information to confirm that AMD is the problem. It might be that many people with AMD might have the problem, or not.

Edit: I really have no idea how to solve the problem. The fact that it can be at least partially solved by removing provinces makes no sense to begin with. I can't even explain why it won't work for me when your original is fine. All possible solutions seem to be negated by other facts. So, what I conclude so far:
1)I am having crashes starting in 1528 (sometimes reliably crashing, sometimes not)
2) I am not the only one having such crashes (at least 1 more person)
3) The crashing for 1528 is directly tied to province #4862 - Dal
4) There is nothing visually wrong with the province file
5)Removing other province histories has no effect in 1528, only Dal
6) Dal is not the only province causing the problem, only the one that causes problems first
7) Dal does not cause problems before 1526-1528 range
8) The game throws an access violation error on crash
9) My RAM is fine
10) My GPU is fine, not overheating
11) No problems with DirectX
12)No visible problems with download
13) If there were problems with the mod download, they would be widespread
14) The problem does not exist on the version being used where it is created
15) Intel/AMD probably doesn't matter
16) It is unlikely that the mod exceeds my PC's capabilities because of the limits of the game itself

Given all of that, the solutions I see:
1) The uploaded version is not identical to the working version - unlikely
2) Download is corrupt - unlikely, would more likely completely fail
3) Mod now exceeds RAM limits - unlikely, executable locked into 2-3.2GB for 32-bit OS with a max of 4GB addressable. If that were the problem, nobody would probably be able to run it.
4) The province file has a problem with it - best answer yet and unlikely. ET had a problem with province crashing apparently, but under different circumstances
5) Working copy is running in modified environment - Not sure. No Idea what you might have done to make the game run better, but shouldn't put a huge gap between us.
6) There is a reference to the problematic province in another file - possibly, but I looked and coild not find one.

With all that in mind, I'm gonna pass the problem along to my fellow tech people and see if a solution pops up

@Challenger A couple questions: Are you using any mod/setting file changes to improve performance? Could you have maybe added sine DLC-dependent lines to your mod that you missed?

I'm not sure that the first would have any impact, but the second probably would. Maybe if we can determine what is different we can find a solution. Unfortunately, I am still learning where to look for where the problem *might* be and I don't have a clue what I am looking for at this point.

Well I'm glad that you're still looking for the problem, but I'm very sure it's not related to my mod being "large". Think of ET for example, that mod is much larger than mine and works fine. Also no I haven't added any DLC dependent lines of any performance boosting things.

As for the province Dal I do have some suggestions to narrow down what might be wrong. Drag out the original and create a new file with the same name "4862 - Dal" but leave it BLANK. Then load up the game and see if it crashes... Obviously the province will always be unowned and have no history but try it. Then, write (do not copy/paste) some lines into this file from the original and run it again. Do this until you get the crash, then we can locate what's wrong

I was able to start in 1528 one time and only one time after changing Dal (top line, looked like only a comment), so I started as Sweden to view the province and such. Game loaded fine. To double check, I then went and immediately started as Spain for the crash.

This led me to look through the files and error logs, and I noticed a mismatch between your files and ET files. When you change the map you make new areas, but you still use all of the ET missions, in this case a call to "finland_area" is made in the Swedish_Missions file in ET, but in your mod there is no finland_area. I don't think this is the particular cause, but there might be other calls made that reference areas that you have reworked and renamed.

As for doing the thing with the 4863 file, I already thought of that, but got sidetracked when the game successfully loaded once. I'm going to go that route now since it seems my attempts at other corrections are failing.