Civilization 5, one of the most anticipated strategy games of the year, has just been released and there are already tons of players who own the game and play it. However, some gamers encounter problems when trying to run or play Civ 5, so in this article we’ll try to help you fix Civilization 5 crashes and freezes, so you can have the best Civilization V experience!

How to fix Civilization V Crashes and Freezes?

1. Try running the game in windowed mode. Here’s what to do in order to get it working:

– go to the installation folder (normally Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization 5\) and edit the GraphicsSettingsDX9.ini with any txt editor (like notepad). Find the line fullscreen mode and change it to 0
– Delete all the .db files in the cache folder
– Run the game, it should be in windowed mode

2. If Civilization 5 freezes during the intro movie, you can skip it by doing the following:

– go to the installation folder and edit the usersettings.ini file, changing the line SkipIntroVideo to 1 (instead of 0).

3. Windows 7: Click on Start and then right-click on Computer and select Manage. Drop down Event Viewer, then Windows Logs, then Applications and then click on one of the most recent crashes of Civilization V. In this information you may well see the problem, you might see nothing you don’t already know but its worth digging around, looking for a faulting module or a .dll file that may be causing the problem.

4. For some, launching Civ 5 directly from the .exe file in the game folder not through Steam did the trick!

5. Lower the game’s settings (especially FOG of WAR) and try running it in 1024×768 mode. You can also try a tweak to make the videos run at a lower resolution, but you have to once again edit a game file:

– go to the game’s installation folder and edit the GraphicsSettingsDX11 (or whatever DirectX version you have), search for the lines: WindowResX = #### WindowResY = #### and change them to this: WindowResX = 1024 and WindowResY = 768

Hopefully at least one of these tricks will help you fix your Civilization 5 crashes and freezes. If you have any other solutions, please feel free to share them in the comment section below.

47 COMMENTS

  1. hrm actually this is the error I seem to be getting on the crashes, Faulting application name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.0.17, time stamp: 0x4c9b9292
    Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bdaae
    Exception code: 0x0000087c

    any suggestions?

  2. My user name was Críostóir Seán (Note the accent marks) and Civ V would not run at all. I saw some French dude say that the gome would not work for a user with accent marks. So I logged into my mom’s account (no accent marks) and the game works fine.

  3. I have the same:
    CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.0.17, time stamp: 0x4c9b9292
    Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16385, time stamp: 0x4a5bdaae
    Exception code: 0x0000087c

    Anyone figure this out?

  4. I found that by altering the directx9 config file to match the higher visual specs of the directx11 config file I got the higher graphics quality without the crashing I was getting with the directx11 version.

    • I have the same now, do you work it out?
      Sometimes game works fine but in one save it crashes in about 200turn and i cant get any further. Can you help? i heard somth about some patch i already have installed one but it seems not working. regards!

  5. A ja mam taki problem:
    Zapisane stany gry mi się nie wczytują. Co zrobić ?
    Gram, gram, gram zapisuje – niby wszystko ok ale potem jak daje wczyaj to nic się nie dzieje czekałem bardzo długo i nic.

  6. It seems the game also fails to save leaving a “valid size” savegame, but unable to load it. Runtime errors when trying to load it. It also crashes fairly often, which is why i save so much in the first place.

    Seriously, this is the worst civilization so far.

  7. I think the issue might be memory. Civ5 is a memory hog: that would explain why people are having issues at certain turns, as the memory burden increases with each turn (causing load times to be horrendous late game). Lowering graphics options might work if this is the case (try texture quality).

  8. Game crashes constantly after turn 300.
    Nothing works. They ask us the pay a lot of money but cant develop a decent game which u can u play to the end.

    Im downloading from now on. No more paying for bad products.

  9. I cannot believe I outlaid $A100 for this game. It constantly freezes and locks up.

    Surely the bugs must have been worked out before it was released!!!!

    How do I go about getting my money back?

    What a waste

  10. I have crashes after a lot of turns (200-300 ish).
    It’s really frustrating because I don’t have the habit of saving often.

    Apart from that the game is very nice. Bugs happen and can be very hard to find out.

    My crash occurred within the VS2008 VC runtime. Nothing to do with the game, at least in appearance.

  11. Brandnew Dell Studio 1747 and CIV 5 gives me in all modes after the intro a dark screen! I managed once to build first city bfore the next shutdown – I am not a tester, Mr. Meier, but a customer with a long memory.
    Anybody got some advice – or shall I dump it right now?

  12. I have a problem too the moment i start the game it gives a black screen and then he crashes.
    I have tried to instal en reinstal the game but nothing helps
    Anyone with some advices?

  13. Yeah, I tried them all as well, I tried on multiple computers (loading the saved game) and nothing, game still locks up. It’s not hardware, driver or karma, this game just sucks. I can’t finish any game, I get into the future era, and it locks, up. German, Japanese, doesn’t matter.

    Civ 5, failed.

  14. I bought a brand new 64 bit Toshiba laptop with a quad core i7 processor, 4 GB Ram, 550 GB hard drive, Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card, on Windows 7.

    Every time I start a new game, play less than 10 turns and try to save the game. It freezes on the save about every other time. WTF!!!! I buy a $1200 laptop and it can’t even play this game?

  15. Well I’ve had it with Civ 5 – too bad as the graphics look nice but it is obviously not properly tested and is filled with excessive bugs causing freezing, crashing and general mayhem. Not worth it so both Civ 5 and Steam have been uninstalled. I will not purchase any further games from Firaxis. It is absolutely rediculous that this far after release of this game that I need to go onto the internet and be searching for work arounds to get this game to work. If their programers are too incompetent to make a game that is addressed to the general consuming public then so long, have a nice life.

  16. my direct x11 wont work it has messed up graphics it only shows just a black screen wherever land is on the screen so i started using direct x9 and fixed the resolution to whre it fit my screen and (oh yea important fact i use steam) but not untill yesterday did i have this crashing problem so i uninstalled it (first i saved all my files on the steam cloud so i could load them later) then reinstalled it and problem continues but i have not tried this out yet i guess i should try it but i dont want to mess up all my game files to where it wont load anymore so i was wondering if anyone else like me using steam has tried this

  17. Running this game with an i7 quad core and an ATI HD5970 and I have to run it on low at endgame (past turn 250-300ish) to keep it from crashing and acting like a slideshow. I’m at turn 520 now and it keep freezing on me. Love the game but there has to be a better way to manage all the map processes than to just try and let our memory deal with it. I have 6gb and I’m struggling on low settings. Also, have made sure I have updated drivers and a clean desktop running it. No extra startup programs and all that.

  18. i was having random crashes playing civ5, and after searching the net for over a week and trying out every possable fix i could find,
    i was still getting random crashes!..How annoying.

    Here is how i eventually fixed it:
    1. i increase my pagefile.sys (i have 2gig RAM, and i have now set my pagefile to 3070mb)
    2. Go to the games ‘cache’ folder and delete all the .db files.
    should be located here:
    C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR USER-NAME\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization 5\cache
    3. run the game without random crashes…Buzzin! :D

    for those of you who have more than 2gig RAM installed on your system, i would still check the size of your pagefile.sys
    after all, you can allways set it back to how it was if your still having problems with civ5

    i hope this fixes it for some of you like it has for me

    Crunchie

  19. My game was crashing frequently, in most of the cases on the same turn (huge earth maps in most of the cases). I was trying many tips and sometimes it was working specially going in to the windowed mode. But after 340 turn it nothing helped. So i was trying to change almost every setting in the game and i found it: Tesselation to minimum and it is working perfectly so far.

    My rig:

    i7 4Ghz
    6GB RAM
    4TB HDD raid 0
    2x ATI Crossfire 4890

  20. Hi, my xml error for crash civ5 is that:


    903
    0
    0
    0
    0
    0x80000000000000

    809

    Application
    cisepunk-PC

    Nothing else….
    I don’t what i can do…

  21. I run Civ V on an I7 with 6GB of RAM and an HD5670. Still, I have every setting on minimum or off just to get through later turns in the game. I agree with most posters here – the developers seriously dropped the ball on this one.

  22. I bought a new rig thinking my three year old machine couldn’t handle Civ V. So I went whole hog: i7 990x six core, 16 gig RAM, and two ATI 6950s crossfired (don’t ask me why; my buddy picked it out – I just paid for it). Anyway, last night I installed it, played per usual and BLAMMO! at turn 352 it crashed. Ok, turned off fog war, etc. Reloaded last autosave and made it to …. turn 352 then CRASH! After fooling with it for half an hour I got to turn 357. Now it crashes every turn.

    So Sid, bug or feature?

  23. Update: something has changed and the game no longer crashes. I’m up over 700 turns and no crashes for a week or two.

  24. I played the game when I first installed it, but now it no longer plays. It crashes during the intro, usually right before the dream part. I set the skip intro but now it wont work. AHH! HELP! IT DID WORK!

  25. Hey all, i bought civ 5 today, and i’ve played it for 5 hours now.. It has crashed twice, both when i clicked on an oppononents city title. The first time, windows just closed the program, but second time my pc crashed and restarted. =/

  26. My civ V keeps crashing when i try to load or start an new game and ive tried every thing to try to get it to work but what’s the thing is after i installed it it worked perfectly then it crapped itsself after i cloze it.

    Help me please

  27. Sorry Zanderman, looks like you have joined the growing club of people who have been ripped off by purchasing a faulty piece of software. Looks as though they don’t give a toss as they are not doing anything to rectify the situation.

  28. Yet another in the Firaxis Failboat.

    Faulting application name: CivilizationV_DX11.exe, version: 1.0.1.348, time stamp: 0x4e144f4e
    Faulting module name: KERNELBASE.dll, version: 6.1.7600.16823, time stamp: 0x4de7264e
    Exception code: 0x0000087c
    Fault offset: 0x0000b9bc
    Faulting process id: 0x420
    Faulting application start time: 0x01cc54b0bfc83c90
    Faulting application path: c:\program files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\sid meier’s civilization v\CivilizationV_DX11.exe
    Faulting module path: C:\Windows\syswow64\KERNELBASE.dll
    Report Id: a3ba74d0-c0aa-11e0-94d1-001bfce15e09

  29. Had a bad problem of the game crashing all of a sudden, though it worked well before and I changed nothing.

    I realized that if I un-overcloecked my system (even though it was only slightly tweaked) the game ran smoothly.

  30. I am running i7, 9G RAM, the crashes are in no pattern…my gut feel is its the DX11, but what do i know.
    The game has been out for A YEAR and its still not addressed?

    The only way this crap will stop is with the first class action suit…I am not a fan of lawyers but I am also tired of paying for crap when NON-Crap is the promise.

    Anyone know a good hungry lawyer ready to take on these rip-offs ?

  31. My machine is i7 with 9 GB RAM sooo keep that in mind,,, and Win7…tip top machine…i reset the compatibility to the most advanced available which was vista with SP 3….also set a couple of the vid game levels a bit easier…shadows etc to easier levels…so far so good, I played 3+ hours and no freezes !! yay

  32. Oh well it didnt last…as soon as I went to ask about moving to new lands it froze…..i went to the help function icon…zzzz

  33. it says windows has found that civ 5 has stoped working cheaking for soultions the it say close program thise hapends when I click next turn I shut of my computer id dyou thing PLEASE HELP ME

  34. So my old laptop broke and I just go my new one today and installed Civ 5 through steam and well when playing as Egypt in the first game it crashed. This is a serious problem that someone in the game company needs to fix

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