So I've been trying to get Settlers II (10th Anniversary) running properly for a few days now, but no luck. Every time I start playing, as soon as I begin a map, the game always crashes back to Windows, no error message, no nothing, just back to the desktop. It usually happens within the first 5 minutes of beginning, but it always happens within the first 10. I've tried everything I can think of to combat the problem - running it in multiple Compatibility configurations (Windows 8, Windows 7, Vistas, XP SP3 etc etc). I've tried turning the graphics options down to "Very low", I've tried turning off the day/night cycle, turning off auto-save, playing it in Windowed mode. Nothing has worked.

What's interesting is that it runs fine on my laptop, but when I move a save game over and try to play from that save on my PC, the game crashes back to the desktop the instant I load the map (assuming I'd been playing for longer than 5 minutes or so).

Any ideas?

Maybe screen resolution? try another res, or windowed mode ...

I already tried both, thanks, but no luck in either instance.

Not sure what any of that means, but it certainly appears to have done the trick. Played for over an hour after changing meshCache to 0, and had no problems. Changed it back to 1, started up my saved game, and it crashed instantly, every time. Changed it back to 0, and everything was fine again.

Thank you very much for that, I really appreciate the help.

Good it's solved.

I'll try explain what I think is happening:
The game tries to write the meshes in 'C:\Users\username\AppData\Local\S2' but somehow fails, maybe because some permissions issue or perhaps an antivirus program.

I don't think it will cause any performance issues if the meshes are not cached, since pc's and drives have become so much faster than they were back in the day the game was released. So if it works that way, it's fine.

Have fun playing!

P.S.
If you are done playing the Roman missions you can try and find a copy of the 'Settlers 2, 10th aniv. Vikings addon' that will give you another set of missions and some other minor updates. It's a German addon, but I translated it to English and wrote a guide how to install it on the English game.

You can find that guide here:
https://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/203258-Vikings-add-on-How-to-Install-Play-on-English-Version?p=1832447&viewfull=1#post1832447

Greetings, Darkje (a.k.a. Mjorky)

I see. That makes sense to me now. I certainly haven't noticed any performance issues as of yet, so no worries on that front.

As for the Wikinger add-on, I actually already have it, and was planning on playing it with my rudimentary German as my only ally, so knowing there's a translation out there is very welcome news.

Again, I'm immensely appreciative.

Thank you for your help.
It doesn't work for me, the game still crashes like @Bertaut says (freeze then crash every time at the same moment on the map).

I tried low resolution and windowed mode, i tried to modify the engine.ini file, still crashing.

Any other ideas ?

Thank you.