The Sims Medieval: Game Crashes When Placing Buildings – Workarounds

**Update** Crashing issues have been fixed in the recent patch. Make sure to run the patch if you’re having any kind of problems with the game crashing.

From day one, The Sims Medieval has been crashing on me with a blue screen of death every now and then, primarily when placing buildings. It would give the 0x00000116 error on the dump screen, which googling points to graphics card issues.

Eventually I found this forum post which pointed to the problem. Apparently there is an issue with some video cards (primarily integrated Intel video cards like the one in my laptop) related to the kingdom walls in the game. When you place a building with security, it increases the size of your kingdom walls, which crashes the graphics driver for some reason.

Apparently EA is trying to patch the issue, but here are some suggestions in the mean time. Personally I have found these to make the problem a little less frequent, but it’s still crashing sometimes. Get used to saving a lot until it’s fixed.

1) Make sure your graphics driver is up to date

Windows Update doesn’t always have the latest driver, so go to the manufacturer’s website, either of the graphics card or of the computer to find the latest drivers if necessary.

2) Turn down the graphics in the game

Click on the little (…) button in the bottom left corner to bring up options, and turn down all of the graphics options to Low, and uncheck the Enable Reflections box as well.

3) Try running the game in a lower resolution

Click on the little (…) button in the bottom left corner to bring up options, and change the resolution the game plays in.

4) Try running the game in Windowed mode

Hit Alt+Enter in the game to change from Full Screen to Windowed mode.