Howdy, gentlemen.


The problem I'm encountering is very simple and usually follows 3 steps :

>I start a new game

>My game freezes indefinitely - either at the start or during the game depending on the quality settings. At which point my machine doesn't respond at all : windows button, Alt+Tab, Alt+F4, Ctrl + Alt + Del... none of these commands do a thing. Even the mouse-pointer stops responding eventually.

>I then have no other choice than to force shutdown my PC by holding the power button for 5 seconds.

>Repeat


I have waited up to 10-15 minutes before forcing the shutdown, the screen remained frozen the entire time. 

I managed on a couple occasions to alt-tab at the exact moment the freeze occured and therefore could take a look at the windows Task Manager for like 10 seconds before it died aswell. It showed a spike to 100% disk usage.


The freeze occurs...:

- On fastest quality : every 6-7th turn on average

- On fast quality : every 4-5th turn on average

- On simple quality : every 2nd turn on average, or possibly right after exiting the loading screen

- On good quality : right after exiting the loading screen and skipping the opening cinematic


I obviously haven't dared trying it on better quality. I tried both on Fullscreen and Windowed fullscreen. Fullscreen showed a everso-slightly better performance but the result was the same.


I have tried the following :

- Latest GPU driver

- Latest SSD driver/firmware (or so Samsung Magician tells me)

- Latest motherboard driver

- Latest Windows 10 update

- Reinstalling DirectX

- Reinstalling Dot Net

- Reinstalling VCRedist 2012/2013/2019

- Running Steam + Humankind on administrator

- Verifying files integrity

- Forcing Vulkan mode

- All kinds of cmd lines

- Formatting my SSD


Some of the required files are attached hereto. I have no saves nor screenshots to attach for obvious reasons : it's a freeze, I can't screenshot. And it happens at the start of the game, so there is no save.


Closing thoughts :

Humankind is the only game I play that spikes my disk usage to 100%, even on the lowest quality. My PC runs Total War : Warhammer 3 in low quality (not even lowest) without freezing or crashing. Now, I am aware, from reading here and there, that Humankind is quite demanding. But to think that my PC can run Civ VI - a very similar game - on the absolute highest quality, or WH3 - a very demanding game aswell - without ever crashing/freezing, but can't get past a few turns on Humankind on the lowest possible quality is a bit confusing, and suggests that something might be off; Surely the discrepancy in optimization can't be that big. My SSD isn't the best, but it can't be that ridiculously bad either ; it has proven in the past that it can handle these games. The fact that I last played Humankind on December and that I didn't have this problem then leads me to think that it might have something to do with there recent updates.


From what I understand by reading some of the posts, devs seem to be reading them and taking notes without always answering. If you guys are reading this, I'm obviously not expecting you guys to make an update just for my ass. I'm just looking to have some intel on what the hell is going on. If it's my SSD that can no longer compete with the needs of Humankind for some reason - which I doubt -, then so be it. I'd just like to know for certain.


Thank you for your time.


Temporary Files.rar