So I was running Civ V perfectly fine for a while, but then it started to freeze. What happens, is it occasionally freezes, and there is nothing I can do. I can move my mouse, but that's it. I can't interact with anything in the game, all the visuals are frozen, and no keyboard shortcuts works, such as force quitting. However, the game music continues to play.
The only way for me to get out of it (and I have tried just waiting a while to see if it unfreezes) is to force shut down my computer. At the beginning, it happened scarcely, so it wasn't really a problem, I just had to remember to save frequently. But it started to happen more and more, and now it's gotten to the point where I can barely play. I'm lucky if I can take two turns without the game freezing. The only was I can play at all is to save the game every turn, and then restart when it freezes. This is very annoying as it makes playing Civ more waiting than playing, as I have o wait for my computer to restart, and then I have to wait for Civ V to load to main menu, and then I have to wait for it to load up my game. Sometimes this doesn't even work though as it will freeze before I can finish my turn. It's getting to the point where I have to save after every action.
I obviously cannot play like this for much longer, so I am asking for some help on how to fix it. As far as I know, there was no patch or anything that would cause it to no longer work. I have not recently installed any DLC the I did not have before, and I have never installed any mods. I have not made any alterations to my computer either, software or hardware. The weirdest part is how gradual it was. So please, help me figure out how to fix this.