When Will My Game Crash?

[Vince278]

I'm up to 1520AD now. I'll see soon how I do at 1720AD.

I'm checking out Smart Map now. I'll see how big a map I can load after I'm done with the game.

[Tattila the Hun]

I managed to crash my worldbuilder, while trying to put a harbor into a non-coastal city...

There should be a fishmarket or something for non-coastals. Just a thought.

[Prussia]

A computer can only take so much, and if you fiddle with World Builder and put, let's say, 20 Civs all having 5 cities or more, playing it would probably crash the game.

But if you don't have any problems now, I can't see why you would in future turns, unless every Civ built 100 warriors and moved them all at the same turn.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
I managed to crash my worldbuilder, while trying to put a harbor into a non-coastal city...

[Vince278]

Just finished a game with Smartmap. The map had twice the dimensions as huge (took 6 minutes to create). It was a marathon earth map with 18 players and I won it by Space Race in 1850AD. The game did slow a bit in the last century or so.

Kudos to the creator of Smartmap!

[Qwertqwert]

Yeah those giant maps take a long time to load up.

[Prussia]

But they are worth it.

[snoopy369]

RAM would be the most likely limiting factor, up to 1GB, assuming the other two are of reasonable level - ie, a pentium II with 2gb ram, you could probably blame the chip

But any P4 1ghz+ with a video card equiv to NVidia 6600+ or ATI 9800+, more than likely RAM below 1GB would be the limiting factor.

Over 1GB, then it is the processor (as CIV isn't going to use much RAM over that, unless you're abusing your system running more than one thing at once).

Slowdowns late in the game come either from the map+units taking too much time swapping from memory (ie, RAM caused), or from the AI taking too long to make decisions about its myriad of units (processor slowdown).

[Vince278]

Well, I have a 2.9G dual core, 4G ram, and an Nvidia 6600. What should I focus on to enhance performance?

[Nikolai]

You should focus on having a blast with your games.

[DrSpike]

Agreed.

[Qwertqwert]

Originally posted by Vince278
Well, I have a 2.9G dual core, 4G ram, and an Nvidia 6600. What should I focus on to enhance performance?

If you really have no better use for your money, your video card.

[Solver]

Originally posted by Vince278
Well, I have a 2.9G dual core, 4G ram, and an Nvidia 6600. What should I focus on to enhance performance?

It would be the video card indeed, if you have nothing better to do with your money, but it won't make Civ4 perform any faster. Civ4 isn't anywhere near graphically-intensive enough to benefit from an upgrade of a 6600 to, say, the 7800. And your CPU & RAM are also way too high.

[Nikolai]

Yup, time to let go of some of that RAM. I can take care of the chips for you, just send the package to the adress<.....>.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Parenthetically, my 200x200 map game crashed due to video limitations (128 MB video).

Setting the graphics options to minimal across the board seems to have solved it.