BTS speed problem?

[mdrago]

Hi there.
I just wondering if anyone is having this issue with the speed of the popup's.
I'm playing in Randon_Continents, Huge map, 18 civs and the game runs very fine, but when i try to use the civilopedia it take's almost 15 seconds to appear!
Also the leaders screen also take 15 second... in short, any screen popus takes a lot of time to show.
The ingame runs very fine, the problem is only with the popups, which seems estrange.
My hardare is: Q6600, 4x73GB Raptor RAID 0, 4GB RAM, 8800 GTS so i dont think is a hardware problem.
In warlords this didnt happen.

Anyone with the same issue?
Thanks in advance.-

[mdrago]

I also forgot to mention that the leaders "music" appears instantly, it's the popup itself what causing the delay.
For example, I heard a leader music, the screen & mouse frezees and 15 seconds larter y see Charlemange face.

[Michlo]

Yes, I too have had this problem, especially after the game has been playing for a while.

I have turned off movies and that seems to have helped a bit.

Also, when I've quit the game I've looked at my task manager since the music seems to take a while to shut off and I've seen 500mb STILL being used by the game and it just stays there going up and down slightly so that I have to end task.

Memory leak?

[nbarclay]

Civ 4 has always had serious performance problems in the late game on big 18-civ maps. Something about the data structures has memory leaks, structures that get a lot less efficient over time, or both. That is obvious from the way the game slows down the longer I play at a time, and then the problems go away for a while if I save the game and reload. I'm also sure memory plays a role because upgrading from 1.25 gigs to 2 let me play a lot longer before performance becomes a serious problem.

I hope the situation isn't too much worse with BtS because my computer is already at the limit of how much memory it was designed to support and I can't afford a new one just to play a game. But if mdrago is having trouble with four gigs of memory, the situation doesn't sound good.

[Michlo]

*sigh*

This is very disappointing.

These games can and will go on for hours as we all know.

One would think Firaxis would have avoided this problem this time around. Apparently they fixed it finally for the vanilla Civ IV.

Any word from Firaxis?

[mdrago]

It's really becoming unplayable!!!
I'm in 1978 and after each turn 1, 2 or 3 other civs leaders appear with annoying messages (mostly "cancel deals" request stuff) but it takes 15, 30 or 45 seconds tto get rid of the screen before I can actually play my turn... very frustating!

[Wiglaf]

Very weird problem. I actually noticed increased performance in BTS. Maybe get new drivers, or roll back the ones you have if possible. I have no idea what I'm talking about but that sounds like a plausible thing to do.

[mdrago]

believe me, it's not a driver thing... and it's not a hardware thing neither... it's a software problem, and I can tell you that because:
1) The game performs blazing fast during my turn and in the end of turn (i mean, when the CPU is calculating the other civs movements)
2) The popup "apperance" time increases "over time"...
3) The key factor here is that the "leader music" INSTANTLY appear, but no the leaders screen itself. So, the source code, I supouse, would be something like:

void ShowLeaderPopup()
{
PlayMusic() // No delay here
CalculateSomething() // HERE IS THE PROBLEM
ShowScreenWithTheCalculatedData()
}

They are doing something like checking active deals, terrain, units, i dont know "what" the are doing... but they are cheking something so the leader have actually something to say... but for the sake of argument let's supouse the check your military strength... in 3000 BC there isnt much to do, so it goes fast, but in 1978... do the math.

I dont know, but it's not a hardware / driver problem.

[snoopy369]

There's not much calculation wise that will take 15 seconds It's presumably a video issue.

Vista or XP? If you're in Vista you might want to tell your computer to access >3GB RAM... on a huge, 18 civ map, you could probably use it

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by snoopy369
There's not much calculation wise that will take 15 seconds It's presumably a video issue.

What kind of video issue could cause that kind of delay?

[Michlo]

It isn't a video issue. That is a load of crap.

It is yet again a memory leak issue.

[meriadoc]

Originally posted by nbarclay


What kind of video issue could cause that kind of delay?

Here's one hypothetical scenario that could cause this kind of a delay - a delay that keeps getting worse as the game goes on.

As we all know, the game consumes more and more memory as the game progresses and the Civs get larger and larger.

Let us say that at the beginning of the game, when the game itself isn't taking much memory, the game stores almost all of its useful information in memory, including the information needed to display the "leader" screen. At this point, since all of the information is in memory, it can be transferred to the CPU and the graphics card quite quickly, thus preventing us from noticing a delay.

Now, let us assume that the game was programmed in such a way that it tries to limit how much memory it is using - perhaps in response to user complaints when vanilla Civ IV came out.

As a result of this programming, as the game progresses, and the Civs take more memory for all of their information, the game starts having to unload less useful stuff from memory. Eventually, things like the leader screens are unloaded as well. From this point on, every time that a leader screen is displayed, it must be reloaded from the hard drive.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the case. But it is a possible explanation. If my very limited experiments with computer programming have taught me anything, it's that often the simplest thing can break a program, and the changes that are well-intentioned can do more harm than good.

[Michlo]

Suffice to say it is something that Firaxis should have been able to avoid by now.

Sheesh, my computer can handle Oblivion just fine with all of the settings on high and it doesn't bog down. :P

But then, I suppose as long as we keep buying the series.....

[nbarclay]

mdrago, does your performance get noticeably better if you save the game, exit, restart the program (after waiting for the memory it was using to be cleaned up), and then reload the game? I've always had it improve dramatically after doing so on my 18-civ huge-map games. I can also get a big improvement just saving the game and then reloading without exiting the game, but I don't know for sure whether the clean-up is as thorough that way.

By the way, in regard to something Michlo wrote, it can take Civ IV a relatively long time to finish shutting down completely, but it will do so eventually.

[Shrapnel12]

For those having a problem, how much space do you have on your hard drive? Perhaps virtual memory is a problem. Try deleting some stuff you don't use and defrag your hard drive. It's at least worth a try.