BTS speed problem?

[Joemurder]

I'm having the same problem. My computer specs are similar, and I also can run all the latest games with everything turned all the way up. It is not a video issue. I have all the latest drivers. It is not a hard drive issue, I have over 150gb of free space. Nor is it a defrag problem, since I defrag every time I install a new game. I have only been playing RtW, but this problem occurs from the START of the game. Anytime I want to go to the Diplo screen or the civics screen or ANY popup screen this happens. Saving and reloading does nothing to help. I have also noticed that after exiting the game a large amount of memory still being utilized
in my task manager, it slowly decreases over the course of 15-20 sec. What's going on?

[snoopy369]

If it's a memory leak, it wouldn't only happen when you play leaderhead animations It would actually have the most effect during the interturn, I think, as a lot of memory is used there.

By video problem I largely mean that either it's not loading the videos properly, if it happens for actual video, or in the case of leaderhead anims it's not loading that properly. Those are pretty heavy duty things so it's not impossible. I don't mean video CARD problem, necessarily (although who knows, video cards have odd incompatibilities).

It's not a general problem though, because as I must continue to repeat, MOST people don't have that issue. I don't (yet ), and thus it's not something that is inherent in the game. This is the unfortunate fact of playing PC games, you very occasionally have incompatibilities due to various different hardware and configurations. My guess is they did something with how the leaderhead animations display (probably trying to speed them up) and ran into something that ATI or nVidia doesn't document ... one of the ten million things that fall in that category

Michlo, are you using steam/direct2drive? I also have persistent Warlords issues (and nbarclay, it really is persistent, as in days later, i'll have 6 or 8 instances of warlords). I presume it is d2d related, as it happens on d2d warlords but not on cd warlords.

[Willem]

Originally posted by Joemurder
It is not a video issue. I have all the latest drivers.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything, the latest drivers can have bugs in them. I once had a problem with a new ATI driver for my X800, which was causing tons of lag at the end game. It was like playing the game on the Radeon 9550 I was using before. When I installed an earlier version the problem went away and I was able to play Huge maps again.

[Michlo]

Originally posted by snoopy369

Michlo, are you using steam/direct2drive? I also have persistent Warlords issues (and nbarclay, it really is persistent, as in days later, i'll have 6 or 8 instances of warlords). I presume it is d2d related, as it happens on d2d warlords but not on cd warlords.

Yes, Direct2Drive unfortunately. The game was on back-order and I was too impatient to wait for it.

[mdrago]

Ok, the answers (sorry for the delay in the answer)
- As Joemuerder say before, saving & reloading dosent help.
- I have al the lastest drivers.
- I have 250GB of free space, so it's not a space issue
- I have 4GB RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTS (It's not a RAM ot video performace issue)
- I have tried with and without a "page file", it;s no use

What looks crazy is that not everyone is having this problem...
Perhaps is something with my installation. I actually have Civ4 CHRONICLES as my main Civ install... the other people with this problem are also using CHRONICLES?

[mdrago]

I forgot to mention, i'm using XP, not Vista.

[anteos]

Originally posted by mdrago
Ok, the answers (sorry for the delay in the answer)
- As Joemuerder say before, saving & reloading dosent help.
- I have al the lastest drivers.
- I have 250GB of free space, so it's not a space issue
- I have 4GB RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTS (It's not a RAM ot video performace issue)
- I have tried with and without a "page file", it;s no use

What looks crazy is that not everyone is having this problem...
Perhaps is something with my installation. I actually have Civ4 CHRONICLES as my main Civ install... the other people with this problem are also using CHRONICLES?

I've had a similar problem. Initially the game worked fine. But the last game I played I noticed that it had really slowed down. Now every game has a performance problem. Its really quite frustrating.

[Standup]

Similar problem here on the leader heads.

Running it on an E6600, 8800GTS, 2GB Ram and Vista and plenty of hard disk space.

Was wondering if it was something related to the 8800 being a DX10 card? The few people who posted specs appear to have 8800s.

[mdrago]

Anyone with this problem is using "chronicles" version?

[mdrago]

Standup, that an interesting view!!!

Please, anyone who is going to post please state a) Video Card and b) Civ version (cronicles or original)

[Shrapnel12]

Well last night I was playing RtW and it finally lagged so much, I gave up on the game. I have had the problem with leaderheads though it was so minor and rare that I didn't bother mentioning it before. I have always had a problem with games that have large maps and many civs and this seems to be what RtW is, but it was fast enough to not bother me, but now every action I take, caused a 30 second or more lag. I really hope somebody can come up with a solution as it is common enough. Did Firaxis downplay the system requirements too much?

[mdrago]

Shrapnel12, what video card you have?

[Stormbringer99]

I've noticed this 'lag' on the leader/trade screen as well.

In the last game I played, Catherine (Russia) was my chief rival for the continent we were both situated on. She would frequently send me messages to ask for help, demand techs, or simply tell me to stop trading with certain civs. After a while, it almost turned into a kind of drinking game for me, because she would contact me so much.

Somewhere around the 1800's, though, the leader/trade screen started 'freezing'. At first, I didn't know if it was a performance issue or not. When Catherine contacts you, her leader animation begins with her back facing toward you; she does this little 'spin around' thing before she looks at you squarely. When the game freezes on this screen, she just keeps her back to you while the trade screen loads up. The first time it happened, I thought, "Wow, she must really hate me! She's not even looking at me now!"

My computer is a piece o' junk, so I usually only play with a handful of civs (7-9) on a medium/large map. First time I've ever noticed this behavior with Civ IV, though. I can't imagine a game with 18+ civs ... I think my computer would explode or something if I tried playing with that many.

Civ IV standard + BtS (no warlords)
1.6 ghz processor
1G RAM
Radeon 9600

[mdrago]

Well, looks like it's not a "chronicles" version problem or a DirectX10 problem...

Perhaps "everyone" is having the problem, it's just they dont know because they don't play large maps...

There is a way to contact someone on Firaxis about this?

[anteos]

Hi

Geforce 6800 ultra
bts v 3.0.2.94
direct x 9.0c
windows xp

I've played on a standard map, but all of a sudden the scrolling and animation became really slow. Previously I'd had an entire map revealed, but suffered no loss in performance. I was able to scroll quickly.

Now it is very jerky and unit animations are very slow.

I'm going to uninstall and then reinstall and see if the problem continues. I also updated my nvidia drivers today, but that didn't make a difference.