Slow, slow, slow turns....

[wisecat]

There is nothing new in this, I believe majority of the people in this forum have complained about slow turns in Civ3. So maybe it is time for all us to try to convince Infogrames to address this issue in some patch?

[copcartman]

I agree. I don't mind waiting a minute, it even makes me think more about my own moves, but 5-6 minutes is over the top. Makes you think: "Hmm, it will take me about two hours to move that unit from A to B...so why bother..."

I find it very unlikely that the code is optimized, given these problems, at least not for a huge map with 16 civs. A patch that helped with the message pop-ups that halts the AI or made it possible to do something (manage cities, browse the civ-pedia) while it thinks would be a great improvement also.

[Travathian]

Now running these huge maps with 16 civs you have a dual Athlon 1800+ MP running Win2K with 1GB of ram right?

If you meet the system requirements, you can play the game, it doesn't say its lightning fast when pushed to the limits.

I have a 1.4GHz and 512mb and late games with huge pangea or continents with 8+ civs do take 5+ minutes a turn sometimes. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Ever play a real computer chess game on the hardest setting? Turns take a long time because its plotting every possible move for many turns ahead. Civ3 is the same way, except instead of 64 spaces and 32 pieces to deal with, towards the end of the games it may be well over a thousand pieces with how many squares on a huge map? Plus the rules of chess pale compared to those in Civ3.

If anything, that time spent waiting would probably best be used to go to the bathroom and actually eat and drink something, stretch, go get some fresh air, etc since I know I don't get any of those things during the half and hour it takes me to complete my turns sometimes.

[copcartman]

Now running these huge maps with 16 civs you have a dual Athlon 1800+ MP running Win2K with 1GB of ram right?

If you meet the system requirements, you can play the game, it doesn't say its lightning fast when pushed to the limits.

I don't blame myself for assuming that having a system not far beyond the sys. req. I shouldn't be kept waiting for 5-6 minutes between turns, not even a minute. Do you?

I have a 1.4GHz and 512mb and late games with huge pangea or continents with 8+ civs do take 5+ minutes a turn sometimes. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Ever play a real computer chess game on the hardest setting? Turns take a long time because its plotting every possible move for many turns ahead. Civ3 is the same way, except instead of 64 spaces and 32 pieces to deal with, towards the end of the games it may be well over a thousand pieces with how many squares on a huge map? Plus the rules of chess pale compared to those in Civ3.

Yes, I do play chess sometimes, and I can safely say that I will never beat Chessmaster set to do its best for only 3-4 secs. But that's beside the point. You shouldn't assume that a civ-game AI must use a chess-like algorithm (traversing the tree of every possible moves), but I get your point. Nevertheless it would probably be more valid to compare it with another civ-game-AI, like CTP, where these delays do not occur to my knowledge.

All I said was that I doubt that the AI is fully optimized for speed. If that happens to be the case then at least I should be able to do what you were suggesting (take a shower...etc) but usually when I do that I find that a message has popped up after 25% of the AI moves and that I still has to wait several minutes. I haven't found a setting to alter this behaviour; note that I do want to recieve these messages.

To sum it up: I do not want to sacrifice for AI skill for speed, but there is still certainly much room for improvements.

[Willem]

Originally posted by copcartman
I agree. I don't mind waiting a minute, it even makes me think more about my own moves, but 5-6 minutes is over the top. Makes you think: "Hmm, it will take me about two hours to move that unit from A to B...so why bother..."

I find it very unlikely that the code is optimized, given these problems, at least not for a huge map with 16 civs. A patch that helped with the message pop-ups that halts the AI or made it possible to do something (manage cities, browse the civ-pedia) while it thinks would be a great improvement also.

It's not really practical to play 16 civs on a huge map. If you lower that to 8, the turns will take a lot less time. The game has to go through all the AI moves in the game as well as your own, and with a huge map, there's going to be a lot more cities/units.

[copcartman]

No matter how many civs there are there will still be about the same number of cities and units after a certain time, am I right? So I don't see why that would improve things by much.

Another strange thing that I forgot to mention before. When I conquer a city in the middle/late game and choose to raze it, it takes about 2+ minutes before the message dialog disappears and I can continue my turn. Clearly there must be something wrong in the code; the AI has no real option there so why should it take more than a fraction of a second to check effects on trade routes and dimplomacy (for instance)?

[Willem]

Originally posted by copcartman
No matter how many civs there are there will still be about the same number of cities and units after a certain time, am I right? So I don't see why that would improve things by much.

Another strange thing that I forgot to mention before. When I conquer a city in the middle/late game and choose to raze it, it takes about 2+ minutes before the message dialog disappears and I can continue my turn. Clearly there must be something wrong in the code; the AI has no real option there so why should it take more than a fraction of a second to check effects on trade routes and dimplomacy (for instance)?

Not necessarily. With the corruption level as it is, it gets harder and harder to create new cities and units as the empires grow. And there's other calculations it has to do as well, though I can't think of what specifically. I do know that if you want to play on a huge map, 16 Civs is not practical unless maybe you have a really fast machine. I play on maps that are 256 x 256, and I quickly gave up on the idea of 16 civs and went back to 8. My turns still take awhile, but it's nothing compared to what it was before.

[pauli]

from what i've seen, a large portion of the issue is the border calculation algorithm. it be slow.

[The Eliminator]

Agreed. This is precisely the reason why I have not played a game past 1600. Are you telling me that the braintrust at Firaxis sat through 10 minute turns while "playtesting" and then still *excitedly* put it out?

If everyone wants to complain, start sending emails to Infogrames instead of Firaxis; thats what I've done. If you have lousy service at a restaurant, you tell the manager, not the waiter.

[Willem]

Originally posted by The Eliminator
Agreed. This is precisely the reason why I have not played a game past 1600. Are you telling me that the braintrust at Firaxis sat through 10 minute turns while "playtesting" and then still *excitedly* put it out?

If everyone wants to complain, start sending emails to Infogrames instead of Firaxis; thats what I've done. If you have lousy service at a restaurant, you tell the manager, not the waiter.

Well chances are they have the latest gear running at 1+ gigahertz. So it's not inconcievable that they didn't realize that us common folk with slower machines might have to wait much longer. I understand that with a top of the line processor, the wait time isn't all that bad.

[The Eliminator]

I dunno, I'm running a 900mhz with all of the goodies, and I still have a fair wait time between turns.

I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that angers me the most is when you build a city and nothing happens for like 15 seconds. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGG

I didn't pay $70 for a brand new game to run like crap on my new computer.

[Willem]

Originally posted by The Eliminator
I dunno, I'm running a 900mhz with all of the goodies, and I still have a fair wait time between turns.

I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that angers me the most is when you build a city and nothing happens for like 15 seconds. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGG

I didn't pay $70 for a brand new game to run like crap on my new computer.

15 seconds!!! Man, are you impatient! That's squat, it wouldn't bother me if it a were a minute or two, I'm not going anywhere. Maybe you'd be better off playing a shoot-em-up.

[pauli]

i think i'm going to have to start timing how long my turns take and how long building/deconstructing cities takes... several hundred cities on a 256x256 map makes things slow

i guess i need more than my old dual 840's now. ::sigh::

[The Eliminator]

hahahahahah shoot em ups!

I know I'm impatient, but I believe that it really takes away from the game. Remember in Civ2, it was pretty much instantaneous.

[Willem]

Originally posted by The Eliminator
hahahahahah shoot em ups!

I know I'm impatient, but I believe that it really takes away from the game. Remember in Civ2, it was pretty much instantaneous.

Well I guess we were playing different versions then, since I distinctly recall spending time waiting for the computer to do it's thing. Instantaneous it was not. Faster maybe, but then Civ III is a more complicated game so it's bound to take longer.