PBEM game 'the european edition'

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by alva
to DeepO.....

ot: Does anyone else notice a big slowdown in their mail program after closing PTW??? Each time I want to send the save, it takes ages to start up (no DeepO, I'm not using outlook, not even express )

What are your system specs? Also, do you get all the way out of PtW, or just back to the opening screen? Right now, with Civ 3 sitting in the opening screen waiting for me to open a game, it's chewing up half the processing power of my dual-CPU system (in other worrds, an entire CPU) and close to 180 megs of RAM. (In a single-CPU system, Civ 3 uses every CPU cycle the OS is willing to give it, but the OS by default favors foreground tasks so the foreground task can get more than half the CPU power if it needs it.)

Nathan

[alva]

nope, completely closed, it feels lik it tries to purges it memory, is that possible? Maybe PTW doesn't 'clean' up after itself
I have actually less problems when I send the mail, when using the windows key in PTW, I think
I'll check the next turn

AMD 2000+
768 DDR
Aopen MOBO AK77-8x max
HD 80G & HD 40G
geforce
WIN XP (on a special partition on the C-drive (6gig) )
I did trim down my virtual mem to 150 MB,

open (background)programs :

norton (virus)
mail
winamp

[nbarclay]

Sounds like you should have more than enough memory. One thing I've noticed is that Civ 3 tends to take a while to close; is it possible that you're trying to open the email program before PtW is finished shutting down? (If that's the case, with as much memory and CPU power as you have, you might actually be better off leaving PtW in its start-up screen instead of exiting. For simple stuff like e-mail and web browsing, I could task-switch on my old Athlon 900 pretty smoothly once I upgraded my memory to 768MB.)

Nathan

[DeepO]

my specs are a lot below that (850 PIII on 256 or 512 (can't remember, it's been ages since I looked inside my box), but I have similar problems. Civ3's memory management is not exactly superb, and yes it takes a while to close, after you see the screen disappearing.

If I want to save the save from e-mail, and keep Netscape mail open during playing my turn, I have to close and reopen Netscape mail before I can send it to alexman. Well, at least, there doesn't seem enough space left for my address book... I thought it was kind of a bug with Netscape 7... At least it works when you know how

I hope I'll be able to play my turn fast, however I'm not back to home yet, and won't be for quite a while.

DeepO

[alva]

no problem with civ.
But when closing ptw, task manager stays at 100% for quite awhile.
Loading other programs seems to be ok, no noticable slowdown and it slowly releases CPU resources.
If I load my mail program(before that), it kind of stays there forever
I guess they don't go along well with each other for some reason
Ah well, not important

[alva]

Is this important enough to let Firaxis know?? I guess they probably do so allready

[DeepO]

I rather think it is a clever trick more programmers use: the difference between real speed, and subjective speed. The program seemed to have closed, while in reality it is still busy, but doesn't show to the user because the previous desktop is already restored.

I used it once in an opening screen, where the program was already loading while the user still had to make an initial choice, and was still loading when the first screen was already shown. So, any normal user thought the program loaded quick, while in reality it took over double the time the user thought it did. Neat trick, that one

BTW, I have to take dancing lessons on dancing from alexman... so turn to him

DeepO

[alexman]

Just practicing. Gypsies (you know, those wandering people without cities, as I am about to become), are good at dancing.

Turn Nathan.

[DeepO]

Originally posted by alexman
(you know, those wandering people without cities, as I am about to become

Sure... just for the record (and for Nathan and Alva): I'm the one who is getting afraid of being rushed... in certain places I'm outnumbered 3 to 1

Hear this Kalif alexman: we DeepO, enlighted despot of the people of China, are refusing to let us be overrun! Like we say in Belgium: "with all the chinamen, but not with us!"

DeepO

[nbarclay]

Interesting the posturing that can go on in a PBEM game. Makes it hard to know what's going on, especially when I haven't even found where you guys live yet.

Turn to Alva.

[alva]

To china....

[nbarclay]

Originally posted by DeepO

Sure... just for the record (and for Nathan and Alva): I'm the one who is getting afraid of being rushed... in certain places I'm outnumbered 3 to 1

Would "certain places" refer to the size of your capitals now that you've built a settler, by any chance? And have nothing at all to do with any kind of local military superiority?

Nathan

[DeepO]

Nope... I'm feeling the power of an expansionist tribe. Good thing I was able to seduce that first settler into suicide, bexause if Alex had had 2 cities up and running, I would have been toast already. But that expansionist trait has to become useless pretty soon now

2750 BC sent.

DeepO

[alexman]

Expansionist is still helping for now. It's the non-industrious that's killing me (hence the name of my town).

[After taking advantage of that 3-1 ratio, Kalif braces himself for the wrath of GoW ]

To Nathan

[DeepO]

Yeah, I have to agree that in an all human PBEM, expansionist is more useful than I'd expected. I haven't seen one hut yet, and don't expect to see one either. The whole problem is that there are no AIs to help you, so everything you get for free is double effective.

But really, that first near-clash between us was very needed, I see now... it may have turned our relation sour, but for me it was the only possible way to keep you from becoming too powerful, I simply had to do it. I needed time to have my industriousness bloom, and it is getting there

DeepO