Slowdown on 966Mhz PIII on Huge Maps

[Akaoz]

Slowdown on 966Mhz PIII on Huge Maps

I run a 966Mhz PIII, GeForce2 (64Mb), 256Mb RAM, WinMX machine. When I play the game on huge maps (255x255) w/ 16 civs, it slows down to a crawl between turns.

It goes from no delay to a 1-minute delay in the middle ages. Then it gets worse. I'm currently in 1920 and I have to wait 15-16 minutes for the game to complete the AI moves.

The game is not slow at all on my moves, except when I raze or conquer a city. Then I get a 2-minute delay while the map updates. I have no problems with scrolling or anything like that though.

BTW the save file is up to about 9Mb!

Does anyone know if this is a bug or a feature? And if it's a bug will it be fixed?

-Alech

[Rosacrux]

I am afraid this is not a bug. It just takes ages to calculate the AI turns (moving all those houndreds of units... takes too much time).

I am only so far as 15th century and I barely can stand the 3+ minutes delay in every turn (on a huge map - 16 civs).

I surely do hope they are going to adress this one way or another, or "huge" will be pretty much unplayable - right now I am doing things at home (even cooking - my wive likes this game ) between turns. If - as you say - it goes up to 15-20 minutes turns... well, I guess I'll have the time to take a nap

Firaxians, please find a way to reduce the waiting time, it's a killer! It doesn't allow huge maps!

[John-SJ]

I have read on this site (and tried it myself) that if you hold down the Shift key the AI turn goes faster. I was hoping it would be a lot faster, but it's not. If you're lucky it may cut the wait time in half, so instead of a 15 minute AI turn where you can get up and do something you'll be stuck with an 8 minute AI turn where you have to remain glued to your computer. Some solution, huh?

To me, this is no solution at all. Neither is buying a faster computer, which was also suggested here. Even if I wanted to spend $2000 for a top of the line rig and even if it reduced wait times by 75% IMO a 5 minute wait time near the end of the game is totally UNACCEPTABLE!

This is one thing that Firaxis has got to fix, or they should just withdraw the game from the market now and reintroduce it when the first 20Ghz P8 is is on the market.

John-SJ

[Johnny_Was]

The game is pretty much unplayable for me on anything larger than Standard. So I don't play it.

I'm running a P4 1.8ghz, 512 MB RDRAM, GeForce 3 and once the game hits the 14th century it slows to a crawl - not just that AI turns but everything - opening menus, my units moving across the map - it's interminable.

Forget scrolling, I can't scroll properly from the first turn - scrolling does not exist for me.

This is unacceptable and there is no excuse for it - this is not a graphically intensive game; it's just an un-optimised one.

And it's going back on the shelf until Firaxis puts out a patch that addresses these issue. If they ever care to...

'Sid Meier's What-Can-I-Do-They-Drove-A-Dump-Truck-Full-Of-Money-Up-To-My-House III'

[solo]

Turning off all the animation options helps a bit, but no one wants to spend minutes watching AI naval units execute their senseless patrols. In the chat with Soren Johnson, he said that this issue will be addressed in the first patch, so we can wait and hope the situation improves. In the meantime, tiny map games are the way to go.

[Venger]

Civ 3 - Where You Are the Betatester...

Completely unacceptable. You don't think they actually gameplay tested this thing do you?

Venger

[Eli]

When people asked more than 8 civs they knew what they need to expect to.

Simply play with less Civs, imagine that only 8 are available in the game.

[John-SJ]

Eli,


That doesn't work. On a huge map I played a game with only 8 civs total and by the late middle ages the entire map was filled with cities. I think the # of cities is more important than the # of civs, at least I can tell you, the slowdown with 8 civs on a huge map is severe! I can't prove that it's as bad as 16 because I refuse to deal with the slowdown again, but at least I know that it's bad enough to be unplayable.

John-SJ

[John-SJ]

Originally posted by Eli
When people asked more than 8 civs they knew what they need to expect to.

This game (according to Firaxis) only requires a P2 300Mhz with 32 Mb ram. Using this as a guide one might reasonably expect that a P3 running at ANY speed should be able to handle the most demanding game configurations (say, huge map, 16 civs, full audio, full animations, etc.) with ease.

The only problem with that expectation is that Firaxis seems to have neglected to inform its customers that with a P2 300Mhz you can only reasonably play the game with 4 civs on a tiny map.

Nothing like truth in advertising, eh?

John-SJ

[RedWhiteArcher]

I play 16 civs on standart only. Its quite fast that way. In advanced stages I get 10-15 secs between turns. Much like in Civ II I think.
The problem is moving all the AI units. Did you see that he moves them all the time, all the time ALL THE TIME just for patrooling the are with one def and one attacking unit, and ofcourse all these workers.

[Akaoz]

I think the problem is either cities or map size, not the number of civs...

-Alech

[John-SJ]

I just did an experiment. In the game I am playing now with all animations enabled it is taking 92 seconds for the AI turn to complete. I then timed the AI turn while holding the Shift key - 71 seconds, and when I turned off ALL animations and held the Shift key it took 72 seconds.

In other words, holding the shift key gave less than a 25% improvement in AI turn time, and turning off animations made no difference whatsoever.

John-SJ

[star mouse]

I have played 1 game so far, 10 civs, large map, and I found few speed issues with 10-15 secs between AI turns. (I finished the game in about 1880 with a diplomatic victory on chieftain level.) I have a mid-range AMD K6 with 256 Mb of memory, running Windoze 98.

What I have noticed is some problems with CIV3 taking a large amount of virtual memory, and this could be related to the slow AI turns. I have a dedicated virtual-memory partition with nothing but the swap file on a 520-Mb partition. On a few occasions, such as when I load CIV3 or quit, Windoze reports that there's no more space on the swap partition. I usualy quit CIV3 at this point and reboot, and it's fine after that. It only happens when I've reloaded CIV3 after playing it before.

I think the game would probably speed up if CIV3 and/or Windows managed its memory usage better. People with slow CIV3 and small amounts of memory should also consider taking advantage of the current cheap memory prices to add another 128 Mb or 256 Mb of memory to their PCs. This might improve things.

[star mouse]

One thing I have noticed is quite slow is the "Go-to tile" command. When you have a unit selected, press G and move the cursor to another location, perhaps 10 tiles away across terrain that varies and has a partial road network. It can take the computer 2 or 3 seconds to come up with a path.

Now imagine the AI doing this 100 or 200 times. I expect the same "go to" algorithm being used extensively by the AI for its unit orders. If this is the case, it comes as no surprise that the AI turns are so slow.

[Simpleton]

Originally posted by Rosacrux

I surely do hope they are going to adress this one way or another, or "huge" will be pretty much unplayable -

I doubt they will address it because Firaxis is only supporting the game to be played for upto 8 civs. If your playing with 16 civs and having trouble you might be on your own.
I can't blame them because pretty much all gaming companies don't offer their help if you've hacked the program code or changed the game rules.