Slowdown on 966Mhz PIII on Huge Maps

[Akaoz]

Glad we could help...

-Alech

[CAB]

I'm currently using an AMD 1400MHz with 266MHz FSB and 512MB 266MHz RDram.

The game flows great and I play on a large huge map with 12 civs. I have almost no delay at all, perhaps a ten seconds or so and I am in late industrual age now.

Though enemy moves are a pain in the "bottom".

[TheDarkside]

I'm telling you, Firaxis is using us to solve the ancient Towers of Hanoi problem during the time you think the AI is doing it's turn... or maybe they were funded by SETI to gradually allocate resources on our machines as the game progresses towards processing their raw satellite data. I shall release a report entitled "Covert Distributed Computing".

No really, it's silly how long it takes for the AI to take it's turn! My system is not the fastest, but my turn actions are responsive and quick. I run a database off my sytem with almost 1,000 tables and tens of thousands of records that never has delays as long as this, even if I process entire tables using inefficent techniques like brute force search.

[Akaoz]

Is there any chance they can fix this? It is really putting me off playing...

-Alech

[Bakunine]

Originally posted by Akaoz
Is there any chance they can fix this?
-Alech

Must be or otherwise their ...

[nickersonm]

I'm pretty sure that memory is the major factor here. I am playing a game on a 256x256 map w/ 12 or so civs, and there are 2-5 minute waits in the aincient ages. However, I only have a Athlon 650MHZ with 128MB of PC133 RAM. My friend with a P41.4GHz and 512MB RDRAM800 experiences only 20 second delays at the releatively same time period, but with more units+cities.

I also found that the number of civs really affects the delay. 16 is unmanagable on my computer, on almost any sized map, but reduce it to 12, and it is loads faster. Reduce it one more, and it's very managable (for a little bit, at least) on 256x256.

- nickersonm

[jonasf]

I run an Athlon XP1600 with 1Gb RAM

My machine is an Athlon 1600 with 1Gb RAM and a GeForce 3 TI graphics card and windows 2000.

i can tell you that the game is so slow it is not even possible to play it on this machine... And it supposed to be a really fast machine in todays market(it does give me over 100fps in other games...).

The only people I've heard that get good performance is people that use a system based on the windows95 core, like windows98 or ME. People using the 2000 core, XP for example get HORRIBLE performance!!!

For some reason this fast machine of mine runs the game much SLOWER than my old pentium II 300MHz laptop, so I use the laptop to play the game.... Doesn't make much sense does it???

This game is buggy as hell and I wonder if they actually ever played it themselves... if they did they must have seen that things were not working..... It just isn't playable on anything but tiny maps...

[star mouse]

I wonder if what we're seeing here is an example of the computation problems associated with NP-completeness. An NP problem is something where computation of a dataset of size "n" can only be computed in a time that is proportional to n! (n factorial). Such problems become impossible to compute even for small values of 'n' (less than 100).

Testing the connectivity of the trade network may be an example of this. During a turn, every player must test the connectivity of its trade network with every other player. This could be why people playing with a lot of civs in particular are noticing slow turns.

[John-SJ]

Mouse,

You might be right, especially if the algorithm used is based on the unit pathing algorithm which is horrifically SLOW!

John-SJ

[Kaesar]

The time problem people are experiencing on huge maps occured even back in civ2, it's not a bug, it's just the sheer number of units that are created when you have a huge map. I'm playing a civ3 game continental huge map myself and it does take a lot of time between turns. I control probably 20% of the map with about 50 cities. There's probably close to 300 cities on the map and a quick estimate will probably tell you there are probably 2000 units in the game. Ever tried to play a RTS game with 2000 independent units? Doesn't exist. It's not the cpu. It's not the graphics card(although you should turn off animation. It's not that it is gpu intensive, it's just that it takes time to show the animation) CPU speed doesn't really help because it's not complex calculations. A little basic CPU architecture knowledge will tell you that a P4 2G will make little difference for this game than a P3 500. The calculations required to make the moves is similar to what's needed to run a spread sheet with a thousand functions. So I really don't see anyway Firaxis can fix this.

[dexter4dxm]

Originally posted by ElitePersian
Well, i bet Firaxis is already paying the price for this, i'll bet a lotta ppl arent playing the game anymore cause of the slow turns - that shows really how long some ppl have to wait in between turns.

how does that make them pay the price? they have our money, and they aren't giving it back. if you mean they are paying the price already because legions of loyal fans are now cursing their name, then okay i agree with you (although i doubt they even care. i guess we'll see when the patch comes out.)

[ElitePersian]

Originally posted by dexter4dxm


how does that make them pay the price? they have our money, and they aren't giving it back. if you mean they are paying the price already because legions of loyal fans are now cursing their name, then okay i agree with you (although i doubt they even care. i guess we'll see when the patch comes out.)

thats exactly what i mean - word gets outs, ppl dont buy game.

[tmarcl]

Oddly enough, I'm not having too many problems. I'm playing on a large map with 9 civs, and the wait is only a few seconds between turns-even in the Modern Era. I did have problems with 16 civs though-half an hour wait between turns.

One thing that's helped, as someone else has mentioned-shut down all your background programs so that only Explorer and Systray are running. Granted, that doesn't do much for the 16 civ games, but it helps on the lesser amounts. For the record, I have a 333mhz processor-just above minimum requirements.

Marc

[SirSebastian]

hmm....



Well... I happen to be running on a PII- 300mhz with 128 megs of RAM. Standard map, 8 civs... sure... later on it can take 2 minutes for the AI's turn... but... it never seemed unbearable. I have no innate desire to play on a Huge map like the rest of you though.. it seems... pointless and silly.

[Akaoz]

*bump*

This question comes up a lot...

-Alech