Computing power and Civ III

[adaMada]

P3 1GHz, haven't played lots (also, only really played enough 8 civs large maps to comment), but it's almost speed problem-less -- a varying delay while the AI moves (a problem everyone is having), and a two second or so delay when loading the advisor screen is my only complaint. I've got a nice graphics card (32 MB).

-- adaMada

EDIT: Added graphics card info.

[Magician]

Mine is:

P2 300
384MB ram
Voodoo 3 2000

Playable in the first two era but in modern era the game slow down to hell..

Anyway, as a sidenote, upgrading your computer with faster CPU and more RAM do not make the game perform as fast as you expect it to be. Huge map with 16 civs is still not playable without a patch. (I have tested with a Athlon 1400)

[Venger]

I'm running a dual P3-850 (soon to be a dual Athlon 1.7Ghz each, come ON EPOX AND RELEASE THE DAMN BOARD ALREADY!!!) with 512MB and a GF2/64MB. The game performs okay, although I think scrolling is screwed up.

I also have probably the overall best HD made on the IDE side, a Quantum LM Fireball - based on the SCSI platter and head chassis of the Atlas drives. Astonishing seek and transfer times, considering it's only 30GB. Does Civ access the drive alot? If so, this may be why some people are seeing some real crappy load times. HD performance is often overlooked - you can put a fast HD on an old slow system and see a quantum (he he) improvement in performance...

Venger

[jadlakha]

Atholon 900
768mb ram
32mb geforce 2 mx
WinME
40gig 7200rpm hard drive

Game runs horrible on huge map with 16 civs, turns take 2-3 minutes after industrial age. However on standard map with 8 civs the game runs perfectly.

[Bereta_Eder]

thanks for the replies guys.

for those that have system specs. similar to mine, don't the advisor screens take TOO long to load?

Is it because of the advisors?

Is there a way to turn off the animated advisors then?

There are cheap ninja - superPCs on the market but I wouldn't want to get a new PC now since I can do all of my work perfectly on the one I already got.

except for Civ... and civ is important...

[J10]

I don't think civ3 access the hd often at all... In fact it almost never does on my PC besides starting up and loading a save game (duh). If it does on your PC during gameplay, then you're lacking RAM I would think (swapping). RAMs are dirt cheap these days anyway.

My piss poor Spec:
Athlon 500
320 MB RAM (128+128+64, weird I know)
V5 5500 (64 MB which translate in ~40 MB because of the architecture in case you did't know)

Large map eight civs. No wait at all in Ancient; 5 seconds max in Middle Age per turn, bout 4-5 seconds wait time on each civ (without crazy units moving that is) in industrial. I have 25 cities myself then... Stopped playing for a few days, going into Modern now.

No animation/moving problems etc. Advisor screen pop up almost immediately (no changes between ages anyway). It does take ~2 seconds to update when I conquer a city though.

Overall I don't consider myself having performance problems at all, I hope the upcoming patch could solve some of your performance problems and best if it could improve mine a lil too

EDIT: Btw, I can run the turns in background, read a paragraph of news or two to three posts on this forum, then switch back to my game again with my advisor waiting for me to determine what to build next

[Alex]

for those that have system specs. similar to mine, don't the advisor screens take TOO long to load?

My system (don't laugh, please ):

K6-2 500 MHz
64 MB RAM
10 GB hard drive
Viper v770 32 MB video card
WinME

I should expect the game to run slowly on my system, given my poor specs. And the advisor screens take near 3 full years to load

Anyway, I did some experiments with videocard drivers... Detonator XP 21.83 is not an option to me, given my outdated video card... So I installed Det 12.41 and things have improved a little bit (considering that I was running old 3.68 drivers )

Next month I'll get more RAM, so I expect things to become a little better (and I hope the advisor screens could load up a little faster -- now it's between 10-15 secs. Sometimes it loads up faster, but not much -- 5 secs.)

But the patch MUST address this issue, I hope...

[DarkForce]

my specs

athlon 1333(266)
512mb ram
geforce2 64mb
ibm 20gb ata100


the game runs ok.with 12 civs and huge map a turn never takes more than 20 secs.

[adaMada]

About accessing the hard drive: The game autosaves every turn, so it should be accessing the hard drive a lot. On my computer, there's no dely for even saving the game (ultra ultra fast), so I don't notice it saving every turn, but logic suggests that it saves at the start of every turn, plus whenever you tell it to save...

-- adaMada

[dexter4dxm]

okay, other than the auto-save, which only happens for a couple seconds each turn, there is not much hard drive usage, and there shouldn't be. not a whole lot of art to load, and it never needs to load new art for new levels either. the time when you see the most hard drive usage is when the game is loading. having a faster hard drive interface can help this time a lot.

[FrostyBoy]

Well, look, I have a 450, 128ram, geforce2 - 64ram; and I have no problems, leaders take about 1-2 seconds to load, advisor screens the same, turns are the same, yes it does start to lag in modern era, when there are lots of cities, units, etc, but still very playable, I might have to wait about 4-5 seconds each turn at that stage.


The funny thing is that I only got good performance, when I decided to reinstall Civ3. The first time I installed it, I got all sorts of problems, advisor screen took about 5 seconds to load, etc.

A reinstall just fixed everything for me.

[sgrig]

I have Celeron 650 Mhz, 128MB RAM, 16MB graphics.

I am playing a 16-civ game on a huge map - it was alright until late middle ages, but now in late industrial age with the map full of cities and units (although now it's only 12 civs left) it is very slow - turns take a few minutes each, and what it is especially annoying loading a game takes absolutely ages. While I am waiting for a game to load or for computer players to move I go to get a cup of tea! Now I can rarely get through more than 10 turns in one hour - which is comparable to a big WW2 scenario in Civ2.

Advisors and negotiations take a few seconds to load.

[GMguy16]

I have a AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz @ 1.5GHz with 256 Megs 2100 DDR and a Geforce2 Pro. The game runs great with about 15-20 seconds in between turns in the modern age, with a huge map, and 15 Civs. There is about a 1-2 second delay when capturing a city. With the amount of civs, units, AI strategy, and cities its processing, I can understand some peoples problems. I dont think it really can be fixed without making the game worse, and I know getting another computer isn't optional for most but I built my computer for $420 and it rocks...for a much slower Intel processor like the 2Ghz I would have paid that much just for the processor. Anything under 500 Mhz. seriously needs to be upgraded soon for any serious modern gaming. My friends 750 Duron plays this very well too and he only paid $30 dollars for his processor. So buying a new computer might not be that big of a deal.

[ham50]

AMD 1.53 XP
512 MB RAM
80 GB HD
GeForce 3(I don't know which of the 45634643 versions it is)

The screen scroll is jumpy, the turns are taking a little while. I think someone forgot how to use the ++ operator, or decided to take the challange and just use addition and for loops in all calculations.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

xp 1333
256 MB DDRAM
gf 2 MX

works brilliant, but I'd like that Firaxis enables the option to turn off enemy/ worker moves. That slows the thing down at the end, if you have many workers. And to turn off pop-ups.