speed problems... how are they for you?

[exsanguination]

My comp sucks.. barely meets the requirements for civ3. So, consequently playing with more than 5 civs completely wastes time (as in 15 mins per turn)... how it is for you all?

i know sometimes a comp's speed won't affect game speed. If you have a real nice, up-to-date comp does it work nice n fast for you?

[TinCow]

I have a P4 1.6ghz with 512mbs of 400mhz RDRAM and a GeForce 3. Assuming no major wars with lots of movement, I get very little wait time. A couple seconds early in the game. The longest wait I'll get on a Huge map with 16 civs in the industrial age will be about 30 seconds. I recently upgraded from a P3 750mhz with 512mbs of 100mhz SDRAM and a Matrox G400. With that computer the Huge map with 16 civs would take about 1-2 mins during heavy play.

[vee4473]

What Tin Cow said sounds about right.

I have an AMD Thunderbird processor, 700Mhz, 128 Ram, TNT2 card with 32 megabytes of memory.

In the later game on a huge map with about 8 civs I have only waited about 30 to 40 seconds at the most with heavy unit movement...although I must admit that I haven't played much larger than that...

[jarofclay73]

I have a PIII 400mhz with 128 MB of RAM and a 32 MB graphics card. Not exactly the ideal game machine.

But I only have speed problems when I have a HUGE map, every civilization has taken up nearly all the land on the map (especially if you're the dominant civ) and it's after 2050.

Other than that, it's pretty quick for me.

And there's very few programs running in the background before I play the game (if any).

[The Rusty Gamer]

Is it my imagination or have things slowed down since the new patch (1.17f)?
Also, would going up to a Pentium 4 make any real difference to the game waiting time?

[Bautou]

When I first purchased Civ3 I was running a PII 333mhz computer, and wait times were huge. It took 20 seconds just to open up a city view screen, and about 4-5 minutes of wait time between turns (still in the middle ages).

After I purchased a 1.1ghz Celeron, the waiting was slashed to almost nothing, even on gigantic (256x256) maps. The only time where waiting gets a little long is during the late game if you have show enemy moves turned on, otherwize, it's pretty sweet. I'd recommend upgrading, it's worth it in terms of speed.

[Ironikinit]

Increasing RAM is the most bang for $.

[Dis]

speed problems are great for me.

although that is because I'm not playing the game

But I intend on playing the game again someday. I just can never find the time.

[Alex]

I'm playing it on a 450 MHz with 256 MB RAM and a TNT2 w/ 32 Megs. Also not the ideal game machine, but I find the speed is not bad at all, even on huge maps (although I never play with more than 8 civs).

Also, I don't think that the new patch has slowed down the game. I didn't notice anything like that.

[August Borms]

Plays great here on my budget pc (700Mhz duron, 256 SDRAM)

[MrWhereItsAt]

For anyone reading this with speed probs, I had the nasty slowdown (about 5 mins around early industrial), UNTIL I installed the first patch, v1.16f. From then, even in Win2K, everythin sped up to smooth. Try patches before resigning yourself to buying a new computer. Although perhaps the tech industry could do with the business...

[Libertarian]

[The Viceroy]

Ive got a P4 2Ghz, 256Mb of ram running XP-HE, and I get no slow down at all on 16civs biggest map .. did get 5-10 second delay on one modders 256x256 map with 16civs .. but thats fine ..

I remember when I first bought civ on the Amiga (500) back in 1992, It had 4 floppy disks (2 to load) and took 5 minutes to generate the map, which by todays standards is tiny ..

You've never had it so good !! well, I haven't anyway ha ha

[MrWhereItsAt]

Grr. Just wait 6 months 'till it's out of date.

[Jac de Molay]

I, unfortunately, have an older machine, and am paying the price dearly during the late game