Game Turn Speed - I'm not impressed...

[Akaoz]

Ok, first of: I love the Civilization series. I really do. But...

The bugs and questionable gameplay decisions aside:

The Slow Turns are killing me. It reminds me of playing Civ1 on my Amiga or Civ2 on my old 486... I really don’t understand why this game is so slow. My system should be able to pull this one off just fine. But by the late ancient early middle ages I have a 30+ second wait for my turn.

This is to slow. I don’t have patience for things like this anymore.

And it’s not just the turns. The whole game is slow. And don’t start on about turning off animations and stuff. I have done all that. The game still scrolls slowly, moves slowly, accesses menus slowly, it’s like playing checkers with a senior citizen. I don’t get it. It’s a TBS game for crying out loud.

Something about the combination of bugs, gameplay and general lagyness (for lack of a better word) really makes me feel like the programmers did a really sloppy job on this game.

Oh and for the record my platform is:

PIII 966Mhz
256 MB SDRAM
40 GB HD with ca 3 GB free
64 MG GeForce2 GTS with 4.13.01.2311 drivers
running WinME with all updates

This should be able to run a TBS game even in 2002...

Anybody got any ideas, or similar experience?

-Alech

PS: Yes, I have turned off all background programs to see if that helps. It doesn’t.

[Gramphos]

Yuo know, you don't have to paly with 16 civs in the game if you don't want to. Firaxis were going to make it just 8 you know. Mynly the system requirements isn't disigned for the largest map you can get with as many civs as possible.

[steelehc]

Just because you have sufficient hardware to run a game doesn't mean it will work fine. If you have sufficient hardware, it will run, maybe not well, but it will run.

Steele

PS:People have been b1tching about the slow speed since the game was released. Enough already.

[ACooper]

I think you need to format your hard drive. It might fix the problem.

[Gramphos]

Originally posted by ACooper
I think you need to format your hard drive. It might fix the problem.

in that case a defrag should be enough.

[Minuteman]

Defragging will definitely help, but don't expect any miracles.

Like any other form of slow torture, you'll get used to the long lags eventually. If you like to play w/ 16 civs on a huge map (like me), that's price you'll have to pay.

[ACooper]

Seriously, don't format your HD. I was making a joke. Defraging is always good though.

I know Firaxis put in the 16 civ option "against their better judgement" for exactly this reason. I have compromised at 12 Civs on a huge map and still get minor delays on my P4,1.8 Ghz.

I've also heard it may be more of a map problem then the # of Civs, but I haven't really tested this out or anything because I like the huge maps.

[Minuteman]

Originally posted by ACooper
Seriously, don't format your HD. I was making a joke. Defraging is always good though.

I know Firaxis put in the 16 civ option "against their better judgement" for exactly this reason. I have compromised at 12 Civs on a huge map and still get minor delays on my P4,1.8 Ghz.

I've also heard it may be more of a map problem then the # of Civs, but I haven't really tested this out or anything because I like the huge maps.

While you were at it, you should have told him to remove his motherboard from the tower to check it for nicks & scratches.

[August Borms]

I certainly don't notice any sluggishness while accessing menus or scrolling with my 700Mhz duron and 256MB SDRAM

And I never defrag

[Ironikinit]

Alech,

You might try getting more RAM.

[steelehc]

Upon further reflection, I have determined what is causing your computer to be slow. Your hard drive needs to be de-ionized. Take it out of your computer, and put it in a microwave for 30 minutes. Then put it in a freezer for three days, at a minimum. This should remove all ionization from your drive, and ensure high access speeds.

I used to work at a computer tech store, and we had this posted on the wall by the tech-room. One day, someone came in, and wanted their money back; apparently they had seen the sign and acted upon its advice... (we didn't pay them).

Seriously, I don't mind the slow speeds. If you mind them enough that you don't want to play, then go buy more RAM, and a faster chip. With P4 2+Ghz coming out, you could get a 1.266GHz for not very much. Also, a faster HD never hurts.

Steele

[exeter0]

Akaoz: I think your fundamental points are very valid.

It does seem as if the game has been developed inefficiently.

What disturbs me is that if it runs this slowly now... how slow will CIV 4, 5 or 6.

If the underlying architecture of the game is flwed then this will restrict improvements in the game.

I remember a thread/post a few months ago which observed that the refreshes trade calculations after each CIV has moved... for all CIVs.. or something like that. This would be an example of something which should be fixed.

The slowness of scrolling, menus etc is a matter of memory. I increased from 128MB to 512MB and it is fine now.

[Leonidas]

Akaoz: With all the workers that 16 civs can employ, I can imagine why the game runs so slow.

In CTP2, I am playing with 28 civs, and I only have a PII 350, and there are only minor delays when I change turns. The fact that there are NO workers in CTP2 really saves a lot on the AI decision making and processing power. . .

[exeter0]

Originally posted by Leonidas
Akaoz: With all the workers that 16 civs can employ, I can imagine why the game runs so slow.

In CTP2, I am playing with 28 civs, and I only have a PII 350, and there are only minor delays when I change turns. The fact that there are NO workers in CTP2 really saves a lot on the AI decision making and processing power. . .

Leonidas: I'm not sure but I think that assertion might be a bit misleading. In CTP2 the AI still has to resolve numerous priority, terrain and city optimisation issues to allocate PW points. And I think Modded CTP2 is very good at this.

What would be annoying and inefficient in CIV3.. is if the AI needed to perform settler (or any other units for that matter) animation for off-screen units or uits under fog-of-war.

[Aeson]

I just finished up an 8AI/Huge/Pangaea game before installing the 1.17f patch. At the high (low?) point, my automated workers (500 of my own & ~300 Captured) took 15 minutes to process each turn. On any given turn only about 1/3 of the workers needed to be given commands even. The worst I have seen for turn processing is 20 minute on Huge maps during the late Industrial to early Modern Era. This is on a 1.33GHz T-Bird/512MB RAM/64MB ATI Radeon 8500 system. 30 second turns are nice in comparison.

Most of the other actions in the game are instantaneous, but workers really have a problem on automation. It actually took about the same amount of time when I was assigning them tasks on my own. It seems there is a delay of several seconds when any unit tries to move a large number of tiles in a single turn. Since automated workers regularly try to move from one end of the world to the other, this accounts for a lot of the delays once railroads are in place. Also the fact that the screen centers on any automated unit taking action even with animations off doesn't help. I haven't played to that point with the patch, but there was an item in the readme that said the movement delays had been delt with, I hope so.

At least Civ3 is multi-task friendly, I can log on and post while waiting for the automation/turns to be processed.