My games always bog WAY down about 2/3 of the way through, about the year 1750 on Standard map size or 1900 on Small map size (both on Normal speed). For example, it literally takes about 5 seconds to add each item to a production queue or switch each worked tile. After I click the End Turn button, it takes more than 30 seconds before the game comes back to life. And I won't even mention combat! Let's just say more than a little classical-era skirmish is a chore beyond belief.

Before asking "is this normal??" I'll describe the specific computer I have and the performance tricks I have tried (to no avail). Oh, and I'm playing v1.52.

My computer is a Dell Inspiron XPS bought new in Jan 2005:
- 3.4 GHz Pentium 4, 1Gb RAM, 256mb ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 video card, 100Gb hard drive (mostly free)

I have all the latest drivers for everything (BIOS, video card, DirectX, etc.).

I have tried all the usual performance tricks, such as choosing all the lowest graphics settings, installing low-quality textures and leaderheads, etc., many of which are mentioned here:
New better solutions to game performance increase (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=158457)

These things seemed to improve the smoothness of the scrolling and zooming, but they did nothing to improve the "thinking time" in the game.

I also keep my computer in good shape using Norton SystemWorks, and I minimize running processes and applications while playing.

I play lots of other extremely demanding games similar to Civ4, and they all run super-fast!

So I'm just wondering: is there something else I can try? Or do I need to go buy a better computer if I want the endgame to be playable? Or does Civ 4 just have a huge mess of problems?

EDIT: I have AutoSave turned off. And I usually play with Alerum's Unaltered Gameplay mod, but I assume that wouldn't affect performance much. Also, the games I played without any mods seemed just as slow.

Is the card AGP? If so try increasing the AGP aperture through the BIOS setup. It might speed things up alittle. It sounds like you have tried everything else, perhaps the new patch in the works will help. I certainly wouldn't be going out and getting any upgrades as the game should work well enough on your spec. Have you tried shutting down Norton and then trying to play?

Is the card AGP? If so try increasing the AGP aperture through the BIOS setup. It might speed things up alittle. It sounds like you have tried everything else, perhaps the new patch in the works will help. I certainly wouldn't be going out and getting any upgrades as the game should work well enough on your spec. Have you tried shutting down Norton and then trying to play?

Hmm, I'm not sure if it's AGP. It's a laptop computer. But I'll try to look and see if I have any sort of aperture settings.

I guess I do have some other software that I could try shutting down, such as anti-spyware and such. Never had any game problems with that stuff running before, and I play all sorts of graphics-heavy stuff like Guild Wars and space sims all with maximum graphics settings just fine. Also, the pauses seem to happen while everything is static (or changing just a teensy bit), not while intense graphical stuff is going on. But I'll try anyway, thanks!