Heya,


I have the Civ III Gold Edition that also contains the Play the World expansion, and I've been having problems with a few scenarios where the wait time between turns become too long :(

I enjoy playing the "Test of Time" scenarios (250x250), where the Earth terrain is quite well described (with all the hills, forests, mountains and such, and not just a sea of flat grasslands), with the modded resources and unit strengths et c. But the thing is, as a game progresses and the civilisations expand the wait time between turns just get longer and longer - I wouldn't have complained if it was a matter of just a few minutes, but I've had experiences where I had to wait for well over 30 minutes :(

Anyway, the scenario allows upto 31 rival civs, and at first I thought the number of civs were slowing things down, so I trimmed it down to 15 - and it didn't take too long before I reduced the rival civs to just 7. The game seemed to run ok for a while, and wait time did increase upto about 1-2 minute or so but it was still bearable. But then suddenly the next turn seemed to take way too long, so for the turn after that I actually timed it and to my horror it was about 11 minutes. It's only 450 AD, with halfway thru the industrial age tech tree, so I don't think I'll be playing that game for much longer.

The spec. for my comp is P4-2.2 GHz with 512 MB RAM, running on XP SP1. Any help/advice on reducing the wait time would be much appreciated.

I would suggest upping your RAM to at least 1Gig. That *might* help. (It certainly won't hurt.)

There *is* a significant slowdown on maps larger than "Huge" (160x160). I think it has been shown to get worst above roughly 206x206.

One problem is when Railroads start to be built. The AI runs through the possible moves for each unit, and with unlimited movement by Rail, suddenly there are a *lot* of possible moves. ANd the algorithm for processing that was not very well implemented.

ah, right, thanks for the reply.

Come to think of it I've started building railroads (and the AIs just behind me), and the wait time seems to have increased drastically not long after that. As I can't really do much about increasing the RAM, I guess I should just stick to playing on a smaller map.

Thanks once again for the advice :)

One problem is when Railroads start to be built. The AI runs through the possible moves for each unit, and with unlimited movement by Rail, suddenly there are a *lot* of possible moves. ANd the algorithm for processing that was not very well implemented.

I don't remember if you can use "NoAIPatrol=1" in the ptw.ini... but this does help.

Another problem late in the game is recalculating trade routes when Airports are built. This really slows the game down too.

Turn off unit animations, as well, to speed up the in-between-turn. I normally play on regular maps, so I don't notice it much. My latest game, my first on demigawd, had so many units running around in the late IA that I had to turn off animations.

I enjoy playing the "Test of Time" scenarios (250x250), But the thing is, as a game progresses and the civilisations expand the wait time between turns just get longer and longer - I wouldn't have complained if it was a matter of just a few minutes, but I've had experiences where I had to wait for well over 30 minutes :(
/Edited
Man this sceanrio TofT in infamous for being the slowest one ever made, ok well one of them anyway. I was drawn to it to when I saw all the bonus goodies and stuff. You can play another mod listed on your gold files called the balancer. Its got way more stuff and you can play with around 20-25 civs on a 196x196 map using mid range Map charateristics and enjoy 1 minute waiting times max at moder ages(clinicly proven!)
Hers a linkhttp://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=126867


The spec. for my comp is P4-2.2 GHz with 512 MB RAM, running on XP SP1. Any help/advice on reducing the wait time would be much appreciated.
Sounds like you could free up some virtual memory(the good stuff that effects time between turns) in the bios menu. Check to there to see how much your onboard graphics card is hogging( if your using one-otherwiz disregard),
some of these PC's like my dell 1.9g were defaulting over 20 times the amount needed to run the relitivly tame graphics on Civ3. Remeber just icreasing the amount of free memory won't reassigne the vitual mem your graphics card is using. It only allocates whats available. You have to free it up Heres a link how. Goodluck this saved me.
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=162439