My mum always told me to think before I speak, but these AI leaders freeze for AGES before they start demanding tribute/whatever from me. Tokugawa, for some reason, is the master of the long frozen pause, weirdly...
My computer's well within the recommended specs (although nothing spectacular).
Does this happen to a lot of people? Is there a 'turn animated heralds off' option in Civ IV? Is it the 3D animation that's taking up the processor, or the AI thinking too hard? If it's the 3D I want to turn it off - if it's my opponents' planning then I'll learn to live with it...
Cheers

It happens to me too, I think this should be in the bugs thread

Yep, it happens to me too, and my pc far exceeds the recommended requirements.

Ah, okay, so I'm not the only one with this problem?
Especially later on in the game it gets very.. well.. laggy.

(Core 2 Duo, 2Gb ram, 8800GTS)

It happens to me as well, but my PC is on the low end of the recomendations.

Interesting... just this morning I was thinking about converting all the animated leaderheads to still pictures in a mod for systems suffering from these kinds of graphics problems.

I think the "problem" might be a bit more spread then you assume, Gaius. ;)

I haven't seen the kind of pause you are referring to. I wonder if this is a case of something that registers more with some people and less with others, or is there a time minimum that should be expected as set forth by the developers?

The pause isn't usually that long - only few seconds, but it happens EVERY time and I can't help but think about how much of my life I'm wasting when you consider all the negotiations that go on. It adds up.
I did have longer pauses when asking the AIs to declare war on one another - that's why I was thinking it might be the AI loading the processor. Happens. And in my vague twiddlings I haven't found an option to turn the negotiation animations off...
(As if I'm not wasting hours of it already on a computer game;) )

I think the "problem" might be a bit more spread then you assume, Gaius. ;)

No kiddin'! :p :lol:

Most this was for people with big problems and graphics glitches (see Holycannoli's avatar) but the patches have fixed most of those.

I've noticed it a couple of times when I've made a trade that they've accepted. They start to do the acceptance animation, and then hang up a bit. Just when I start to get really nervous, it picks right up.