I am having serious trouble to even finish my first game. When I started it it went smoothly, no hicups. This was tru until about turn 120. Then the game slowly started to get slower and slower. Action like mouseclikcs and move commands took half a second to be recognized, getting into the city view took 1 or 2 seconds. This got worse and worse, right now I'm at turn 230, and the game has become unplayable, cycling from one city to the netx takes 5-10 seconds. Oddly, I have no problems with Civ4, it gets a bit slower in the end, but never so much that it basically takes me 5 minutes to finish a turn.

My PC isn't new, but not so dated that it shouldn't be able to run the game decently:
Athlon 64 3700+, Radeon 2600XT, 2GB RAM, XP

Are there any settings I should change?

I am having serious trouble to even finish my first game. When I started it it went smoothly, no hicups. This was tru until about turn 120. Then the game slowly started to get slower and slower. Action like mouseclikcs and move commands took half a second to be recognized, getting into the city view took 1 or 2 seconds. This got worse and worse, right now I'm at turn 230, and the game has become unplayable, cycling from one city to the netx takes 5-10 seconds. Oddly, I have no problems with Civ4, it gets a bit slower in the end, but never so much that it basically takes me 5 minutes to finish a turn.

My PC isn't new, but not so dated that it shouldn't be able to run the game decently:
Athlon 64 3700+, Radeon 2600XT, 2GB RAM, XP

Are there any settings I should change?
If you turn down stuff that eats away memory - so most graphic settings (anti-alliasing!) and then reboot your computer and startup the game again, does that solve your issue?

Memory leaks typically do not occur straight away, but only after playing the game for a bit. Does the problem occur after a fresh load as well?

You might want to close down all apps running in the background as well, and that includes hidden progs that you are not aware off. Make sure to scan for virusses and spyware.

Please scan your computer for malicious software, reboot your computer and load up your game. Does that fix the problem?

Around turn 150 the gameplay gets choppish and sluggish for us too..

I play on a 20" iMac 2.4Ghz core 2 Duo with 4GB ram and Windows XP (medium settings, graphically)

My mate on my second computer a AMD4200 dualcore with 3GB ram and Windows XP also (medium settings also)

Civ4 (and Warlords) is slow as hell too halfway through the game. And it's deadly annoying.
Any tips ideas? (no not the "scan for virusses rubbish" it's not that, not spyware either).

Actually i think this is kinda not fixable by us, but should be patched by Firaxis as the games engine seems to be utterly broken. But hey that's just me.

Thanks in advance!

Same problem here and I also have it in Civ4, if I restart the game completely it clears the memory and runs normally for awhile.

Around turn 150 the gameplay gets choppish and sluggish for us too..

I play on a 20" iMac 2.4Ghz core 2 Duo with 4GB ram and Windows XP (medium settings, graphically)

My mate on my second computer a AMD4200 dualcore with 3GB ram and Windows XP also (medium settings also)

Civ4 (and Warlords) is slow as hell too halfway through the game. And it's deadly annoying.
Any tips ideas? (no not the "scan for virusses rubbish" it's not that, not spyware either).

Actually i think this is kinda not fixable by us, but should be patched by Firaxis as the games engine seems to be utterly broken. But hey that's just me.

Thanks in advance!I think that you are right that this is not solvable for you as your processor seems kind of light for late-game civ - depending on the map size. It may very well be that your processor causes the slowdowns, as I do not experience any slowdowns.

So how many trillion megahertz's do i need then?

I go well over the recommended specs with my computers. If my computers can't handle it, how bad is it for people who meet the minimum.

I doubt my computer is the cause. But fine, try and proof me wrong :)

So how many trillion megahertz's do i need then?

I go well over the recommended specs with my computers. If my computers can't handle it, how bad is it for people who meet the minimum.

I doubt my computer is the cause. But fine, try and proof me wrong :)

I had same problem with pretty high end comp, opening city screen took about 10 sec in late game. But after restarting game everything was smooth again.

I have late game slowdown too, with a core2duo E6750, 3G RAM, ATI 4850, Win XP Pro.

Normal sized map (with low sea level for a bit more land).

Noticeable (1-2) seconds to go in/out of city screen. When inside it can take several seconds to assign a colonist or load/unload cargo. Far worse in highly populated settlements but all around horrific. Main map is jumpy.

I never have problems like this in Civ IV.

This game is not that complex and should not have this kind of sluggishness.

I also have a 24" monitor but it's usually not an issue with my relatively beefy video card.

After posting I dropped anit-aliasing to 4 from 16 (since it probably makes zero difference in a game like this anyways but *could* cause extra unnecessary work) and turned off high terrain textures (not sure you can tell a difference there either) - quit out and reloaded my game and it's snappy again.

So, dunno if there's a memory leak or changing those setting, that I always have on in Civ IV with zero issues, but it got "cleaner."

Same problems here, running a core2duo E6600, 4GB Ram, Geforce 8800 GTS and Vista.

Only solution what works far me is to exit the game and then reload my save. Changing graphical options does not improve things.

I suspect the game engine puts too much strain on routing the units and especially on doing it all simultaneously. If you alt-tab out of the game and look at resource usage colonization or Civ4 take like 400-600MB ram and a whole bunch of CPU %'s

However, a same amount of units in Civ2/Civ3 worked like a charm, which to my idea means the new game engine is broken at some point.

Its gotta be a memory leak problem...

I've noticed that as im playing, the RAM usage goes from about 150meg to over 600. Once its hits about the 350 mark is when i notice the slow down. Reloading the game (quit to desktop) works for me. It will reload the same game that was eating 600 and will only use about 150 on reload.

Another indication for me that its time to restart is that the music stops playing once the memory usage is way up there.

I can see this being a major killer in MP.

Ugh, I'm having the same problem (I'm at work so I don't remember my specs, but I bought this laptop about 2 years ago at the near-max specs at that time). I made all the graphics down to lowest, but it made no difference. Restarting the game DID make a difference, but only for about 10 turns before massive slowdown again. This game is infuriating.

Yep, having the same slowdown late game. Lowering the settings does seem to help for a bit but then it creeps back. If I exit out of the game and reload it goes back to normal for awhile then comes back again later. Pretty annoying.

this is my biggest issue with the game. In lieu of a fix in the form of a patch, would anyone know if a 3rd party memory manager program help this?

Over the past few days we've tried other things;
singleplayer, smaller maps, less indians, less AI all over, lower graphics settings and all that.

Combinations of those too.

All to no avail. Even on a small map with 2 indians and no other europeans but us 2 it broke at around turn 150/170.

This game engine is seriously broken.

Almost every Civ game since civ 3 has had this problem. After so many turns the game crashes due to a memory leak. It was fixed in the previous games with a patch.

Its not that anyone dosnt have enough memory, or that anti-aliasing is on and such. Its the software coding... The fixes ussually work by dedicating certain caches to certain parts of the memory. When this isnt done, the memory accidenty overwrites itself and crashes the system.

Can I just point out that it's not a memory leak.

Civ4 and Civ4 Col work by using what's called LISTS in programming. Basically each category of object is in a list, players, plots, cities, units, buildings, etc.

Throughout the game these lists are fluid. IE: build a unit, the unit list gets 1 item longer. By end game, you'll have heaps of cities, heaps of improvements, hundreds of units, etc etc. Each item is stored in a list. The catch with lists is they don't flush until you deregister the list array, which in the case of Civ4 and Civ4 Col is when you close the game.

BTW, this is not a strange method for a game. Most games utilise lists. Just not many games create lists as long as Civ4s. :)

Can I just point out that it's not a memory leak.

Civ4 and Civ4 Col work by using what's called LISTS in programming. Basically each category of object is in a list, players, plots, cities, units, buildings, etc.

Throughout the game these lists are fluid. IE: build a unit, the unit list gets 1 item longer. By end game, you'll have heaps of cities, heaps of improvements, hundreds of units, etc etc. Each item is stored in a list. The catch with lists is they don't flush until you deregister the list array, which in the case of Civ4 and Civ4 Col is when you close the game.

BTW, this is not a strange method for a game. Most games utilise lists. Just not many games create lists as long as Civ4s. :)

That's the biggest load of codswallop i've heard in a long time! :crazyeye:

If that was the case then I could continue to play my game when I close and reload civ. In this case I cannot... It'll crash no matter what I do. Well Im not sure about this LISTS, as that might be the problem for the majority here. But mine is definately a memory leak. Same problem I had with earlier versions of windows...

That's the biggest load of codswallop i've heard in a long time! :crazyeye:

Prove the mem leak then. :)

EDIT: Yes, I realise my above comment isn't very constructive, but then the comment I was replying to wasn't either. :p

I have this problem too, but I don't even need to reload the game to fix it. I just minimize the game to the desktop and jump back into it and it is running at full speed again. I am guessing it is some sort of graphical problem... mem leak or not...

Can I just point out that it's not a memory leak.

Civ4 and Civ4 Col work by using what's called LISTS in programming. Basically each category of object is in a list, players, plots, cities, units, buildings, etc.

Throughout the game these lists are fluid. IE: build a unit, the unit list gets 1 item longer. By end game, you'll have heaps of cities, heaps of improvements, hundreds of units, etc etc. Each item is stored in a list. The catch with lists is they don't flush until you deregister the list array, which in the case of Civ4 and Civ4 Col is when you close the game.

BTW, this is not a strange method for a game. Most games utilise lists. Just not many games create lists as long as Civ4s. :)

If the problem vanishes upon restarting the game, it's a memleak, because obviously the program doesn't really need this much ressources. And besides, not freeing unused memory is the definition of a memleak. So what you describe is essentially that, a leak.

Yes, "not freeing unused memory", but Civ4/Col actually do free it. This is true because the memory is freed up when you close the application (watch task mananger if you want when you exit the app, you'll notice all the memory frees up).

A mem-leak leaves that memory space full until the OS flushes it in a pagefile cleanup or reboot.

So mem-leak? No. Inefficient use of memory? Yes.

Have you tried changing the CivilizationIV.ini file in the folder for Colonization?
You can change frame rate and keep it at a max like 30 instead of the value 0 which means no max frame rate? I changed mine, my video card is okay but it is not the best one.

Have you changed the graphics off screen not being held in the memory or something like that? (in the *.ini file there is that line also)

All the other lines that have to do with graphics?

And anti-aliasing does slow down a video card and if it can not handle it (has a bottleneck in the video card because the video card is not really that good like mine), it can also make a difference leaving it "0" (zero).

All this add up to bottleneck the videocard unless you have the latest greatest video card actually.

The ships in mine may do the jumping a little but not much at all. But although only finished one game so far, every map larger than Standard is also going to slow down the game. That is just the way that it is, unless again, you have the fastest newest computer and the fastest newest video card - and then you probably need the newest computer and video card that will come out. Too many times people are thinking that the computer and video card can handle about anything, and that may not just be true with 3-D graphics. Of course there are games you state you can play - but really the graphics are not as great as you think they are and that has been in articles about games. One place you may look at is:

http://www.guru3d.com/

i've never had civ4 or civ4col crash on me, just it getting slow, let's stay on topic here guys.

If your game crashes open a new thread!
I don't think the two are related. Also i doubt it's a memory leak, granted i'm no expert and have no knowledge on how the game works. But i have 2 computers with 3GB and the game never near reaches that, if the memory keeps leaking at an increasing pace i would see higehr usage and it never goes over the 600MB. The rest of the system is near Idle, no other apps running but windows and it's assorted crap. Which takes like 300-500MB. So i almost always have like 1.5GB of free ram.

I also play rainbow 6 vegas 2 alot and half life 2 sometimes. Those games are much heavier for my computers, on both CPU and memory usage, and they run fine.

Have the same problem. Specs:

Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+
Geforce 8600 GT 512MB
2 GIG DDR RAM

I saved the game when it started becoming unbearably slow between turns and then reloaded. The slowdown disappeared. I remember this happening in Civ 4 I think as well but that might well be pre-patch.

I had the same problem a long time ago in civ 4 before it was patched away and i got it in col2 too so i used the same fix i used when it happend in civ4.

Set game to run on 1 core and the slowdown wont happen atleast that fixed it for me in col2 and civ 4 before it was fixed there.
Hope this helps anyone

and we do that how?

In Task Manager select the Civ4 process & set it's affinity to just one core.

i'll try that, thanks!

That's the biggest load of codswallop i've heard in a long time! :crazyeye:

but that's probably why the game slow down as you run it

as you create more colonies, the memory fragment use by your city list will become full, and the next lines will be write on another fragment

but there are fragments of others lists between the fragments used by the citylist

the longer you run the game, the more fragmented these lists are in your ram, and so is your load time when the game search a list

I am having serious trouble to even finish my first game. When I started it it went smoothly, no hicups. This was tru until about turn 120. Then the game slowly started to get slower and slower. Action like mouseclikcs and move commands took half a second to be recognized, getting into the city view took 1 or 2 seconds. This got worse and worse, right now I'm at turn 230, and the game has become unplayable, cycling from one city to the netx takes 5-10 seconds. Oddly, I have no problems with Civ4, it gets a bit slower in the end, but never so much that it basically takes me 5 minutes to finish a turn.

My PC isn't new, but not so dated that it shouldn't be able to run the game decently:
Athlon 64 3700+, Radeon 2600XT, 2GB RAM, XP

Are there any settings I should change?

i had an identical problem as you. i have new computor that goes over the suggested spec. i updated (my brand new ) graphics driver and i have not had that problem since. if that doesnt work well....

I am having the same problems and my computer is over the recommended specs. I have tried everything in this thread and more with no success. When I restart I can play 3-5 turns before the game slows down to where it is unplayable. Sometimes it even stops completely. I've had some slow downs in Civ 4 but nothing like this. Does anyone know what is causing it? I've contacted 2K but I doubt they'll fix anything.

Meh, the game is broken...

For me... 3 teams of 2 (4 AI and me andm y mate on a lan) in a large inland sea map works fine... But not with war... we play spacerace.

It's playable but not really the way it should be.

I am having the same problems and my computer is over the recommended specs. I have tried everything in this thread and more with no success. When I restart I can play 3-5 turns before the game slows down to where it is unplayable. Sometimes it even stops completely. I've had some slow downs in Civ 4 but nothing like this. Does anyone know what is causing it? I've contacted 2K but I doubt they'll fix anything.

Make sure your graphics card is well above the minimum. Col's graphic requirement is a lot higher than Civ4's as it's a much newer version of the graphic rendering module.

Meh, the game is broken...

For me... 3 teams of 2 (4 AI and me andm y mate on a lan) in a large inland sea map works fine... But not with war... we play spacerace.

It's playable but not really the way it should be.

You're looking for Civ4, not Col.

Ah yea... well same engine, same problem. The game is broken.

Actually, it's NOT the same engine. Col runs on a heavily modified and updated engine to Civ4. Aside from that you didn't even say what your problem with Civ4 is. Thirdly, this forum is for Col, we don't care about Civ4 so please go somewhere else to speak of what you do not know.

EDIT:
Now I see, you're a Mac user. Bye bye.

pfft . .. .. .. . :)

I was just slightly confused about the threat it being a long time ago since i read it.
Why am i explaining myself to you anyway... It's not like you'll understand :lol:

Make sure your graphics card is well above the minimum. Col's graphic requirement is a lot higher than Civ4's as it's a much newer version of the graphic rendering module.

Now that's really odd.

I'm running Civ4Col on a laptop - the hp compaq tc4200 with 1.5 gigs of ram and a frail onboard graphics card, GMA900. It will run Civ4Col fine up until shortly before revolution, then the game inevitably crashes.

But the reason I'm saying what you said is odd, Dale, is that I can't even install Civ4 on this computer. My experience was that Civ4Col was *less* picky about system requirements than Civ4, not the other way round.

Cheers, --- Wheldrake

That is wierd. But I can guarentee what I said is the case. Just lucky for you eh? :)

I have the task manager performance monitor running on another monitor as I am playing and the game runs fine at first with my computer using about 1.3 - 1.4 of its 2 GB of RAM, so I don't see a problem here. However, as the game goes on, usually 5-10 minutes, the CPU usage just keeps going up from about 40-50% to 100% and then it just stays there and becomes unplayable. I am getting this in Civ 4 too but not as fast as it occurs in Colonization. I never had this problem before playing on this computer, I don't know why its happening now. I even reformatted and that didn't even work.

im having the same problems late game, and im running it on my new comp

Corei7 920 @ 3.8ghz
6gb DDR3 1600
GTX285 SLI

I dont get slowdowns in any other games period except this one for some reason


and before you say its my overclock its prime torture test stable at this speed for 12 hours tested, i stopped the test of after 12

Games slowing down as you play is common to the engine they built. It has to do with how the object arrays are created: linked lists. So as the game progresses and units (or other objects just units are the biggest culprit) are created, changed and removed, more memory is taken up. This is because it takes much less RAM to store 8 units at the start of the game, than 300 units mid-game, or 1000 units end-game.

You can help this by exiting the game every 50 turns or so as the dead stubs are removed from RAM thus freeing up some of the space.

Sad that some people think it's a memory leak when all it is, is this happening. :)

I am not even far into the games and I am having problems. Also, I can't play 50 turns without it slowing down. I would be exiting the game every 5-10 turns. I don't think it is the RAM either. I have the performance monitor running on another monitor and it only shows about 1.5 gigs of my 2 beings used while I am playing Civ 4 or Colonization.

Games slowing down as you play is common to the engine they built. It has to do with how the object arrays are created: linked lists. So as the game progresses and units (or other objects just units are the biggest culprit) are created, changed and removed, more memory is taken up. This is because it takes much less RAM to store 8 units at the start of the game, than 300 units mid-game, or 1000 units end-game.

You can help this by exiting the game every 50 turns or so as the dead stubs are removed from RAM thus freeing up some of the space.

Sad that some people think it's a memory leak when all it is, is this happening. :)

so its sloppy program because the game doesnt trigger a clean in the memory of changes and stores all previous states. that is very sloppy programing from Fraxis instead. The point is you shouldn't have to do these things. I can Rome Total War all day without a slowdown

Codswallop... that's hilarious. Did anyone see that Dirty Jobs episode where the cameraman who eats anything tried it?

Ooooh... OT: If it's a "lists" thing", then why does a quicksave(shiftF5)/quickload(shiftF8) get rid of the slowdown without any need to restart the app? BTW, that's my current solution for the slowdown as it takes all of 10-15 seconds to do. However, in vanilla C4 I found that disabling animations significantly reduced the appearance of slowdown. As most of the slowdown was most notable when selecting/scrolling through units, that what led me to disable effect for them. That's my next step with C4C, as it appears to be the same problem with the addition of the city screen being slow as hell, with particular regards to moving colonists around.

Basically, that's my way of saying that I think the "lists" thing is a bunch of codswallop. I think it's primarily a problem with the unit animations.