Playing big maps, computer performance, how?

[kensington888]

i got new RAM helped alot.now earth 18civ is only a few seconds later on in game rather than 2 minutes.

 

[3 EMS]

[QUOTE / Lemon Merchant ]Don't worry Dave, I'm just funnin' ya. I have no problem with Nvidia, I just use ATI because my motherboard is optimized for those cards. "Dragon" platform and all of that marketing nonsense. My old Nvidia card was an excellent little piece of hardware. I'd still use it if the machine hadn't caught fire.[/QUOTE]

I was looking forward to a fanboi war. Darn ! Maybe Sli vs X-fire? I won't participate because I, of course, have no preferance and buy the one that provides the best performance for the buck. lolon't know how many times I've seen that.)

I would give up on my game long before 20 mins. I just know I would think somethings gone wrong with the game or my PC and rebooted

 

[dirtyparrot]

I too noticed that the game lag is significantly reduced if you reload the game. But, you should be fine on standard size maps. My computer is 7yrs old and is a pentium 4, 2.4GHz 504MB of RAM and runs fine on standard. It follows that a much newer computer should do much better.

 

[Zink]

I got the same problem with my C2D 6600 and 2GB RAM on standard maps late game
And it all started with BUG (or maybe it was some patch). Never had a problem before.
But i cant play without BUG anymore, so i just reload now and then when the game gets laggy.

 

[Brian Boru]

restarting the game is not a fun idea, from loading Civ IV until the saved game actually loads can take a minute or more

My CIV desktop icon is shortcut to the Quick Save game [in "...\Saves\single\quick\QuickSave.CivBeyondSwordSave"]. So to restart, press Shift + F5 to quick save, then exit and restart via above desktop icon. If you have the intro stuff turned off as well [don't recall offhand where that's done], it loads straight into the game you're playing.

 

[hunterai]

Auto save every turn so that when it finally crashes, you only lose 1 turn worth of progress.

 

[dirtyparrot]

My CIV desktop icon is shortcut to the Quick Save game [in "...\Saves\single\quick\QuickSave.CivBeyondSwordSave"]. So to restart, press Shift + F5 to quick save, then exit and restart via above desktop icon. If you have the intro stuff turned off as well [don't recall offhand where that's done], it loads straight into the game you're playing.

You don't need to restart the game, just exit to the main menu and reload the save.

 

[Zero-Sum]

Well its not my computer actually, its my parents..if I it was mine, I would of save up longer and build a better one. But their PC doesn't look too bad, its a AMD Phenom, it has 4GB of ram, but it has onboard graphics. Upgraded it to win 7, no difference. No other programs or game lag on the PC, its one of the most stable PC's ive used in years.

Until you play a later era Civ IV game. If waiting between turns was the only thing that lagged, I'd be ok with it, but it lags in between turns, during the actual turn where I do my moves, the mouse cursor lags, the whole game turns sluggish.

I hate the feeling when you hear the decleration of war sound go off stacked a few times, and a big AI has a few vassels, and your looking at the spinning world mouse cursor for 10 seconds hoping its not you thats going to war.

I'll be trying to disable some of the graphical options

 

[Willem]

...but it has onboard graphics.

Well there's your problem. You don't need a top of the line video card for this game, but you need one that's half-decent. And there's no onboard video that will be good enough. Unless you can convince your folks to get a better card, or get your own system, you'll just have to deal with the lag.

 

[Zero-Sum]

Hehe, the days where I can convince the folks to get me things are long gone, the only reason I have access to their house is because they want to help me finish college.

The game runs perfect, until renaissance/industrial eras... but then again I've known the graphics are that PC's weak spot. I'm the only one that cares about that, so I guess I'll have to play standard maps on epic or faster until I get my own pc,

 

[tom123]

More RAM/better CPU.
If neither is an option, try closing non-vital processes, such as your Anti Virus program, iTunes, ect, that should free up some processing power.
Ideally, you want a powerful dual core at minimum.
On my laptop, with a 2GHz Core 2 Duo, I had problems with very large maps, and in the endgame, but with new 3.4GHz Quad desktop, they run fine. Somewhere between the two should work well.

 

[Poppis]

Umm, I don't think CivIV supports multicore CPUs. So unless you have a habit of alt+tabing out of your game a lot, you don't need dual core.

 

[UWHabs]

Umm, I don't think CivIV supports multicore CPUs. So unless you have a habit of alt+tabing out of your game a lot, you don't need dual core.

Civ itself might not use it, but it could mean that one core is dedicated to civ, and the other ends up doing all the background stuff that computers like to run.

 

[sherbz]

Save your game and reboot once in awhile. There's some sort of memory/CPU leak that starts showing up at around the Renaissance era. The game will start to lag and become sluggish. If you reboot the game though, it will clear up and function much better for awhile. I usually need to reboot after 2-3 hours of playing in the later game because of this problem.

This makes me feel so much better that someone else has the same problem as me. To begin with i thought it was just my imagination. Then I thought it was my computer. Now i know its the game

 

[Willem]

This makes me feel so much better that someone else has the same problem as me. To begin with i thought it was just my imagination. Then I thought it was my computer. Now i know its the game

That's been a known issue for quite awhile. Since the game was first released in fact, though it used to be worse. You probably haven't seen anyone mention it since most players have just become resigned to the problem. Obviously it's not going to get fixed so we just have to deal with it.

 

[USS Walter Mond]

does it make a difference if u play online?

 

[morchuflex]

Quitting and reloading every one or two hours of play really helps fighting late game lag. Plus, it's good for your mental health, your job, your personal life and such.

 

[Willem]

Plus, it's good for your mental health, your job, your personal life and such.

Agreed. I usually don't find having to do that a big problem since by the time I have to reboot it's time to take a break anyway. Of course I usually get back to my game a short while later, but that's beside the point.

 

[Zero-Sum]

Quitting and reloading every one or two hours of play really helps fighting late game lag. Plus, it's good for your mental health, your job, your personal life and such.

Agreed, sometimes it gets really laggy, I save and decide that instead of reloading I'll just pick up the next day. Wish the game was always smooth like it is during the first half of gameplay.

 

[binhthuy71]

Life takes care of the reloading issue for me. I have a family and I mostly work from home so my games get played from half an hour to an hour at a time. It can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of weeks before I'm able to resume playing. That's not necessarily a bad thing: occasionally when I return to the game with fresh eyes my formerly dynamite strategy becomes "Why in the world did I want to do that?".