Why does Civ5 Have Longer Load Times than Other Games

bc1 said:
The likely reason the game takes so long to load is that the code is probably poorly structured, especially the decision to access game data via slow poke SQL interpreter, while mostly using only simple table XY queries... and manage the popup event system by pooling slow interpreted lua code :crazyeye:
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I suppose it takes much longer to build the DB from the XML files from the game and XML/SQL files from mods (that's part the loading time to reach the main/mods menus) than caching it when starting a new game. AFAIK once started the game only use a few queries as almost everything from the DB is cached, so that shouldn't be a cause of the long time between turns (a big part of it is taken by the AI code in C++)

On the other hand, I don't know how much time you could gain by recoding what's done in Lua in the vanilla game, I've never tried LuaJit for example.
 
bc1 said:
what a waste :lol: Civ is a 32-bit application which cannot use more than 2GB (with O/S overhead unless multitasking don't expect more than 4GB RAM useage)
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Oooh! All this time, I thought it was artificially capped. Now I know why. It is better knowing that it wasn't intentional. But sheesh, why can't they make it 64-bit capable?
 
Most likely not well optimized, might take a while to load but once I'm in a game I don't have any issues and I'm not running Civ on my SSD. Disabling the cinematic at the start reduced load time for a few people, but I didn't notice too much of a difference besides not having to skip it.
 
Are we talking about actually starting the game (to get to the main menu), or the load time to load a savefile (to play the game)?
Both are long but the first one is ok, because you only do it once, and you can do other stuff while it's loading, the second one is really annoying, especially with that configuring data message. It's just inefficient coding.
 
The startup loading time is really long, but the worst are the turn times.
Not only it's a huge waste of time, but far more dangerous, it's not healthy. It's simply not good for your brains.
 
Tatran said:
The startup loading time is really long, but the worst are the turn times.
Not only it's a huge waste of time, but far more dangerous, it's not healthy. It's simply not good for your brains.
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The turn time can be greatly reduced by going into strategic mode before ending the turn.
 
I'm familiar with the reduced turn times in the strategic view mode, but it's still too long in the late game.
One of the reasons I've stopped playing civ4 and civ5. Besides the games have become repetitve, the late game turn times on standard-large-huge maps are awful.
Players who happily wait 30 seconds or even minutes on their next turn shouldn't do that.
It's not healthy because somewhere in your brain the waiting process is going on.
Most players, like me, simply stare at the screen (watch a lot of nonsense) and wait.
I'm planning to do a test with turn times of some older games (like civ2 and SMAC) to see what time is acceptable to wait for the next turn. It's probably less than 5 seconds.
 
Dushku said:
Even if you already have quick movement/combat turned on?
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Those two options combine to eliminate most of the tactical map slowness, but not quite all.

Tatran said:
I'm familiar with the reduced turn times in the strategic view mode, but it's still too long in the late game.
One of the reasons I've stopped playing civ4 and civ5. Besides the games have become repetitve, the late game turn times on standard-large-huge maps are awful.
Players who happily wait 30 seconds or even minutes on their next turn shouldn't do that.
It's not healthy because somewhere in your brain the waiting process is going on.
Most players, like me, simply stare at the screen (watch a lot of nonsense) and wait.
I'm planning to do a test with turn times of some older games (like civ2 and SMAC) to see what time is acceptable to wait for the next turn. It's probably less than 5 seconds.
Click to expand...

Neither Civ 2 nor SMAC allowed there to be more than a total of 7 players at a time, including the human. While a standard map size isn't that different, playing on Huge map with default number of civs is comparing over 2X the number of AIs that those had and so is a very unfair comparison.

Today's processors are also a lot better than those around during Civ 2 / SMAC time. You'd need a very old processor to get an accurate representation on how long late game took during late game back then.
 
joncnunn said:
... is a very unfair comparison.
Click to expand...
To compare much older games, like civ2 and SMAC, with civ4 and civ5 on the same system isn't the purpose of the test.
It's to find out what pc system gives acceptable (very low) turn times.
Even if one civ5 game has an average of 15 seconds turn time, it's still a loss of 2.5 hours (600 turns) doing nothing.
Besides losing valuable time, there's something wrong when a player simply feels better not playing civ4 or civ5. And this has to do with all the waiting.
 
Civ 1 was never slow on a 1990 piece-o'-junk LCII Macintosh.

Civ 2 and SMAC were never slow on a contemporary computer in 1999.

Civ 3 was slow on monster sized scenario maps on a 2002 junky PC that I had. Scenarios that were "the whole world" and had 30 civs and probably a thousand cities and a few thousand military units. Normal scenarios there was no delay.

It's really only Civ 5 that is slow even at the beginning.

Even other 4X games don't have this problem like Master of Orion II, which worked fine on a 1995 computer.
 
I recall on Civ II generating a map being very slow on Huge map. (By contrast loading the 4000 BC autosave really fast.) No slowness noticed in late game even on this map size.

Civ III: Slight slowdown in AI turns noticed in modern era for large+ maps on the first machine I had during this period, and not at all on the second machine.

Civ IV had graphic glitches at the beginning during the first year of Vanilla on the first machine I ran. In addition, slowdown in AI turns noticed on standard map size in Industrial era. The second machine reduced, but did not eliminate this.

Civ V Vanilla had noticeable slow down in Modern era on standard map size. (Highly similar between my first machine on Direct X 9 and the second machine on Direct X 11)

BNW has noticeable slow down in Industrial era, and much worse than G&K and Vanilla.
 
Turn times are awful. I fought this battle long ago but not enough people cared. If you do the math on it it's a big part of your play time waiting unless you're pretty slow.

For some reason most just don't care these days. Waiting is part of gameplay for too many players.
 
Simultaneous turns dont take that much time in civilization 5 but hybrid turns do take awhile. Thats why shift clicking exist in simultaneous.
 
Honestly this is the biggest reason I cannot get into 5, it's so slow between turns and it's so slow to load you can't just play it for an hour at a time, it's not worth waiting. Maybe the devs dont' realize this, but there is a target audience who wants to load game, play 5 or 6 turns and then turn it off and it's impossible with 5. And just like 4 going a cultural or spaceship victory, there's a ton of just pressing enter to end turns and the time between them to do that is unacceptable.
 
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