New better solutions to game performance increase

I have tested them many hours on huge map in modern era with all world visible on my:AMD 64 Sempron 3200+, 1,5 GB Mem, GeForce 6600 128 RAM.
After applying them the game and graphic is much faster and generates less crashes due to small memory needs.

Of course this changes does not resolve problems with very slow unit reactions time in advanced game. (there is some errors in game programming which can be only resolved by Firaxis themselve)

Ok lets go: (some change are known but I have contained them all in one)

1. You can have no start movies by replacing two files in GameInstallCatalog/Assets/Art/Movies/Intros on files from intros.zip

2. Replace textures and leader files to much smaller versions
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=144459
(there is a huge speed change, but game graphic will be lower)

creator of this MOD wrote:

After getting fed up with the periodic slowdowns in the game, I went through most of the textures, dramatically reducing their resolution in order to improve both performance and memory usage.

You should experience a tremendous improvement in the early part of a game, however the effect won't be as noticeable in the late game.

There are two sets. One is for regular in-game textures, the other is for the animated leaders.

This pack replaces alot of ingame textures with low resolution versions.
This pack is for the leaderheads. I stripped all mipmap detail and made all texture resolutions uniform - before, the chicks had gigantic textures. Catherine, Hatshepsut and Victoria had individual textures that were over 1 mb.

Click to expand...

it's originally for 1.09 but with 1.52 works too

### this is totally new ####

3. Replace 3 files in GameInstallCatalog/Assets/XML/Art on files from Art.zip
(back up original)
I made it myself. What are the changes:
- in cities there will be only some simple generic buildings generated by game. There will not be any of your buildings. (granary, market etc. )
- no shaders in bonus improvements (horses, sheeps ....)

That changes makes game graphic simplest and do more playable game speed. Especially in later game. If you don't like it you can always come back to original files.

4. As you probably don't know the game is copy protected by SafeDisc copy protection by Macrovision. It 's prevent to play without CD.
http://www.safecast.com/products/activereach_games/safedisc/index.shtml
Always when you start your game this product is activated and affects your system and your game. A process windows\temp\~e5.0001 is always on the run. It takes about 1,6 MB of system memory. It's added to civilization.exe and makes this file bigger more then 2 MB. Some people write that it can slow down games. I check this regard to Civilization IV and I consider that is true.
I understand that it protect game rights but ..... what to do when game running it's so slow ... It makes it slower .... sure not faster. Every time you start your game you can switch by ALT+TAB to pulpit and enter by CTRL+ALT+DEL to Task Manager and kill the ~e5.0001 process in memory.
It doesn't work with not pached version 1.00. Hmm - let's see if my post there is not will be erased from this forum but in my opinion and tests .... this is true - without this is faster. If someone have reservation about this - I will erase this point from this message.

### end new changes ###

# Other known hardware improvements witch affects game speed a little:

- force graphic card shaders to 1.1 by for example by RivaTuner
http://www.nvworld.ru/downloads/rivatuner.zip in Main/Driver settings/Customize/DirectDraw and Direct 3Dsettings/Shaders

- change your graphic card setting in Windows screen properties to high performance

- set AGP Aperture Size in Bios to [128MB] (in Award Bios you have to press CTRL + F1 and in Advanced Chipset Features will appear this option)


thats all
Kristof
Sorry for my irregular English.

The Apolyton link is dead or needs correcting.

When you say a 'no CD version', you mean somekind of cracked version right? I don't think this is tolerated too well on these forums.

Don't get me wrong it is certainly a interesting read but I would rather use 'official' fixes. Sure, the shaders and AGP pointers work well though.
Can you not just stop the SafeDisk program running after you have got a game going anyway since it only seems to check the CD/DVD when it first loads up?

Zanmato said:

The Apolyton link is dead or needs correcting.

Click to expand...

You are right - it was my mistake. Now it works

Zanmato said:

When you say a 'no CD version', you mean somekind of cracked version right? I don't think this is tolerated too well on these forums.

Click to expand...

I have removed this from my post.

Zanmato said:

Don't get me wrong it is certainly a interesting read but I would rather use 'official' fixes.

Click to expand...

Of course I am waiting for patch too, but there is so many graphic in this game then I think it do not resolve problems with game speed especially on low end machines .......

Zanmato said:

Can you not just stop the SafeDisk program running after you have got a game going anyway since it only seems to check the CD/DVD when it first loads up?

Click to expand...

Yes. I dont see a long time if it loads again, but i think it do not..

And finally I know where the problem is..... Game is slowing down when in your visible area is the very huge stack of enemy units ... In one of AI city was about 100 units. When my plane discover this part of map with this city game becomes unplayable. About 1 minute of waiting on unit reaction. To fix this problem I entered to WB and I deleted these units. And game speed returns to normal. Of course it's no sense to play further. As you see problem is in programming in this case ->"PATCH: 1.52 - huge map - game is unplayable" http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=157623

Not in graphic or system resources .... Something is wrong in game code after how some values are too high. I understand long priods when AI thinking but not slow game on my turn. If you have very slow end of the game go to WB save as WB scenario and load this scenario. What a huge speed up. Of course it's changes everything but simply to see, that the same amount of graphic, units etc. don't made this game sluggish.

Lots of units on screen dont lag me down to much, if i could stop the tree sway i could play the game stable. If you no how i could do this please reply.

My specs

1GB PC2100 Ram

2.4 Ghz P4

Geforce 5700 LE 256

Running windows xp home edition.

Im pretty computer savy and am going to take my A+ Certification soon but i dont no much about programming and such so any help is appericated.

Dudy80 said:

Lots of units on screen dont lag me down to much, if i could stop the tree sway i could play the game stable. If you no how i could do this please reply.

Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I don't understand what you want to say by: "stop the tree sway".... Mayby to stop AI to growing. But on Deity level I don't see it possible. Try play my game: http://kristof734.webpark.pl/save.zip. You will understand what I'm talking about.

Hi there.

The suggested fixes do work pretty well.

What bothers me is that by the time we have all these fixes in place, we are playing a game that has Stick People on a CGA background.

Thanks for the fixes...

Later!

Sorry if you misunderstood me, i ment the animation of the trees being pused in the wind. On maps with alot of forests is lags so bad.

Has anyone tried these performance enhancers with Warlords? They worked superbly for me in v1.52, but I haven't tried them since.

Any other tricks for improving Warlords game speed (other than the settings in the Options and .ini file)?

My performance boost version:
- Upgrade CPU from Intel 2.4B to 2.8B.
- Upgrade VGA Card from ATI 9500pro 128MB AGP to ATI x1600pro 512MB AGP.
* Pending: Memory upgrade from 1GB to 2GB.

Regards,
Arto.

jray said:

Has anyone tried these performance enhancers with Warlords? They worked superbly for me in v1.52, but I haven't tried them since.

Any other tricks for improving Warlords game speed (other than the settings in the Options and .ini file)?

Click to expand...

I answered my own question:

1. The low-quality terrain files worked fine as-is.

2. The updated art (removing shading and animation) is not compatible as-is. But it only took an hour or so to update the files according to the handful of XML name changes between v1.52 and v2.00 (Warlords) and also add the new buildings. I'll try to post the updated files later.

3. I did not try the new leaderheads.

jray said:

Has anyone tried these performance enhancers with Warlords? They worked superbly for me in v1.52, but I haven't tried them since.

Click to expand...

I can't speak for Warlords (don't own it), but the XML art solution isn't compatible with v1.61. If anyone is updating this to be compatible with the latest versions that would be great.