Is there any way to get around the late-game slowdown?

Honestly, this is crazy! The game runs relatively fast-- though still a BIT slow (as compared to other turn-based games) between turns until I hit the modern era. When the modern era comes around, the game goes MUCHO slow!

I find myself having to wait 5 minutes for my saved games to load; the game has mini-freezes perpetually; each AI turn takes about 3 minutes; scrolling across the map becomes EXTREMELY slow. This ONLY happens in the late game!

Any ideas why? Is this common? And is there any way to fix it?


Thanks!

Do you have the 1.61 patch? Do you have at least 1GB of RAM? After that, upgrade CPU and graphics card.

vilemerchant said:

Do you have the 1.61 patch? Do you have at least 1GB of RAM? After that, upgrade CPU and graphics card.

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I am patched to 1.61. Will you send me the money for a new computer?

Gam said:

I am patched to 1.61. Will you send me the money for a new computer?

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I take it you're young and don't have a job? You could always sell your arse for cash

Just do all the regular things. Close any unnessesary processes, defrag your disk, set the graphics settings to the minimum.... write an angry email to fireaxis for lying their arses off about the minimum specs.

jimbob27 said:

I take it you're young and don't have a job? You could always sell your arse for cash

Just do all the regular things. Close any unnessesary processes, defrag your disk, set the graphics settings to the minimum.... write an angry email to fireaxis for lying their arses off about the minimum specs.

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No, I'm a college student and I don't have time for a bloody job!

Anyhow, why is it that the actual slowdown happens in late game only? Like, it slows down by a factor of 10.

The further you get into the game the more cities and units there will be to compute build orders for and move about. You could try playing smaller maps with less civs maybe? A fresh reboot can help too, especially if you've had the computer running for 5 days and have opened and closed 1000 applications.

BTW, I found the perfect solution to getting a new computer. It involved getting cute gaming-addict girl to move in and offering to build her a nice PC if she bought the parts hah

Well, i've noticed that the memory leak still hasn't been fixed, and just minimizing the game and bringing it back up will help sometimes. Fact is, even though i like the game, it was programmed by monkeys. The graphics (while nice for civ, but i don't care about graphics anyway) are about HL1 quality, yet deliver lower framerates later in the game than Oblivion does on high settings!!!!! And it's a turn-based game for crying out loud...there shouldn't be much getting processed between turns besides idle animations. I'd hate to see Civ5 with up to date graphics...a $5000 system would chug along at 5fps Anyway, i feel for ya man, they really programmed the graphics like ****. Upgrade, run it on lowest settings, play on a smaller world size with fewer players, play zoomed in...thats about all you can really do.

Small maps and early conquests

I had that problem too, but my tax returns came in and i shelled out some dough to upgrade... and WOW! What a difference! I hated having to do that, but love the way the game plays now.

Upgrading your machine will help, but if you are asking "Is there anyway, on a huge terra map playing against 18 civs on marathon to make turns take less than a second in late game" the answer is likely no. I basically upgrade my computer just to have late game turns in civ as fast as possible - they are pretty fast now, but its still slow when compared to any other game.

I'm running a dual core 64 bit opteron 170 @ 2.6 GHz (roughly equiv. to an FX60) with 2 gigs of ram @ 500 Mhz. This improved things substantially over my 2.4C @ 3.1 GHz w/1.5 gigs @ 400 Mhz, but its still slower than I'd like.

I mean, it isn't that bad, but I want to click and be taking my turn again by the time my finger comes up from the mouse

Hey Fraxis - cluster support in civ?

If you're running WinXP go to Control Panel>Adminstrative Tools>Services and set the Themes Service to Manual. The interface remains the same albeit without the cutesy 3D touches. It frees up a boatload of system resources and allows you to play Civ on higher graphics settings without chugging.

http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/blkviper/servicecfg.htm
The computer runs a bit faster with reduced settings. I don't know how large the save file can get without the slowdown, but I have reached 1,300KB when the game ended. Has anyone made a larger save without slowdown?

I always play huge maps / marathon, and although this slowdown is less than it was with earlier versions and patches, it is still there....its even more noticable if you consult military advisor, or conduct diplomacy / trade maps on a regular basis...

What works a little for me in late game (cos I get no slowdown at all till then), is play the game for a couple of hours, then quit out, wait till your machine has completetly ridded CIV for RAM, then go back into the game (always pressing shift to clear cache)...it then runs at a reasonable speed again for a few hours (depending again on how much stuff you open...map trades, military advisor, diplo stuff etc)...

Hmmm..I'm describing all the symptoms of a "memory leak" still existing am I not?

No,no,no,no,no don't start that again....anyways the above procedure works for me, and even though it's a pain to do, it forces me to stop playing every few hours and have a small break, which can't be a bad thing...thanks for that firaxis

Ps: I always also switch off all anti-virus, spyware, adware and the like, and kill as many of the myriad of unecessary progs that XP runs in the background as possible, in other words allocate as much RAM and cpu time to CIV as my machine will allow, this helps too...

Is it possible that it is just the amount of individual animations for each little building going on (or even the number of building shown on the map for that matter)?

The gave us the option to turn off buildings from global view - how about the option to turn off buildings all the time? Perhaps this is why it slows down after trading maps (more buildings all of the sudden)?

looking at the pretty buildings and the little mining carts has nothing to do with civ.

try my tiny and small maps if you like...

I also get slow downs late in game, even on some of the smaller maps. I have found that hitting the start key on my keyboard and bringing up the desktop then going back into game helps for a few turns. Gets quite annoying but the game keeps playing.
I have a 1 gig of ram, BFG 6800GT 256meg and a AMD 64 3200+, not overclocked at all. So this shouldnt be a hardware issue. Also I dont have all the eye candy turned on. I think its one of those design features that you have to get used to

Milford said:

I have found that hitting the start key on my keyboard and bringing up the desktop then going back into game helps for a few turns.

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Thanks for this tip, Im going to give it a try later.


I have a high spec machine, and I find that slowdowns are still present in the latest patch, however, they have become intermittant.

Late game on a large/huge map it can be buzzing along reasonably happily, and then all of a sudden it reverts back to 1 FPS.

Very frustrating.

If you get a slowdown to that extent it's time to reboot.

Gam said:

Any ideas why? Is this common? And is there any way to fix it?

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1. No,
2. Yes,
3.1 Ctrl-O
3.2 Zoom in (Close-up). for this, Rolling up Mouse-Scroll or Click PgUp 20 times
3.3 OCC.
3.4 Buy Warlord

vilemerchant said:

If you get a slowdown to that extent it's time to reboot.

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nope - it is time to wait it out for civ to get back on track... on my xp laptop - it is around a 5 minute wait - i don't have any slideshow slowdowns on my win98 (it is slower in late game, but not slideshow slow) - i did not have the slideshow slowdown before patch 1.52

there are a number of posts about these slowdown issues - they don't affect everyone the same

Hmm i get slow down in game play. Im wondering what patch 1.61 did to my game play. Was fine before that. Even on huge maps although load times were slow. Im convinced its a driver issue in my case but flashing bios to allow new ati driver to work is something im not an expert at. i did try the new ATI driver for laptop but it crashes if you load a video in WMPlayer. Thats true on websites too. Had to revert. I dont think the prog is corrupt as it only ever suffers serious lag that goes after 30-40 seconds.

Come on firaxis tell us why you wont fix the problem. Perhaps as customer service you could post us all 1gb of free ram to put our minds at rest of what issue is? (if you cant afford that i would be happy to accept the 1gb of ram to clarify to all users problems. Anything to help people here )