Massive Slowdowns late game, memleak galore?

[Dale]

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

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.

 

[gdpdht]

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...

 

[Kohlrabi]

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.

 

[Dale]

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.

 

[Raion]

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/

 

[SHRIKEE]

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.

 

[Ghost5786]

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.

 

[Merkill]

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

 

[SHRIKEE]

and we do that how?

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

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

 

[SHRIKEE]

i'll try that, thanks!

 

[pajeg]

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

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

 

[coreybowman]

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....

 

[SK138]

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.

 

[SHRIKEE]

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.

 

[Dale]

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.

 

[Dale]

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.

 

[SHRIKEE]

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

 

[Dale]

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.

 

[SHRIKEE]

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