> 30 minutes a turn !!?

[iiee]

I am only at industrial age and having like 30 min waiting time per turn... this is unplayable Any of u experience this?

I play huge map, 11 civ including me. I custom set the senario to myself in a group and another 10 civ in second group. My idea is not wanting the civ to fight among themselves. no animation on battle and movement.

Everything seems ok; those civ only fight with me individually but not fighting among themselves UNTIL the civ can sign mutual protection agreement. I am at war with a civ when this agreement is researched, so i quickly sign it with all other civ. the civ i am fighting do the same too. In next turn, kaboom, mutual protection agreement drag all civ into war, everyone is in war with everyone..... this is the time where the turn waiting time shoot up to 15min, then 20, now 30 and heading to 40....

My system is Pentium4 3.4G, 1024 mb ram, 10000 rpm hdd, X800XT PE.

 

[Pounder]

I have had games on hugh maps 250x250 or 300x300 with 31 civs and when there are big movements of troops because of war or what ever, turns can take over 2 hours.

I usually just leave it running in the background and do something else. Or just play smaller maps.

BTW, welcome to CFC.

 

[Bluemofia]

usually this happens in huge maps, and in maps when the ai hasen't fought for a long long time

 

[dojoboy]

Try turning off animations, in the preferences menu. Kill anything that may make turns last longer. Nothing happens on a huge map that can't happen on a standard or small map.

 

[warpstorm]

Play on a smaller map.

 

[Jaybe]

Large/Huge maps are the BEST! Epic games should also be of epic LENGTH!
For a faster-loading game, check out CFC-Rhye's of Civilization

 

[tjedge1]

Another trick I've learned is...

Before loading the game when you start civ3, minimize the game and open your task manager. Click on processes, and then right-click the Civ3Conquests.exe, then select priority and select high, then select ok. I've found that this speeds up the game dramatically. Makes giga maps much more fun and easier. Try it out, trust me.

 

[JonathanValjean]

Another trick I've learned is...

Before loading the game when you start civ3, minimize the game and open your task manager. Click on processes, and then right-click the Civ3Conquests.exe, then select priority and select high, then select ok. I've found that this speeds up the game dramatically. Makes giga maps much more fun and easier. Try it out, trust me.

Great idea, tjedge1!

Welcome to CFC, iiee.

 

[sabo]

I had a turn once that took 3 hours, 2 and a half of it was Persia attacking me. I was so disgusted with the length of that turn that the next turn I stole his military plans and nuked as many of him as I could

 

[Xerol]

Problem with setting priority higher is that if you want to do anything else on the PC during the AI cycles, there isn't any processor to do it with. That, and sometimes it can make the whole system unstable and doing something like bumping the start button can lock up the whole thing.

 

[Pentium]

I played only one game on huge map, it was huge Earth. The AI turn was almost half an hour, so I did my homework, then I read a book and in one turn I had dinner. The problem is that you got messages for everything they do.

 

[tjedge1]

Problem with setting priority higher is that if you want to do anything else on the PC during the AI cycles, there isn't any processor to do it with. That, and sometimes it can make the whole system unstable and doing something like bumping the start button can lock up the whole thing.

Well, with the priority on high, you don't really get much time to do anything else on your system. If you have too many problems, then you can just use abovenormal setting instead and it still makes a difference.

iiee has a far more powerful system than me, and it cut my 20 minute waiting period to 2 minutes.

 

[tR1cKy]

You probably have something not very right on your hardware and/or software.
Your pc is really powerful - even on huge maps it should not wait 30 minutes for a turn. I remember when playing huge maps, even in modern era with lots of units everywhere, it didnt take more than 2 minutes to end a turn. My comp is an athlon xp @2640mhz (watercooling rocks ) - fsb@220 and ddr@440 (512megs), and my video card is still a geforce 4 mx!!!

You have a p4, it may throttle because of overheating (boxed heatsinks SUXXXX).
You may have all graphics stuff turned on in your WindozeXP - get rid of them, they're useless.
You may have a disk too fragged - defrag, nortonize the file system, set a fixed size for your swap file and put it at the start of the disk.
You may have viruses, spyware, lot of things in autoload etc... all this stuff eats up cpu power for nothing, get rid of them as much as you can.
A lame Windoze98 is enough to play civ3 and do whatever you want. Consider using this ancient, but still reliable os.

 

[Vegasgustan]

Is this just a PC issue? I can play on my eMac which has the following: Mac OS 10.2.8, 800 MHz PowerPC G4 Processor, 640 RAM, and 133 MHz of Bus Speed, and never have more than a two minute wait time. Just curious...

 

[Bagatur]

What about NoAIPatrol=1 ?

 

[Bluemofia]

in the TETukerhan map I once had about 1hour wait time and 20 minutes doing stuff. took a while to do anything

 

[Pounder]

There are games reported lasting more the 600 hours, that's averaging more than an hour per turn.

 

[allhailIndia]

One of the reasons I haven't played a huge map in quite a while...maybe I should follow these suggestions and give it a shot...

 

[Bluemofia]

take a look at this game.

 

[Tomoyo]

Bah. That's nothing.