About running Civ3 in late games

[nutnutwin]

Late games, esp mod games, tend to run totally slow with the torrents of units and cities, for civ3, would an upgrade of computer help release the problem? I mean, is there a boundary set by the coding(which I'm not very familiar with) that even you have far superior computer, the game just won't make use of, which makes the upgrade totally futile?

My Thx.

 

[civverguy]

I think its because of the massive amount of units your computer has to calculate. Maybe getting more RAM is better.

 

[Theryman]

If you are willing to upgrade your computer to play Civ a bit better, then, we all here are humbled. We bow before you- you are a true Civver!

Will it help? To a point. Let's just say that a computer with one gig of ram and a 3.4 ghz majigger will load the turns much faster than my 224 mb, 1.4 ghz computer. However, there is bound to be some slowdown no matter what type of computer you are using.

For the record, what are the specs on your computer?

 

[nutnutwin]

Just 2.4ghz with 1GB RAM actually assembled about 3 years ago...with a radeon 9550 128M RAM(which has nothing to do with Civ3 but explain why I try to shun Civ4...to slow on large map)

 

[MAS]

2.4 GHz and 1 GB RAM? That should run civ3 almost as fast as one can go!

I'd upgrade such a system when I have more than 1 reason to. For example, to play civ4, plus a bunch of other games/non-game software. I may plan to get my hands on.
Then the extra speed in Civ3 would be a welcome side effect.

 

[ecuwins]

That comp should be plenty fast. My only suggestion is: play smaller maps if the slowdown is an issue.

 

[Kumquat]

If you made only grassland, plains, flood plains, and hills as the only land that you could settle on that would speed it up and keep barbs around. Making settlers wheeled and more expensive would slow down the land grab. If worker jobs took longer and they were more expensive the entire game would slow down.

 

[Sanctum]

I was told awhile back that its caused by the amount of trade routes that the computer has to deal with, and thats why it sometimes pauses for a bit when you raze a city, because it checks if any trade routes were canceled.

Through the editor you can make airports a small wonder and maybe harbours to (keep in mind that you can't have colonies if you make harbours small wonders, ran into that problem myself). I don't know if making harbours and stuff cost more would deter th AI from building them, but you could try that too.

Oh and the guy above me has good ideas to, on a earth map I set all worker actions to take three times as long as they normally should, and it worked alright, there wern't roads and other improvments on every single tile, but all the tiles in my core were completely built up and most outer cities wern't half bad either. The less roads helps cut down on improvments.

 

[T.A JONES]

If you upgrade to 3.2ghz the turns will be faster, after that, everything is at its pinnicle. I went out to buy the fastest turns possible and it ended at 3.2.

I tried dual core (two 3.2's) and it made no differnce to what was already lightning speed. You'll know your at Civ3's optimal performance when the AI blurs its moves across the screen with no real deleys in between pillage and only slight pauses for mass wars and city takeovers.
Expect another slight deley right after your citys building projects have been anounced.( Nothing more then ten seconds. ) and thats it


I should mention Im talking bout playin full random epics made larger then 'default' huge with the help of the editer but larger only to a certain extent, after which 'to many city error become more a problem.

Standard huge should never have much deleys and if it does, you definatly have room to upgrade. (without buying new motherboard, try clearing more virtual mem or overclocking)
Of course the more civs, the more deley as each civ's moves are added to the total sum. Try for 18-22 civs to keep it under a minute with a 3.2 processor.

 

[CommandoBob]

Just 2.4ghz with 1GB RAM actually assembled about 3 years ago...with a radeon 9550 128M RAM(which has nothing to do with Civ3 but explain why I try to shun Civ4...to slow on large map)

I've got a PIII Celeron 500 MHz 256MB RAM. My IBT took forever too (15 minutes) until...I stopped automating workers. Now I control them and the IBT is not bad at all. Noticeable, yes, but even on a Huge map the 'hang time' of 'please wait' is about a minute.

The longest wait time was on a modded Earth map for the SG Mad Madagascardians. That map was larger than Huge. That turn took about 5 minutes on the IBT (In Between Turn). To me, that was reasonable

Um, how much free RAM do you have when Civ is loaded? (CachemanXP is a free download that can give you that number.)

 

[Quintillus]

Just 2.4ghz with 1GB RAM actually assembled about 3 years ago...with a radeon 9550 128M RAM(which has nothing to do with Civ3 but explain why I try to shun Civ4...to slow on large map)

I suspect the processor is the problem. I've never seen CivIII use up 1 GB of RAM even on the 180x180 Huge Vanilla maps. Check in Task Manager while Civ is running to see how much you have left. If you still have a decent amount free, a RAM upgrade won't help.

I have 2.66 GHz and 1 GB RAM. A 180x180 map with 31 civs create really slow IBTs. I don't remember it being as bad with 16 civs on a 180x180 map. With 25 or so civs surviving in the late 1800s, I was getting 7-minute turn times. The worst delays are when Harbors are built - and thence trade routes are re-calculated.

An processor upgrade probably would help, I doubt a RAM upgrade would. I suspect there would be some increase in 3.4+ GHz P4's over 3.2's, though. And any of the new Core 2's or Athlon X2's should be faster than a 2.4 GHz P4. Dual-core won't help much...unfortunately CivIII (or IV) can't take advantage of that.

Of course all the techniques to reduce the AI's overexpansionist tendancies would also help - I know many of the makers of uber-huge Earth maps for CivIII implemented modified settling rules in their mods. And until you have some other reason to upgrade, you might as well just fiddle with the rules a bit. Then when you have more reasons to upgrade, make sure you get a really good (albeit reasonably priced) processor so you can play Civ at blazing speeds!

 

[Heretic_Cata]

2.4 GHz and 1 GB RAM? That should run civ3 almost as fast as one can go!

That's kinda what i have. The last game i tried was a huge map. Everything was good. Even in the 4th era the end turn times were 15-30 seconds (with show enemy turns disabled ofcourse - with that on it would take a few minutes to show every single unit move )

 

[RFHolloway]

Try having caps lock on - that turns off the unit animation which makes the between turns go quicker. You might miss some useful info, but if its taking too long you probably arn't watching too closely anyway.