Animated leaders = memory leak?

F

Fabius

Chieftain
Joined
Oct 27, 2005
Messages
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I read in another thread where someone conjectured that the talking heads of the leaders caused some sort of memory leak, and I think I can confirm that. The game runs decently for me, but when Caesar or Hatshepsut come on to talk to me, the game runs very choppy after that. If several leaders come on in a row I'm lucky if I can save the game before it crashes. Quitting and reloading the game clears it out and everything runs fine again . . . until another leader comes on the screen.

First, does anyone else with video problems notice this tendency? And second, is there a way to disable the talking heads of the other leaders so that I can test to see if my game stays stable if there are no animated leaders to talk to?
 
After attempting to play for several hours tonight, that seems to be the conclusion I've come to as well. The game runs beautifully for me at first, but as soon as an animated leader head shows up, my framerate and overall performace falls. I too can quit to the desktop and restart the game, with it running perfectly yet again, until another leader head shows up. I can live without the animated heads if it allows me to play this game that I already can tell I'll love, if only the performance didn't make me have to save and reload the game every other turn or so.
 
I'm having the same issue. Game runs fine until another leader appears... then gets progressivly slower and slower. Hope they put out a patch soon....
 
Ok guys, I think I may have found a solution of sorts for this problem. I'll explain it here, and then load Civ back up and try to test it. If you guys could try the same on your rigs, and let me know whether it worked for you or not.

This doesn't so much as elimnate the problem, but sort of correct it without having to dump the program and restart. Here's what I did.

While in my game after it had slowed conciderably, I enter the WorldBuilder option (which, why is there a trainer built directly into the game? Kind of takes the strategy element out if you ask me...), and added a few units. When I exited the builder, my framerate was back up to where it should be.

I'm going to spend a bit of time testing this out, and see if it's something I can recreate or just a glitch undoing another glicth. (C:
 
Lukas--

I'm personally running an older system... AMD Athlon 1.1, with 756m of RAM, and an nVidia GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. The video card is the newest componet, and it's over a year old. And the only problem I've encountered so far is this one with the talking heads (burining down the house...)

As for my theory, it doesn't hold up to my testing. I tried to insert random animals and units throughout the map, and even increasing my tech level to no avail. The best I can figure, I must have inadvertantly zoomed in. I know that at close (and I mean CLOSE) zoom, the framerate returns, but that makes it real hard to watch you back or even manage you civ. I'll keep playing around though, and see if I can't come up with something to help out.
 
I've had an issue with a leader(Peter the Great) initiating diplomacy popping up while one of my units was about to take a turn. I couldn't access the diplomacy choices, or my unit commands because they got all meshed together.
Must be MY computer's fault. It couldn't be that diplomacy or units weren't programmed with priorities set in place now could it?

I mean, this is a turn based game if it's MY turn why is another leader getting to initiate diplomacy? Must be my sound card drivers, right?
 
Ape, man, we've got to keep cool heads about this. I'm bummed out that the game's flawed as well. My fiance and I just started our first vaction in over a year today, and intended to spend it playing Civ. Now she's snoring on the couch, and I'm trying to figure out how to boost performance. It's understandable to be upset about the whole deal. Venting, while it may make you feel better at the time, doesn't really change the situation or fix it. Should it come down to something like a serious program error, then we can start to vent our anger at those responsible, but for now, howsabout we all put our heads together and try to figure out some solutions.
 
We were having this problem too:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=134794

Updating out motherboard chipset drivers solved it for two of us, both Asus motherboards - one an nforce and once an intel. Don't know why it solved it, but it may work for you as well.
 
lukas4 said:
What systems are y'all running? I need to upgrade, so I'm trying to find out what works and what doesn't. Thanks!
Click to expand...

I am running a simple Dell Dimension 5100 (I think they renamed it E510). It is only 2 months old. It has a P4 3.4Ghz 650 chipset. I added a 2Gb Crucial memory kit. I changed out the OEM X600 vid card that came with it to a ATI X800XL PCIe card.

I have had no problems that I can see. I really think the people that have pointed toward a memory leak are on the right track. Like I said I haven't seen this on my system. Then again I haven't played begining to end yet and I have 2Gb of ram to work with.
 
Alright guys, I tried an idea on a seperate thread and it's worked miracles for me. Try updating your motherboard, especially if you have an nForce based board. Follow the link from insectile for more information on it.
 
I updated my Intel chipset (I too have an Asus motherboard, a P4P800) and it seemed to fix my problems just like it has done for others. I grabbed the Intel Chipset update utility (version 5.0.2.1003) and ran it. I just went into one of the games that was a problem for me and one by one spoke to every leader in the game, and the game was still playable after I had talked to all of them. I think that might have done it!

I hope this works for the rest of you as well. It's certainly something to try that wasn't obvious to me at first. And the updater utility is easy to run too, for those of you with Asus boards.
 
Well, a little update on this one. While the Intel Chipset update fixed my choppiness due to leaders coming on the screen, I now have random crashes to the desktop (sometimes requiring a reboot because it sometimes fails to initialize the renderer), random freezes usually when scrolling around (the map just freezes for maybe 30 seconds or so, then it starts working again), and other problems I've never had before.

Apparently whatever I did to the chipset fixed one problem in exchange for picking up some others. Just wanted to warn people who have Asus boards who may do what I did. It might work for you, or you might be in the same boat as me. I still have to get out of the game and reload, just not as often as before, so I guess it is a small improvement.

It just stinks to be getting into the habit of saving the game after EVERY move I make.
 
Permission to come aboard Fabius? Too late, I've already been on the boat. After updating my MB drivers, the missus and I were able to get in a good 4 hours of gameplay without a single issue. The game ran magnifcently. We took a break while I made dinner and watched some TV. When we came back to the game we got maybe 45 minutes of gameplay in before it started rebooting my system. We kept trying for awhile, but my PC would reboot about every 10 minutes or so. I know my PC isn't the greatest, but I've played much more intensive games than this, and the only other to make my system crash like this was Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines.

I feel your pain...
 
Had exactly the same problem and I just reinstalled the NForce drivers for my mainboard and this problem is fixed for me at the moment.

I run an AMD 2400+ XP
MSI NX 6600GT
512MB RAM
 
KevInSweden said:
The process that is using 67% of your CPU is a tad suspect if you are having low perfomance.
Click to expand...

That would be the System Idle Process... This is normal.
 
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