Can someone explain to me why a 5-year old game has wait times at all?

[kwanzaabot]

Honestly. This game is old. Not Frogger or Pong old, but it's definitely not a recent game. AND, it's not particularly graphics-heavy! So, I just don't get it.

I'm currently running a Final Frontier campaign in Beyond The Sword, and I was experiencing 30 second to 1 and a half minute waits between turns right after I met my first foreign civilization. Even if I had dozens of other civs on a huge map, for 5-year old game, that's way too long. What, 4 gigs of RAM not enough?

Before I got BTS off of Steam, I was playing a Warlords campaign, and the wait times were just as bad, though it took a fair few more civs before that happened!

I've googled around, and there's plenty of tips on how to get the game running smoothly (though playing in windowed mode and modifying the .ini file didn't help one bit), and they didn't help at all, so I suspect that maybe there's something in my hardware that could be part of the problem.
So just in case, I've uploaded my DxDiag file. I think it's safe to say that I exceed the system requirements! (Hell, I even went to systemrequirementslab.com to double-check!)

 

[Jarlaxe Baenre]

Because of all the information on it. On a huge map, it has to process hundreds of unit moves, all in 3-d, all with their own animations, as well as have the AI make a logical decision.

 

[kwanzaabot]

Because of all the information on it. On a huge map, it has to process hundreds of unit moves, all in 3-d, all with their own animations, as well as have the AI make a logical decision.

So, I guess this game would've been unplayable back in '05 then?

I exceed the recommended system specs by lightyears, so even if they have all that stuff to process, it's inexcusable for a game that old to take that long on my PC. A modern, crappy bargain bin PC should be able to run this game smoothly.

I hate to think how horribly Civ V would run.

 

[Furiey]

Even Civ 3 has long wait times between turns on large maps. Yours seem excessive though at the start. With 4GB of memory you can't use it all with the 32 bit OS you have, usually Win 7 comes with both the 32 and 64 bit versions on the install disc so you might want to consider installing the 64 bit version at some point so you can use all your RAM, if HP have given you full install discs that is...

You should try and update your video drivers, there have been frequent updates for Win7, again assuming HP have more recent drivers or will let you use the standard ATI ones, brand name computer companies are notorious for not maintaining drivers up to date.