Civ 3 Being Painfully Slow

[Raman]

Hey guys,

I have a 2.4 GHZ, 512 MB Pentium 4 computer w/ 128 MB Radeon Graphics Card. I have the Civ 3 Complete Edition.

When I start a game, it is fine until the game really kicks off, and I have built a number of bases. Then the waiting time in between turns gets horrendously long. I will click spacebar to end my turn, and then it'll take about 40 to 50 seconds to start the next turn (it literally just sits there for that long - I have deactivated being able to see opponents' movements). Why does it take so long to get from turn to turn? How can I speed this up?

Thanks!

 

[Raman]

Is it possible that I have too little RAM? 512 MB seems like a lot...

 

[civverguy]

What do you mean by really kicks off? Is it during the modern age?

 

[Quintillus]

First question: What size map are you playing, and with how many civs?

Right now I've got a Huge Map CivIII game up with 23 civs survining in the late Industrial Age, and RAM usage is 590 MB, including what my Internet browser, anti-virus/firewall, Microsoft Paint, and Notepad are using, combined over 87 MB (leaving at least 503 MB for Civ/Windows), so unless you're playing oversized maps I don't think RAM is your problem. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc and check PF usage in the Performance tab of Task Manager to see what RAM usage is with no programs up, though - if it's over 300 MB you might not have enough because of background programs.

The processor is probably what's slowing it down. I'm running a 2.66 GHz Pentium 4, and Civ 3 is Painfully Slow on the Huge Late Industrial 31-Civ game I'm running. You'll notice a similar slowdown on Huge maps. But you should notice Civ running much faster on smaller maps, to the point turn time is not an issue.

And it can get much worse than 40-50 seconds. The game I'm playing, it takes as long as 10 minutes between turns depending on what the AI does. The reason it takes so long is mostly how trade routes were coded - any time a city is captured, a harbor is built, anything else that affects trade, all trade routes are recalculated, which can take a horrendously long time with tons of civs, cities, and tiles. You notice this any time one of your cities completes a Harbor in the Modern Times on Huge maps, or when you capture a city in that situation.

There's really no way to speed it up without upgrading hardware - except playing with smaller maps or less civs. You can get an approximation of how powerful a new Core 2 Duo processor is for CivIII by doubling its speed (GHz) and comparing it to a Pentium 4 - a 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo would roughly halve your turn times.