Civ 3 complete suddenly crawling in speed

[dirtworm]

I was doing fine up until i started making far away contact with civs and got part of their maps...now the game crawls to load each turn, attached is my save file. please tell me if it is the same on yours?
i am wondering if this has anything to do with my macbook...

 

[Blue Monkey]

You may be experiencing the well known slow down once you can trade via harbors. My understanding of it is that the AI searches every possible combination of tiles across the seaways looking for a route.

 

[AlanH]

There's no attached file. As Blue Monkey says, there is a lengthy computation process in between turns to recalculate trade routes between all Civs, and every tile. If you are on a slow Mac or playing a huge map then this can get very slow.

 

[dirtworm]

i just relized that i didn't attach that save file..i'll get around to it
and that is interesting. something to note it slows down a TON when i had it playing on my external screen, then when i palyed it in a window on my laptop screen it wasn't near as slow...

 

[AlanH]

On the external screen, were you playing full-screen? Just that you specified window mode on the laptop screen, if so this might be a significant difference.

 

[dirtworm]

well, just did some more testing...it has slowed down even more, and it wasn't in windowed mode. it froze on the city screen, i am on a macbook 2.0 ghz, 2gb ram, i don't get it?

 

[AlanH]

So when you play in windowed mode it isn't as slow, and it doesn't freeze?

 

[dirtworm]

when i play in windowed mode it is much slower (which would seem obvious) i played it on my laptop screen in only 1024x640 it ran fine...
kinda sad, civ 3 look sweet on 1280x1024

 

[AlanH]

when i play in windowed mode it is much slower (which would seem obvious)

BUT ...

i played it on my laptop screen in only 1024x640 it ran fine...

.. that's in window mode, and faster?

You have totally confused me now. You also said ...

it slows down a TON when i had it playing on my external screen, then when i palyed it in a window on my laptop screen it wasn't near as slow...

Faster in window mode?

And ...

it has slowed down even more, and it wasn't in windowed mode.

Slower in full screen mode?

Sorry if I'm being thick.

 

[dirtworm]

yeah, i made no sense
windowed mode
1280x1024 (slow as crap)
1204x640 (runs fine
any other resolution under 1280x1024 windowed runs fine
fullscreen
any resolution takes long to loud each turn and gets me the spinning ball for quite a long time

sorry about the confusion.

 

[AlanH]

Like the old joke goes ...

Patient: My head hurts when I bang it against the wall.

Doctor: Then stop banging your head on the wall.

Sounds to me like you ought to be playing in a window smaller than 1280 x 1024?

 

[dirtworm]

sounds about right
kinda annoying that a new computer can't play a game that is...how old is civ 3?

 

[D0NIMATRIX]

6-7 years old.

 

[AlanH]

Just for information ...

I was looking at a late game save from the current Civ3 SGOTM, which is on a huge map with 30 civs. I ran an inter-turn, just accepting the defaults in the build and diplo dialogs, and timed it, first in the Aspyr/Mac OS X version of Civ3 Complete, then in the Atari/Windows version running in Parallels/WinXP. Same hardware, one 2.66 GHz Xeon CPU core in use by Civ3.

Mac OS X: 8.5 mins
WinXP: 6.5 mins

Notes:

1. The WnXP virtual machine had a limit of 1 GByte, and that memory plus the single core used by Parallels had to handle Windows and Civ3.

2. Civ3 used one core in OS X as well, but the operating system had the other three cores to play in, and the whole 4 GBytes of RAM were available to the OS X combo.

3. Graphics probably had very little effect on the times, as hardly any screen activity was visible during this test.

I conclude that the Mac port of Civ3 Complete is inherently about 30% slower than the Windows version, probably due to compiler inefficiencies.