Civ 4 Lag Issue

[faile486]

I installed Civ 4 last night. When I tried to start it up, I got a loading screen, but then nothing happened. I've uninstalled and reinstalled, restarted my computer etc. Before going to bed I tried starting it up again with the same results. When I got up this morning it was open! Trying to progress through the menus takes at least 4-5 min for each to load...I thought it might be a drive issue, so again I uninstalled it and moved it from my C: drive (almost full) to my X: drive, which has over 100g of free space. It still takes forever to open (I'm at 30 minutes right now). When it did open this morning, the first thing I did was try the Update and it said I had the most up to date version.

I'm using XP with SP2. I've got a 2.8 Intel processor, 1 gig of ram, a Nvidia 8800 GTS card, so I meet the recommended specs (I saw something about TNL and it only listed Nvidia cards up to 7...not sure if it's out of date or if my card possibly doesn't have this?)

I'm not sure what my patch version is, but it said it was up to date when I ran Update.

My dxdiag file is attached.

Thanks for any help.

PS. I tried searching for lag issues, but they all seemed to be in-game topics, like troops lagging, or end-game lag.

PPS. It opened after 40 minutes. It's still lagging from menu to menu. A start time that's as long as the game was expensive sucks = (

 

[ori]

which version of the game (expansion?) are you using?
Your system should be up to the task

Welcome to Civfanatics

 

[faile486]

I'm using just Civ 4. I have BTS, but it won't install, which is a different tech issue altogether. I made it through the menus, and am going to see if the in-game lag is really bad.

I'm not sure how to check whether I have the latest patch, other than using the update feature, if you need that information as well ^^;

 

[ori]

have a look at advanced -> about this build it tells you the version number

 

[faile486]

Build Version: 1.7.4 (thanks for pointing out how to do that).

 

[ori]

please do the following:

open you civilizationIV.ini (located in my games\sid meier's civilization 4\ )
and set all items with log in their name from 0 to 1 (i.e. 4 of the last 5 items except the very last one). Save. Then start a game - try doing this until an actual game is started. Quit the game and post the contents of
my games\sid meier's civilization 4\logs
as a zip file here. You can attach files to a post by clicking go advanced and then manage attachments below the reply box.

 

[faile486]

Here are the logs you asked for.

PS. I've played a game up till the last 50 turns. It's now lagging really bad in-game too. About 2-5 minutes between clicking end turn and the next turn starting. It only started doing that in the last few turns. It's still taking between 20-40 minutes to open the game.

 

[faile486]

Were the logs any help?

 

[ori]

sorry, work distracted me. I did look through them and thought I had answered
Apart from the fact that it does not find the cache (which *could* explain some lack on startup - but only a couple minutes - not more) I don't see anything. You have installed it on a drive with the number X: - is that an external drive?

 

[faile486]

Nope. I've got one internal hard drive, with three partitions. C - 10 gig, X - 120 gig, and Z - 20 gig. Does this game normally require CDs to run? My husband thinks that the Direct2Drive might have caused an issue. Is this possible?

 

[ori]

direct2drive sells their own version of the game geared towards not requiring the CD/DVD - so this *should* not cause any problems - though you might want to contact d2d about this.
One thing: on which of the partitions is your my documents folder? the game needs access to this pretty much all the time, that would be the only thing I can think of.
Also you could try installing NeverMind's static leaderheads and movies packs from this site just in case its a graphics problem.

 

[faile486]

I have a folder called My Documents on my X drive, but I believe the official one is on my C drive, since that's the drive windows is installed on. That drive is almost completely full, and probably fairly slow = / The C drive being full is the reason I couldn't install BTS. I'll look for that pack and see if it helps.

 

[faile486]

Ah, after looking up what the pack does, I don't think it'll help. I don't generally have problems during animation. Only starting the game, going through menus, and when the game starts to get into the end stages - I think it's more of a processor type problem.

 

[ori]

look for where the following directories are:
documents and settings\<username>\my documents\my games\beyond the sword
and (this is a hidden directory)
documents and settings\<username>\application data\my games\beyond the sword

the first houses the autosaves and startup options the second houses the cache - both might be the reason for the lag if they are on a full partition.

One could probably change a few of those things by either turning off autosaves or changing some registry keys. But I don't want to delve into this without seeing if that might explain it

 

[faile486]

I don't have beyond the sword installed, just Civ 4.

C:\Documents and Settings\Kendra\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4

I wonder if there's a windows setting that would allow me to change where that folder is by default?

 

[ori]

sorry I had another thread in mind when I posted this path - I meant to write the Sid Meier's thing
you can set a different path for the saves in your shortcuts - but you might want to try the following: in the path you post above there is a file called civilizationIV.ini open that and set the line that says:
AutoSaveInterval = 4
to
AutoSaveInterval = 0

does this help? if yes then it is indeed the autosaving -

you can move the my documents path using the TweakUI utility from Microsoft - just google it, or search the microsoft website for it

 

[faile486]

TweakUI didn't help, and neither did changing the autosave. Direct2drive refused my technical support request, said I should contact the manufacturer in an automated reply = /