Civ III Complete 1.22 Rev.A speed

[tao]

I got my copy of Civ III Complete (bought on eBay), installed it, and immediately applied the Rev.A patch.

To my dismay, the speed is abysmal, i.e. 2-3 times slower than vanilla Civ III 1.29b2. Is this caused by the patch and will hopefully (may eventually) improve after another patch?

PowerMac G4 MDD 2x1GHz, 1.75GB RAM, 64MB ATI Graphics

 

[AlanH]

It sounds as if there may be something wrong in your setup. My "old" Mac is lower spec than yours. 1GHz single CPU, 1.12GBytes RAM, 32 MBytes Geforce 4MX. It runs Civ3 Complete Rev A at least as fast as it ran version 1.29b2.

 

[Mxzs]

OTOH, you're not the only one who has had issues with the patch.

 

[tao]

Maybe because I run in 1600x1200 full color, all animations mode.

 

[AlanH]

I always leave all animations on, but I usually run 1280 x 1024 on my second screen, which fills it. I sometimes run the next smaller resolution to allow easier window movement between screens. Always in full colour, always in a window, never full screen, as I always want to be able to see other windows on my primary screen while Civ is up.

I've noticed that the Mac Civ4 community seems to find window mode is faster. I wonder if there's any reason, and if so, whether it applies to Civ3 as well.

 

[tao]

I did a complete re-install and "measured" times before and after patching. The patched version feels much slower and increased load times by a factor of about 3.

PS: Windowed mode is not faster.

 

[benjaminz]

I have the same problem -- very slow load times when starting a new game or loading a saved game. Game play itself "feels slower" too, though I have no empirical evidence of that. In my case, starting a new game is the worst: it gives me a spinning beachball for several seconds and causes severe stuttering of the music. Factor of three seems about right to me. On another note, I even experienced my first crash of C3C after installing the patch.

Is there an easy way to roll back to the previous version, short of reinstalling from the DVD?

 

[AlanH]

I suspect all you need to do to roll back is to copy the actual application files from the DVD. That would be a lot quicker, since most of the installation time is moving the data to your hard drive, and the data doesn't change between versions.

The application files on the Civ 3 Complete DVD are /Civ III Complete/Civilization 3 Complete and /Civ III Complete/Unsupported Extras/Civilization 3 Play The World.

 

[benjaminz]

I suspect all you need to do to roll back is to copy the actual application files from the DVD. That would be a lot quicker, since most of the installation time is moving the data to your hard drive, and the data doesn't change between versions.

The application files on the Civ 3 Complete DVD are /Civ III Complete/Civilization 3 Complete and /Civ III Complete/Unsupported Extras/Civilization 3 Play The World.

Yes, that did seem to do it. Odd, since the patched 1.22 Rev A (v10667) C3C application is 114.1 MB in size, and the unpatched 1.22 (v4945) is 6.2 MB in size. That's a major jump!

Anyway, I tried it and had a nice fast experience creating a new game. Thanks!

 

[AlanH]

The patched one is Universal Binary. That accounts for 6 MBytes because there are effectively two copies of the application.

Looking at the bundle contents, there are *two* 50 MByte folders called "Resources/Disabled" and "Resources Disabled" in the patched version. Each folder contains a complete copy of InstallAnywhere - a cross platform Java installer system - complete with a 24 MByte user manual. I doubt if either was supposed to be in there . I recommend throwing them in the trash to save 100 MBytes of disk space.

 

[Philip Wing]

Looking at the bundle contents, there are *two* 50 MByte folders called "Resources/Disabled" and "Resources Disabled" in the patched version. Each folder contains a complete copy of InstallAnywhere - a cross platform Java installer system - complete with a 24 MByte user manual. I doubt if either was supposed to be in there . I recommend throwing them in the trash to save 100 MBytes of disk space.

Wow, now the apps look a *lot* more reasonable. Hoping doing that doesn't break any possible *future* updates Aspyr might be required do, e.g., for Leopard.

 

[AlanH]

There's absolutely no reason why InstallAnywhere needs to be delivered as part of a Civ3 patch - even once. With the Xcode development system it's very easy to include stuff in the release that should not be there, as it defaults to adding everything in the project folder to the bundle, so you have to carefully remove all the stuff you don't want. I'm certain it was an oversight when they built the final release, and removing it will have no repercussions later.