Could we please have a "small GOTM"?

[idle]

Hi!

My computer isn't as fast as it used to be (relatively), and playing on standard maps is nearly impossible from industrial era onwards due to slowdown (and frequent crashes).

I'm sure I'm not the only one with this problem, and I really want to play GOTM's and wondered if perhaps we could have a "Small GOTM" category (SmGOTM?) for us poor folks with POS computers?

Any chance for this?

 

[Samson]

Sure, just start one yourself. Probably best to do it in the general forum so as to not confuse people.

 

[ainwood]

Sure, just start one yourself. Probably best to do it in the general forum so as to not confuse people.

Not really an optimum solution.

@Idle - there is a new patch rumoured - maybe there might be some performance gains?

Can you tell me your actual PC specs? I might make a poll and see what support there is for a smaller game.

 

[CliftonBazaar]

I also support a small game; my computer was top of the line about 2 years ago but it can only just finish a standard map with graphics set to medium.

James

 

[Piscator]

My computer wasnt even top of the line 2 years ago (AMD1800+), but Civ just runs just fine. I think Civ also complained about something being below Spec (after the 1.09 patch not before ) I even played a huge map, though that was getting a bit slower as the game progressed. Just set most of the grapic details to LOW. It still looks more than good enough:
+ Resolution 1024x768
+ Graphic: Low, Render Quality Level: Low, Globe Quality Level: Low
+ And on the right panel, I have the last 4 options checked:Effects Disabled, Globe View building Disabled, Full Screen Mode, Lower Resolution textures.

The thing is that Civ is a memory hog. It uses normally 300-500 MB and before the patch sometimes upto 800 MB (before I killed it). I've got 1GB. The thing is that computers are often sold with 256MB memory It's just too little and makes computers slow, while memory is so cheap (I think the shops might do this on purpose so people come back buying faster expensive CPU"S ). Anyway, if you don't have enough memory, get it. You make yourself much happier. It's just about the price of the Civ game, so that's not too bad.

greetz,
Piscator

 

[baboonfan]

I'm not sure but GeForce 2 seemed to run it faster than my current Radeon 9600. I've upgraded RAM 512 --> 1GB, and it didn't have any effect on Civ as I presumed. I have AMD 1900+. Even tiny maps choke when we get to the industrial age. All the settings are as low as they can be set. It all just depends how much action there's going on on the screen.

3-4 fps is bearable, but kinda annoying.

 

[idle]

I have a Athlon XP 2600+, 1 Gb RAM and a Radeon 9800. Should be enough to run the game just fine, right?
It improved tremendously with v1.52. BSOD's are history, and it crashes appr. every 3-4 hours compared to every 15 minutes earlier.

When I start Civ4 XP uses ~180Mb RAM.

All graphical details are set to low; single units, no animations, effects disabled, globe view building disabled, fullscreen mode, lower res textures.
I even followed harkonnen's tips on improving performance (and used his patch before v1.52).

 

[Thrallia]

piscator: the reason yours works well is because you have 1GB of RAM....but then, it is also only then because of how old your CPU is. your CPU doesn't expect more than 512MB of RAM, so Civ4, when it checks for avaiable memory(using cpu specs) thinks you have 512MB and scales itself accordingly.

That is, if I understood how Harkonnen said Civ4's memory usage works.

Essentially, if you've got a good amount of RAM and are using an older processor, you'll be better of than someone with the same amount of ram on a newer(eg. faster) processor...up to a point.

Hopefully whatever and whenever this new patch comes out, they'll do something that works much better than their current method does (Pay Hark for his program!) cause the current method makes Civ4 a memory hog, and it doesn't like to give back memory when it is done using it.

 

[Piscator]

@baboonfan. I've an old GeForce4 MX440. It works on 1280x1024 but good at 1024x768. As I recall now, I set the color depth to 16bits instead of 32bits (for another game a while ago, never set it back). I also changed an option in the BIOS. VGA aperture size (or something like that) to 128MB. It made the difference for that game (slow as hell to ok). Not sure if it makes any difference for Civ though, but perhaps it could help.

@idle. I've a friend with about the same specs. It runs smooth enough on his machine and I don't think he put the graphic settings back. And even I have NOT checked "single units" and "no animations". Getting BSOD's is really bad. That should happen on XP alone if you have overheating problems (run a motherboard diagnostic tool), memory problems (google: memtest) or bad clusters on the hardrive. I've had all these problems through the years. Anyway, you can check in the Windows eventlog for more details on the bsod or if some things are wrong with your harddrive.

@Thrallia. As far as I understand how older CPU's work is that they only cache (CPU cache) the first 512MB of the memory. But it uses the whole memory and that is still a lot faster than the page file. And I don't think Civ was thrashing to the page file when it was using 700MB or so. Then again, I don't know how Civ manages the memory and I could be wrong.

On a side note, I really hate AntiVirus software. Those apps hog your system down, so you can't properly use it anymore.

 

[idle]

@idle. I've a friend with about the same specs. It runs smooth enough on his machine and I don't think he put the graphic settings back. And even I have NOT checked "single units" and "no animations". Getting BSOD's is really bad. That should happen on XP alone if you have overheating problems (run a motherboard diagnostic tool), memory problems (google: memtest) or bad clusters on the hardrive. I've had all these problems through the years. Anyway, you can check in the Windows eventlog for more details on the bsod or if some things are wrong with your harddrive.

On a side note, I really hate AntiVirus software. Those apps hog your system down, so you can't properly use it anymore.

Well I just turn the AV off, as I've so far only played single player. This helped a lot.

The BSOD's stopped after v1.52, but I moved the PC to a more ventilated position at the same time, so it could be either of those that helped. I've run diagnostics and memtests, but everything seems to be fine.

The funny thing is, whenever I play a few turns with the grid on (Ctrl-T) the game crashes to desktop

Now I've turned on animations, but found I prefer single units (with the health bar).

Anyway, small maps is the most I can safely play, and even then it slows to around 10 fps in the modern era. Standard is unplayable in the later eras.

 

[Thrallia]

piscador: that's exactly why it does run well on your system. your cpu only caches 512MB. Civ4 checks how much RAM your cpu caches, then takes about 10-25% extra over that for its use...since you have 1GB of RAM, it takes it from the excess RAM, not the page file system...like it would if you only had 512MB of RAM.

It was really weird how they programmed Civ to look for and use memory...I'm not sure if it was an unintended method or if that was the only way they could get it to run well when it was programmed entirely in C++, Python, and XML.

 

[Pete2006]

I prefer small maps because larger maps are too much work and take too long to finish. Small = fun for me.

 

[Cactus Pete]

I agree! Even standard maps become tedious and too much like work at the end -- plus, time available is a major limiting factor for me.

Once in a while, a small, challenging map would be a nice change of pace that a subset of the participants would much appreciate.