Do mods with lots of ethnic flavor units slow down game performance?

[Conqueror Worm]

I know that map size greatly effects game performance, and that the number of civs does as well. How about the number of flavor ethnic units? I enjoy all the new flavor units, but I do wonder, to what degree does a mod with a ton of these units slow down game performance?

 

[Chuggi]

Definietly to some degree, as some unit creators like to splash out polys as well (even me sometimes, but I try to avoid it).

 

[3141592]

Not really. The units will be treated like normal. Only if the art is really complex will it slow down the game.

 

[Gaius Octavius]

So it ultimately has more to do with the unit art itself than with the number of new units?

 

[snafusmith]

So it ultimately has more to do with the unit art itself than with the number of new units?

Exactly -
In general, I wouldn't expect a lot of unique graphics for figure units to slow down the game much. Most of them use existing models from civ4, so there isn't a great increase in poly count.

However, if you start to add a lot of new aircraft, tanks, and ships, then you will see a slower game. Most unit creators make vehicles with poly counts between 700-1200. Some even go as high as 2000-3000. In contrast to this most of the vehicle units supplied with the game have a poly counts like 400 (tank), 520 (mechanized infantry) and 1100 (jet fighter). You get the point.

Another thing to watch out for is the size (pixel, not disc space) of the textures. Most units will have at most one texture 256x256 (main) and the rest 128x128 (gloss, etc). Increasing the size of the texture, even to 512x512, will slow the game down more than a ton of polys.

Basically, you're right - if you're going to add a bunch of new flavor units, especially vehicles, check the poly count. Most creators post the count of their units (or should), so it's not difficult to check.

The same also goes true for any improvements or city graphics. Those especially are vulnerable to high polycounts, as they show up all over the map.

 

[Fanatic Demon]

The bigest performance hits is the number of units and the number of cities and number of terrain plots. THat because for every unit or city the computer city has to perform AI calculations.

 

[Conqueror Worm]

How about mods that use regiments? Would a mod that uses regiments slow a game down as well?

I ask, becuase i like to use huge maps with lots of civs and flavor units. Some of the mods out there with lots of flavor units also use regiments - such as Composite XL and Regiments and Ethnic Diversity, some of them don't - such as Diversica, Varietas Delectat, and EDU Extreme.

I understand that the map size is considerably the most important factor, perhaps followed by the number of civs and then the number of flavor units. Where does the use of regiments fit into this?

 

[ClassicThunder]

What part of the game are you worrying about slowing down?

If you worried about turn times then nothing but more alive units and civilization instances will increase the turn times. If there's 20 soldiers in a formation it will take the same amount of time to do a turn as if there's 1 since there's still one class instance.

Anything that increases the amount of stuff that has to be drawn such as larger formation will drop the frame rate. Which many computers can handle many, many times more polys that what the stock game usually has. I personaly have the anti at 4x.

If your worried about making the game take longer to load. Adding any graphic will slow it down.

Hope that bit of theory helps.

 

[Kael]

I havent seen any evidence that unit art styles effect performance to a significant degree. But I also haven't done any indepth testing on it.

I have seen a problem on video cards without much memory, they end up with solid black instead of the normal graphics when the card runs out of texture memory. I would expect that use of more unit art styles would increase that.

 

[Fanatic Demon]

Seems to me unit graphics are insignificant. THe only thing that realy matter appears to be the size of the map, the number of units on the map and the number of cities.

 

[Conqueror Worm]

Right, thanks for all the info. I'm glad to know that I don't have to worry too much about the number of flaver units, regiments, or even the number of civs (aside from Dale's claim that at the moment anything beyond 18 could cause a crash). So it is really pretty much the map size that slows down the time between turns and causes the lag.

I have experienced the blackout Kael mentioned when playing the
Total Realsim World map in Warlords, and I have an Nvidia video card. But havn't experienced it yet in BTS.

Now if only my eyes were a little better so that I could actually make out the flaver in the regiments! So it goes!

Now after all this information, I am also assuming that the other changes in the larger mods, which incorporate many interface and gameplay changes, don't really effect the time between turns and lag much either. I have seen warnings before that the larger mods can cause MAF and such, but after what I've read here, I am going to assume it is mostly the map size, and at the moment perhaps, the aforementioned by Dale 18 civ bug, that is causing most of the problems. Hence, I will continue to dig the flavor, regiment, gameplay, interface and max civ limit changes, only steer clear of the awsome Ghengis Kai world map. Perhaps some day, that too will be remidied.

PS - Just read Classic Thunder's post again, and think I fully understand it now. So if lag - or frame rate - begins to be a problem, I will shy away from regiments! Thanks! Great info!

Thanks again!