Game interface has really sluggish reaction

[Eddi]

This was not a problem when i first installed the game, but only appeared with a patch some time later (i'd guess about half a year ago, but i'm not exactly sure)

the problem is not visible immediately when starting a game, but when playing for a while, the interface does not fully react to clicks i make, e.g. i can click on a city, and the city screen opens, but the details in the city screen are from the last city i viewed.

or when i click on a unit, i can move it with the mouse or give commands via keyboard, but the commands input box on the lower left does not appear for a long while, and the highlighting of the unit on the map does not happen. if i cycle through units e.g. with the "w" key, then the map moves to the new unit, but the highlight stays on the old unit for sometimes a very long time.

also, the "end turn" button does not appear after i made my last move, especially when i have things like selecting research topic active, that stays there even after i selected the research.

i'm playing the DirectX 9 version on WinXP SP3. The Game is up to date and i recently upgraded to Gods&Kings expansion, but nothing changed.

I also spent ~10 minutes on google and this forum's search, but it didn't come up with anything helpful.

 

[The_J]

The 2.5 years old graphics card driver could be a problem .

 

[Eddi]

Updating the graphics driver gave no notable improvement...

Also i'm having the same issue on Linux with Wine.

My gut feeling is telling me it's a threading issue, though i don't have any insight into the game internals :/

 

[The_J]

If so, then you might want to check your .ini file (in Documents\My Games\Civ5; not the DirectX .ini files). There's an option enable Gamecorethreading (or so). It should be turned on, but people (mainly on single cores) reported quite some problems with it and turning it off helped at that point.

 

[Eddi]

Yes, that feels way more responsive now. Although it feels like a dirty workaround :/

As you should see in the dxdiag, my system has 6 cores.

 

[The_J]

Yes, that feels way more responsive now. Although it feels like a dirty workaround :/

As long as it works ...

As you should see in the dxdiag, my system has 6 cores.

Yeah, saw that. It's also the reason why I did not suggest this at first, because I though that it's not very likely that it's the problem.
I guess the underlying problem might be a bit more complex .

 

[Eddi]

Some sort of an update, i've had several more or less random crashes, so i reenabled the threading setting, but instead set the number of threads to 1. it seems to be more stable that way.

 

[ragan651]

As long as it works ...



Yeah, saw that. It's also the reason why I did not suggest this at first, because I though that it's not very likely that it's the problem.
I guess the underlying problem might be a bit more complex .

Not intending to necro the thread, just wanted to point out something. I've heard this problem occurring more on multicore processors (particularly i7s) than single core. I'm wondering if it's actually a problem with hyperthreading, but I can't be sure. It happens to me an a core i7.

My opinion is that this fix is harmless and simple enough it should be recommended pretty quickly when someone complains about unit and button lag.

 

[jtwood]

Not intending to necro the thread, just wanted to point out something. I've heard this problem occurring more on multicore processors (particularly i7s) than single core. I'm wondering if it's actually a problem with hyperthreading, but I can't be sure. It happens to me an a core i7.

My opinion is that this fix is harmless and simple enough it should be recommended pretty quickly when someone complains about unit and button lag.

This problem jumped out of the blue on me earlier this week on my i7 lappy (Lenovo W530).
In the end, I fixed it with a really stupid solution. It seems that applying one of Lenovo's "default" power settings had somehow taken away Steam's ability to utilize the graphic card. Once I restored that permission, everything started working great. I also doubled the page file size, but I think that only had a minimal impact. The graphic card fix was the big turnaround moment.