Game Performance

[Grimus]

I was lucky to pick up a copy at one of the numerous shops around here, though each one only ordered 1 copy of the game! The game is absolutely AMAZING, I love everything about it. The new additions really flesh-out an already great game.

Anyway...

One thing I'm curious about is the performance of the game. Many have said the game runs better and smoother than Warlords or vanilla. My experience so far is that it runs a little less smooth. I don't know what it is. Have others experienced this?

The game used to run pretty well with Warlords unless I was playing a Huge Map and got many turns into the game. With BtS, even on the Standard size maps that I play on with the standard number of civs, I'm still experiencing a little bit of "choppy" movement of the screen every now and then. Even when hailing a leader or pressing a function key to bring up a menu, there's a slight pause.

I don't know... it's nothing really that bad, just a little annoying.

 

[kingkasai]

I have a problem with the music, whenever it plays durring the opening or an in game cinematic, the music skips, as if the cinematic were lagging but it doesn't.
Also I have a problem that isn't ingame, there is no icon on the desktop for bts, is this supposed to happen?

 

[Yakk]

Unless you include system specs, your comments neither make sense, nor can people figure out what could be the factor that is causing it.

 

[LlamaCat]

Grimus I am having the same problem. Also the opening movie is slow, like in the old days when the first edition before patches.
I am running the same great system I always have that worked so well for Vanilla and Warlords. No need to post my specs. I really hope they are working on a serious patch now.

 

[madscientist]

Ditto here. I am running a 5 year old Dell, 1.7 GHz, 750 Mb Ram, 256 video card. Marathon speed, huge maps there is more of a "stutter" than warlords on the early levels. No graphics problems but the little spinning earth doesn't spin all that fast.

 

[Dida]

I think performance is significantly worse than warlord.

 

[largedarryl]

I have experienced a drastic improvement in performance. I find that the AI turns are way quicker come late came. I find that the unit animations have even been improved.

I did notice one thing that seemed different, the video options in BtS have defaulted my video card to have x2 AA. I have a low end card and that is possibly too much for the video side of things (this would be even worse if you have a low-end video card)

 

[garbage0707]

I am having that same problem with the intro movie and music, it's so choppy. But then when Im in game...everything works fine. I dont understand it cause I pass all the reccomended specs. Oh well, probably wrong forum for this...

 

[Zhahz]

The general game engine is ultra smooth for me with every one of the few options cranked as high as possible, and at 1920x1200, as with Warlords, but with an X2 4200, 2G Corsair XMS, and 8800GTS 640MB, it should be smooth. The graphics revisions are pretty sweet (fog of war smoothness, unit animations, haven't seen any of my units sliding across half the world in combat as before, etc).

I disabled the music immediately, so I can't speak for it (prefer to listen to MP3s via winamp running in the background).

The only place I'm having any differences is entering the diplomacy screen, report screens, and stuff like that - where it's likely extra AI or other calculations taking a bit more time now than previously - ie, not something I'd categorize as a performance issue.

 

[sw99]

Huge improvement in performance for me (x2 3800, 1gb, x1950pro). Loading saves is easily twice as fast too. The people having issues should really check their graphics settings (it defaulted mine to max, but that's fine for me) and post your system specs so we can pinpoint possible weakpoints.

The game seems to draw unit movements and the fog of war transitions a lot smoother, which may or may not feel more sluggish if the graphics card is weak.

 

[geebo]

The only place I'm having any differences is entering the diplomacy screen, report screens, and stuff like that - where it's likely extra AI or other calculations taking a bit more time now than previously - ie, not something I'd categorize as a performance issue.

Same here everything runs smoother except for contacting civs, and opening the diplo. and other screens. Not really a big deal but it is sometimes annoying when 2 or 3 civs contact you on one turn. I can almost bet on it that the next patch will fix this, as a memory leak must be occuring somewhere. Also, I never had an issue with Vanilla or Warlords...

BTW my specs are:

2.80 GHz
1 GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 6600

 

[QwertyKey]

With a 4400+ 2GB and 7800GT I had the same choppy videos since Vanilla. All the videos like the wonder's videos and the winning videos and intro videos were choppy. I just got used to it.

 

[Yakk]

The systems specs are needed, for both "good" and "bad" performance.

Because that'll let us figure out what is the bottleneck.

The mention of 2x anti-aliasing is a big red flag. That could cause serious video card load. If your game is slow, try turning off the anti-aliasing, and see if the game is performing better all of a sudden.

 

[garbage0707]

I found this answer over at the Techinical support forum. It worked for me so you guys that are having problems might want to give it a shot. I will paraphrase as the original post with the answer was kinda long...

Download nVHardPage. Just google it or dl it here

http://downloads.guru3d.com/download.php?det=362

Install the program

Click on the Direxct X button Arrow down button and go to Shader settings

Set Pixel Shader setting to 1.4

Make sure you Apply settings!!!

If it doesnt work from the get go...delete the Civilization4.ini file (or just delete the Civilization 4 folder in My Games under My Documents). Create a backup of course.

I am not the best with computers so I couldnt tell you what this does but it did indeed fix my choppiness problem with the movies!

It works!!!!! Give it a shot

 

[Grimus]

So I see I'm not alone at least...

Okay, here are my system specs, I'm a little bit of a noob, so bear with me:

Windows xp pro service pack 2
Dell Dimension XPS
Pentium 4 processor 3.4 ghz
2 gb ram
Nvidia Geforce 6800 256 MB PCI express x16

I usually play standard size games, Hemispheres: 2 continents + Islands, 8 Civs
All graphic stuff is set to "High", I changed AA to 0 right away after installing and setting up the options, my resolution is set to the lowest one available.

I can't read this stuff, but here is an image with usual system running without BtS:

Thanks for the help!

 

[Tristan daCunha]

With a 4400+ 2GB and 7800GT I had the same choppy videos since Vanilla. All the videos like the wonder's videos and the winning videos and intro videos were choppy. I just got used to it.

I'm surprised because I haven't had choppiness with vanilla or Warlords (haven't played enough BTS to know) and my specs are a notch below you: AMD 3800+, 2GB, Nvidia 7800 GT. I'm using an HP computer which is straight out of the box except for the video card, the memory and a new power supply.

 

[LlamaCat]

I took off anti-aliasing and also downloaded that program mentioned above and that seemed to do the trick for me. game movie works perfectly and the in-game seems to run smooth again. so not sure which did it, or a combination of the two.

then again I no longer have anti-aliasing, so I guess I'll have to play as a pro-aliasing guy from now on, or until a better patch comes along

 

[Verkinix]

My machine ran warlords perfectly including movies. Now, with BTS, the main menu runs fine and music plays fine, but the game stutters like mad. I move a unit one space and I wait for 3-5 seconds for the move to happen. Its quite annoying really. I have tried this on max and minimum graphics settings with the exact same thing happening, so I doubt its a graphical issue.

My machine is 5 years old, 2 AMD 1900MP processors, 1G RAM, 6800GT nvidia... Drivers are as current as possible including Dx9c. Only necessary background tasks running. I've even disabled my AV to no avail.

Apart from getting a new machine, I'm hoping an optimization patch comes out soon. If there are new graphical features in BTS that werent in warlords, I hope they give us the option to disable them.

Anyway, I'm sure the bottle neck is in the processors, as I have experienced problems with other softwares that were not optimized for dual processors. Other then that, I'm not sure what the problem is. All I know is I hate waiting over and over again for every unit to catch up with the game.

Thanks

 

[doronron]

All the in-game and diplomacy animations are crisp at 1280x800 (though map scroll has just a hair of lag). The opening cinematic stuttered something fierce. I haven't built a wonder yet to see how that'll fair, though