Great game - awful turn times

[spicytimothy]

No problems with Vanilla.

Huge lag with G&K.

Enough said no?

 

[Kwami]

So it's unreasonable to assume that when playing a video game you should be able to see animations?

Well, if an animation takes ten seconds to play, then it's going to take ten seconds to play. On a gigantic map with 20 civilizations and 45 city-states, I could see the animations alone taking more than four minutes to play on each turn.

I doubt that's what we're talking about, though. The guy you quoted was just trolling, I think. More likely, the poster that he quoted experienced four-minute turn times because he was playing a gigantic map with 20 civilizations and 45 city-states in the modern era. I mean, how large should we expect to scale the game before the turn times get high?

I'm more concerned with the one-minute+ turn times that I get on a huge map with the default number of civilizations and city-states and animations off than I am with unsupported gigantic maps. I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect shorter turn times on a high-end PC when using standard options.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well, if an animation takes ten seconds to play, then it's going to take ten seconds to play. On a gigantic map with 20 civilizations and 45 city-states, I could see the animations alone taking more than four minutes to play on each turn.

I doubt that's what we're talking about, though. The guy you quoted was just trolling, I think. More likely, the poster that he quoted experienced four-minute turn times because he was playing a gigantic map with 20 civilizations and 45 city-states in the modern era. I mean, how large should we expect to scale the game before the turn times get high?

I'm more concerned with the one-minute+ turn times that I get on a huge map with the default number of civilizations and city-states and animations off than I am with unsupported gigantic maps. I don't think that it's unreasonable to expect shorter turn times on a high-end PC when using standard options.

That's all I'm really sayin.

 

[Flaviusx]

None of these expedients have worked for me. G&K is simply not well optimized right now and flat out runs slower than vanilla. I hope it will improve in future patches.

 

[Zanarkin]

So let me guess... you had animations on, maybe a bunch of vision in a lot of places, bunch of active wars.... Then you wonder why it took so long?

I don't wonder at all nor expect it to be any faster. I think you misinterpreted my post.

 

[trevpow]

I have been lurking for years but never post but thought I would add my bit to this.

just loaded my last game on turn 347 which was in the 1920's i was playing korea on king level in G & K with 8 civs and 16CS and my next turn without any civ interupts was 27's.

I am not a pc literate but i do use system mechanic often to clean out my pc which often does a registry and hd defrag, My pc has 8g memory has an ati hd4870 series graphics card running windows 7 home edition.

maybe a system clean out of all the rubbish that builds up and a defrag will help as i say not the best with pc's

 

[trevpow]

forgot to add all the animations and graphics are on full. obviously if there is a war going on and i have a unit within sight of a battle then things will take longer!

 

[Zanarkin]

Welcome trevpow

 

[Greasy Dave]

The ai with specs like those take every decision very quickly, they just don't take them simultaneously. Turn off combat animations at the very least, turning off movement is probably not bad either on Huge maps like you described.

ERRRRH?????? HAve you actually read my posts? I think if you actually rad them properly you will see that my time of 90 seconds is in strategic view with animations OFF! OK!

YOu're actually the second poster in the thread who seems to have missed that.

Can I just repeat for those who are scan reading.

90 SECONDS WITH ALL ANIMATIONS OFF IN STRATEIGC VIEW!!!

I hope people won't misread that anymore

 

[Greasy Dave]

I have been lurking for years but never post but thought I would add my bit to this.

just loaded my last game on turn 347 which was in the 1920's i was playing korea on king level in G & K with 8 civs and 16CS and my next turn without any civ interupts was 27's.

I am not a pc literate but i do use system mechanic often to clean out my pc which often does a registry and hd defrag, My pc has 8g memory has an ati hd4870 series graphics card running windows 7 home edition.

maybe a system clean out of all the rubbish that builds up and a defrag will help as i say not the best with pc's

WElcome trevpov...If I'm reading your post right, I'm guessing you had a standard map. My G and K times on standard maps aren't problematic. They run under 30 seconds.

My problem came when I stepped up to large. Also, your game was at King level. At Deity the AI pumps out units like it's going out of fashion. As I noted the file size is 500 KB larger than my largest vanilla. WHich I think means there's an awful lot of units hiiden in the fog of war - which will also slow things down.

 

[Txurce]

None of these expedients have worked for me. G&K is simply not well optimized right now and flat out runs slower than vanilla. I hope it will improve in future patches.

I think this is the core problem. The mystery is why seemingly equal systems respond differently.

 

[Greasy Dave]

THanks for Peeder and Xink for testing and giving me something to compare with.

You have similar system to mine. ALthough Xink is overclocked to a much higher speed than my i7 is at.
And you're both using SSD hard drives...which I don't use.

Clearly G and K is not well optimised. If a system like Xink's is taking 50 seconds to crunch my end game then G and K is very cumbersome.

AS for solutiosn for myself, I'll try defragmenting and all the toher suggestions.

Currently my game runs on two cores (when I study it in task manager). Is there anyway to get it to run on all four?

A friend who works in the industry tells me I'm stuck with two core - one is doing the graphics calcs,a nd the other is doing the rest of the processing, and that'll be how the game has been written. I've read a couple of posts by players claiming they've got it running on all 4 cores(not in this thread)...but I'm wondering if they're talking out of their backsides...or if it's possible.

 

[Xink]

AFAIK - unless something fundamental has changed in the coding of the game (which I doubt) Civ V doesn't really take advantage of a four core system that well. I think that it is more of Windows balancing the load rather than the game itself being aware and using all the cores available.

When I had a dual core E8500 running at 4Ghz it would use around 80 to 90% of both cores at most.

Now I see that more balanced across the four cores....



I think that the above might make people believe that the game is optimised to use all the cores but I take it as more of Windows balancing the load.

The above represents the game running on a large map and several turns taken.

The upshot is mhz is king in this game. Anything over a dual core isn't much value and, like most other games, hyper-threading is wasted.

So for you to improve your turn time overlcock that CPU.

What I also noted was when I had a GTX460 1GB GPU all the memory of the card was being used, especially on the larger maps. Now I have a GTX 670 2GB card and I find around 1.4GB is being allocated to the game. GPU usage is also pretty high when playing. I know that you opted to use the strategic view, could be helpful when pressing the next turn button in the late game stages, but the GPU usage still remains high.
As I replaced the GPU / CPU etc at roughly the same time I'm not sure which helped the most but they both seem to contribute to the faster turn times.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Ever since I moved up to Standard size, my turn times now take a minute or two instead of 20-30 seconds. Do you think reducing the number of City States would help? Or would AI cities just replace it as a load on the processor anyway?

 

[Xink]

Anything that you do in that way to reduce the number of AI's or CS's will have a positive effect on the turn times.

I did make a lengthy post once over at the official forums about what I called the "unit dance". Where on each turn the AI (CS's were bad for this) their units would move one square and then the next turn they would then move back, this would repeat. All of that action cumulatively would add up to quite a lot of time added to the turn sequence. They did not seem to fortify the units but constantly shuffle around to create some sort of animation which then makes the turn even longer.

I dislike having to reduce the AI's or CS's though as it reduces my overall gaming pleasure. I just end up playing smaller maps but at least my PC's spec is decent enough to cope.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

So for you to improve your turn time overlcock that CPU.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing.....but I need to point this out to the less PC savvy gamers.

Overclocking your CPU can cause a large reduction in the lifespan of the chip. It can also cause it to drastically overheat and destroy itself. Overclocking is OK, if you know how to do it correctly and do not push it over the limit. Also, overclocking is only going to increase your raw processing power marginally at best. There is an argument to be made that the extra heat generated by an overclocked chip will mitigate that extra power to an extent.

Being forced to overclock a good, modern 4 or 6 core processor to run a 2 year old game is a serious issue, IMHO.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I still want 8 civs though, more chances for different blocs to form. I find the 16 city states far too many to deal with though.

 

[Greasy Dave]

Ever since I moved up to Standard size, my turn times now take a minute or two instead of 20-30 seconds. Do you think reducing the number of City States would help? Or would AI cities just replace it as a load on the processor anyway?

what Xink says is correct. Also, I've found that when I increase difficulty level, turn times increase - the AI has about a thousand more units at Deity than it does at Prince, for instance.

You could try switching to strategic view at the end of each turn. Other players have written that this has helped. My personal experience from the game that the save file comes from is that I have the same turn times no matter whether my graphics are set to high or low or in strategic view. for my pc, I think my problem is processing the AI's moves, not a graphics issue.

You can also turn off combat animations, if you haven't done so already.

I'm probably going to go back down to standard maps. My i7 can overclock quite well, but I don't see why I should. I don't want to have to increase my cooling fans and noise, when I've got a really nice quiet set up which is capable of playing every other game that is on the market. Overclocking just for Civ? Hmm. Better if the devs had a go at rethinking about DEity AI and unit numbers etc

 

[Greasy Dave]

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing.....but I need to point this out to the less PC savvy gamers.

Overclocking your CPU can cause a large reduction in the lifespan of the chip. It can also cause it to drastically overheat and destroy itself. Overclocking is OK, if you know how to do it correctly and do not push it over the limit. Also, overclocking is only going to increase your raw processing power marginally at best. There is an argument to be made that the extra heat generated by an overclocked chip will mitigate that extra power to an extent.

Being forced to overclock a good, modern 4 or 6 core processor to run a 2 year old game is a serious issue, IMHO.

QFE Couldn't have said it better myself

 

[hobbsyoyo]

QFE Couldn't have said it better myself

Yeah my rig can handle any NEW game out there - no lag. But CiV......end turn and wait 30+ seconds late game at a minimum.