How do people run giant maps with 32+ civs?

[ghostmaker650]

Hi, I just finished building my computer: Phenom II x4 955 BE 3.2GHz, 4gigs DDR3 ram, ATI radeon HD 4850, windows 7 ultimate 64bit.

I am currently trying to play RoM 2.8 Giant earth 34 civs, marathon speed, all graphics high. Everything is fine except the wait between turns: turn 1 on the map has a wait of 5 seconds, this is very much tolerable, but we all know as the game goes on that time increases. By mid game I'm waiting 2+ minutes between turns, and by late game its 3+ mins.

My question is WTH? Is this normal for a computer like mine? Do I need a better computer? Does everybody who plays these huge maps have wait times like this? What does it take to play these maps with wait times under 1min?

My entire computer is up to date, Civ4 BtS 3.19, RoM 2.8. Lowering the graphics doesn't seem to help.

Please enlighten me.
Thanks.

 

[DrewTate]

Don't know sh*t about computers, but from the looks of it, you are gonna have to go with fewer civs man.

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[ghostmaker650]

Don't know sh*t about computers, but from the looks of it, you are gonna have to go with fewer civs man.

So who plays maps like this? gods with the super power of infinite patience?

 

[Cykur]

I'm trying to figure this out as well. As best I can tell, this just seems to be how fast the giant maps with tons of civs run. Your computer is a bit faster than mine, I'm only at 2.66Ghz...as best as I can tell, once you have enough memory (3-4 GB) and a good video card with lots of video memory, it all comes down to processor. Civ IV doesn't utilize multiple processors, btw, so throwing more cores at it doesn't help.

I have seen suggestions for doing things like disabling leaderheads, and turning down a lot of the graphics, but I don't do this since it takes away my enjoyment of the game.

As the other guy said, you might have to make the map a bit smaller and have less civs to reach your tolerance level. I find myself playing "Large" maps fairly often for this reason, though my computer can run Giant.

 

[ghostmaker650]

Thanks Cykur, I have accepted that I could not play with 32+ civs on a giant map. So I settled with a huge continent map with 18 original civs, with barbarian civ mod turned on, so 3 new civs emerged early on, just on my continent alone. Playing marathon speed. The turn wait is about 10-15sec, not bad but I'm only on turn 490 at 550AD, So hopefully it doesn't get too bad.

But I am still curious though as to who plays these maps. There must be people because they keep making and updating these maps. So PLEASE if any of you play these maps TELL ME! just say, yes hahahaha I play these maps because I'm bill gates and I'm better than you! This will make me feel much better.

 

[ori]

for one thing RoM already increases the load on the game dramatically - so someone who could run a 32+ civ map in the unmodified game might get into trouble with a huge mod like RoM

 

[bertram]

I totally know your problem, I also hold up with looong waiting time between turns - several minutes! very annoying. I've started playing games on my mobile phone while waiting for civ to get done with the AI and back to my turn.

I also play 3.19/RoM 2.8 - And realising that the load on the pc is crazy, I've gotten used to playing small maps with ca. 15 civs starting.

But its kind a ridiculous to create giant map-sizes and allowing for 20/32/?? civs, if no one can ever play them because it makes the waiting unbearable.

I think I've read somewhere on this forum, that more ram could make a difference. So I have recently upgraded my pc from 2gb Ram to 4gb. And guess what - the waiting havent decreased at all. And I have always grafik-levels turned to low, just to do something.

My pc is:
intel core 2 duo (2.2ghz), 4gb, geforce 8200 (1gb) graficcard. standard harddisc.

 

[Lux_93]

I have the same problem..

 

[ori]

the game isn't build for giant maps - there is a reason the developers limited it to huge maps and 18 civs - they didn't want to support larger maps
that said: more RAM usually helps - as does updating your graphics card drivers / having a graphics card that has a lot of dedicated memory - but at some point the load will be too much for the best computer.

Please post your dxdiag results file - maybe something can be improved.

 

[phungus420]

As a mod maker I've gotten multiple requests to add a giant map size to Legends of Revolution. I will not because it will cause more harm then good. Many users will attempt to play on such map sizes on computer that wol't be able to handle them and then complain about MAFs. As far as the first couple posts, I question of anyone's computer can handle Giant maps on a mega composite mod like RoM.

the game isn't build for giant maps - there is a reason the developers limited it to huge maps and 18 civs - they didn't want to support larger maps

In short I agree with the devs entirely on that that decision.