Inexcusable Slowness

[Beeblbrox]

Civ3 Solo was wonderful. Decent AI (better than Civ2 at least) much prettier, a handful of new features, a goto that actually worked, made it great.

PTW - well, my lodger and I are actually attempting our first game after swallowing the fact we dont have build popups anymore (oh yeah that REALLY speeds things up having to scroll through F1 to check all cities every turn).

Having found a couple of workarounds to get round production monitioring we are approaching late-midgame time. We both have in excess of 100 workers and military units roaming the map. With an appalling delay of 2 seconds *minimum* for every move, then another 2 seconds to make a worker action (more if its a military unit fighting), 2 seconds for each production change to update etc etc etc - oh - did i mention the 10 minute wait at the start of every turn for some unknown reason?

All this on a LAN makes PTW the *worst* coded network game I have ever heard of. There is *no* excuse, rhyme nor reason for this, considering that REAL TIME shootem ups of the complexity and depth of Counterstrike et al are available and perfectly playable *over the internet*

What happened to the Civ2 coders and code? Did the Civ3 team decide that smoke signals and 2 cups on a bit of string would be a better approach than a tried and tested method?

Infogrames/Firaxis, whoever, have obviously decided that in view of their financial problems correcting the heinous mistake of PTW is just too costly and too much hard work seeing as we have been suckered into buying this piece of cr*p already, as I have seen no rumours of a new patch/fix coming out to make it even halfway playable.

Sincerely, a very dissapointed and long-time devotee of the Civ series (c.a. 1993)

Beeblbrox

p.s. Yes I have the patch, it hasn't made a stitch of difference.

 

[Beeblbrox]

Andy (my opponent) has just made an analogy that seems apt.

'Moving 100 units:

click.................................................................. move
click.................................................................. move
click.................................................................. move

This isn't a game, it's working in a factory'

Sums it up for me.

 

[GeniX]

The only way I could possibly imagine the delays in movement taking place on the internet would be if each move was sent to each other player on the network in turn for verfication, and then returned, and then possibly resent for actually making the move.

How else does one turn 200ms ping between computers into 3 or 4 seconds to move a unit?

--
I have played smooth games of Warcraft III with 4 players and 6 spectators. I've played in 32 player games of Battlefield with better performance...

enough *****ing tho. I still play despite the issues.

Its fun.

 

[widdowmaker]

Umm no buidl popups? dude. set your prefs. it is right htere. I get asked wht to buidl next after every cite complets ANYTHING. the movement sses are easy. get everyhting yo uintende to move ot an AREA and put it on one square. the stak move it and unstak them at the destination. IF you odnt liek ti dotn play. But please dotn rag on a good game.use the auto mate worker action (with out altering) once you set up a infrstcutre or have htem join the city. Then turn off animations ot cut down even more time.

For the buidl changes it is eays. use the queus. Any "Glitch" or flaw int he game i can proly find a way roudn it.

 

[Beeblbrox]

Its there in prefs but only works for single player. In a multiplayer game I do not get build pop ups at all, just a list of what has been built briefly appearing on the left of my screen.

And its a fine game for solo player - I have not said a word against solo playing, but MP is just abysmal. Apparently the lag times have improved since I wrote this thread due to the new patch - I just hope this is true.

Beeb

 

[Copernicus]

One thing you can do to help with the "no build popup issue" is use the 'x' key. At the start of every turn, you get a brief report on the left side of the screen. If you hit 'x' it will take you to the location of the most recent one. Hit 'x' again and it goes to the next one, etc. This way you can quickly cycle through anything of note that happened, giving attention (i.e., changing build queues) where needed.

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Originally posted by Beeblbrox
Andy (my opponent) has just made an analogy that seems apt.

'Moving 100 units:

click.................................................................. move
click.................................................................. move
click.................................................................. move

This isn't a game, it's working in a factory'

Sums it up for me.

Got to use the stack functions.

Group your builds using the "rally function" for city production. Use the fortify all, the wake all and select what type of unit you want to move, activate it then use the stack command for that type of unit and move it into position.

The problem comes in launching an attack, especially if the timer is on as the combat resolution takes ages.


I will say that 1.21f is far superior in performance that any of the previous patches and having played some of the very early versions (alpha, beta) you guys have it very good now