Is the AI unit spam above emperor so excessive it degrades performance?

[hoopsnerd]

I've been noticing something lately... If I play a game on Monarch or Emperor, I have very few performance problems even if I play with 18 civs in my game on a huge map. Playing on Immortal or Diety though, I have yet to be able to finish a game due to lack of patience from waiting between turns, even having only 10 AIs on a huge map. I have probably 5 or 6 saved games in the mid-1800s that are waiting until I get the "uber-machine" in hopes that a faster computer will make the games playable again.

Since the lower difficulties have such better performance, I have to assume it's the massive unit spam the AI performs on Immortal and Diety. I've been attacked by stacks of well over 100 units, and i've seen both Shaka and Alexander with 150 units in a single attack stack. Those of you who play Diety or Immortal can attest that this is not uncommon.

Am I the only one that can't finish my games at these levels because it takes ridiculous amounts of time per turn? Does the AI need to have more unit costs to prevent this from happening and get a benefit someplace else for challenge? I guess I wouldn't mind the mega-SoDs too much if they didn't cause horrible end-game performance... does anyone else have this issue, or will it go away if i get a faster PC?

Right now I have:
Dual Core 2.0 GHz Processors
1 GB Ram
128 Meg Video card

 

[peter450]

Lots of units will indeed slow the AI down, i dont play at those levels since A they are extremely hard and B fighting stacks of units that number to the 100s is pretty tedious, an comming from a warlike player that says a awful lot about how they need to actually put a limit on how much crap can be stacked on one tile

 

[MrCynical]

Modern age warfare is certainly very sluggish (on laptop with 2GB RAM), but it's bearable. It's nowhere near as bad as it was in Civ 3, so I don't tend to mind it too much.

 

[hoopsnerd]

Lots of units will indeed slow the AI down, i dont play at those levels since A they are extremely hard and B fighting stacks of units that number to the 100s is pretty tedious, an comming from a warmoghering player that says a awful lot about how they need to actually put a limit on how much crap can be stacked on one tile

Great point Peter. I want to play on Immortal mainly because its so hard but I don't really like:

A. fighting 100s of units in a stack because its tedious as peter said.

and

B. i can't finish the game because the turns are so slow near the end that its not fun anymore.

I wish we could find some sort of happy-medium between making conquest of the AI a bit more difficult and make it have less units at the same time...

 

[hoopsnerd]

Modern age warfare is certainly very sluggish (on laptop with 2GB RAM), but it's bearable. It's nowhere near as bad as it was in Civ 3, so I don't tend to mind it too much.

What difficulty level?

 

[MrCynical]

What difficulty level?

Immortal/Deity. Stacks of 100+ units are far from unusual, but I've yet to have an interturn take more than 30-40 seconds.

 

[hoopsnerd]

^^ thats great news to me, it means that when my new machine arrives I'll be able to finish my games. What are your machine specs if you dont mind me asking? It seems not many play Imm/Diety. I wouldnt mind the huge stacks as much if it performed better.

 

[ushram]

No, I don't have issues even when playing Huge maps on Immortal of DIety

 

[DMW]

I didnt vote cause for me its somewhere in between. The turns do increase quite a lot but it doesnt become unplayable. I play at immortal level with Aggressive AI on, so that means even more units.

Its doable, fighting epic wars has its price I guess

Edit: I got a 3000+ cpu and 2 GB's ram

 

[Silence101]

I notice this as more of a problem when I play AGG AI... I do about half of the time. It hasn't caused me not to be able to complete a game, but the more units and Civ's there are, the more noticable the decrease in perforance. It does get annoying, though. I don't notice it as much with AGG AI turned off... but I'd rather have it turned on. I guess I just need a new computer - just for Civ IV.

 

[Mylon]

All the more reason why late game units need their maintenance costs jacked up to account for the strong economies backing them.

 

[Dan Quale]

I generally play on immortal difficulty, and just purchased a new computer less than a week ago that can max out anything with ease. My first game was just a bloodbath 18 civs and a lot of wars everywhere, not to mention montezuma and the kymer were among the ranks. The game lasted until the 1800's when I finally managed a domination. The amount of units used in the last war was ridiculous. Montezuma managed a stack of god knows how many calvalry at one point, but unfortuneately they were nuked, and destroyed by modern armors, I think I saved him for last just because, I wanted to see just how many he could build given enough time and his "own" starting landmass. I have no idea just how many units the Ai made, but I had more,(400+ in one stack) and the turn times were still fairly quick.

My system: AMD duo 5600+
2gigs ddr2 800mhz
geforce 8800 gts 640mb ddr3

 

[DMW]

I think the processor is the most important part of your rig when it comes to civ eh?

 

[PieceOfMind]

I think the processor is the most important part of your rig when it comes to civ eh?

I would have voted for RAM. But as usual it has to be "it depends". Certainly the video card, CPU and RAM are the big three IMO.

 

[Osama Bin Davis]

I have a pretty decent computer that should run the thing with no worryz, but always in between the turns it takes too long. Even with animations off, always pushing on 5 - 7 minutes between turns in the later stages of the game. Ill see what happens when I get a bit more ram, but I cant see it doing much.

It comes down to lazy programming, I am sure with a bit of work the requirements could be half of what they are now if not 66%.

 

[Roland Johansen]

I also play huge maps on immortal and deity levels and I don't have these problems. But if I play on a different less capable computer, then it becomes unbearable in the late game.

My computer specs:
2GB's of memory
AMD Athlon 3500+Mhz
Geforce 7800GT

My guess is that because of lack of system memory in the late game, your computer starts to make excessive use of virtual memory which is extremely slow compared to normal memory. Do you hear the hard drive a lot in the late game? I do when I play on the slower computer which has only 512 MB of system memory.
It could also be that the graphics card doesn't have enough memory to contain all the graphics easily.

 

[hoopsnerd]

^^ Totally. It gets REAL bad when a leaderhead requests an audience with me too, I'll be like "somebodies requesting audience, I should probably go to the bathroom now...". I've got a new machine in transit, can't wait to finish those games.