Is there any way to reduce loading times between turns?

[Soneji]

Are you saying the game has a memory leak?

Are you sure you are not getting confused with Windows kernal?

 

[77alex77]

If you've been playing for a while, try saving and quitting to main menu, then reload the game.

When I've been playing for a little while, I get bad lag time, not just between turns, but also when selecting units and cities. If I save and reload, it usually fixes the problem.

I'm experiencing this as well.
But I don't even have to reload. For me it helps to minimize the program and maximize it again.

 

[dribnairb]

There's definitely a memory leak somewhere (Windows XP at least): Try this:
Start Task Manager
Start a game, play a few hundred turns and then save it.
Exit the game and look at the memory usage in Task Manager
You'll see the memory usage has dropped massively since the game has been closed, but while the game was running the memory usage has been slowly going up.

So far, this is expected. However, now reload the savegame and Alt-Tab back to task manager. You'll see it's using less memory than it was when you saved it.

For me, I find reloading every 100 turns or so gives a significant speed increase for things like moving units and going in/out of cities

 

[Ossian]

It's not a memory leak that can be fixed easy, it's just how RAM works, for example.

You look at every unit in the Civipedia and every leader model, if I'm not mistaken it will store those files/models in your RAM so next time you talk to monty it will load faster hence slowing the game (Only should effect lower RAM less then what civ reqs which is 1gb)
This is how RAM worked when I first learned about it, I don't know if it's changed in the last 5 years.

 

[Iron Weasel]

Ossian, you are correct.

Another thing to consider is that on low RAM systems, you'll frequently be using virtual RAM as well, which is data temporarily stored in the pagefile on your hard drive. One thing that I've found helps (not a huge amount, but a little) is to set your pagefile to a static size rather than letting Windows determine its size dynamically. The "general rule" regarding that is 1.5x the amount of physical RAM, but I have mine set to 2x.

I have 2GB physical RAM and a 2GB pagefile on each of my physical drives, for example. That gives a total of 4GB of virtual RAM. If you plan on using multiple pagefiles, it's best to do on different physical drives rather than just different partitions.

I just loaded a save to see what the memory usage is.....
Large map, Big & Small map type, Epic speed, 12 civs, year is currently 1961.
The save file itself is 839k in size and memory usage by Civ IV: BtS is 498MB, total system usage is 831MB.
So for someone to be running Civ IV & everything else on only 512MB of RAM....that's going to be tough on the machine.

 

[Soneji]

There's definitely a memory leak somewhere (Windows XP at least): Try this:
Start Task Manager
Start a game, play a few hundred turns and then save it.
Exit the game and look at the memory usage in Task Manager
You'll see the memory usage has dropped massively since the game has been closed, but while the game was running the memory usage has been slowly going up.

So far, this is expected. However, now reload the savegame and Alt-Tab back to task manager. You'll see it's using less memory than it was when you saved it.

For me, I find reloading every 100 turns or so gives a significant speed increase for things like moving units and going in/out of cities

You start a game, you have a settler and a warrior. The game uses (estimate) 500Mb. Look an hour later, when you have dozons of cities (hundreds including the AI), as well has hundreds if not over a thousands units including the AI. By then, its (estimate depending on setup) 900Mb for example.

Of course your memory useage will increase.

Just like MS Word would use more memory with a hundred page document compaired to a half a page document.

You cannot expect a program as complex as Civ to just sit and use the exact same amount of memory.

Also, task manager does not detail how much page file/virtual memory the program may be using.

 

[mystyfly]

im playing on a laptop @ 512 Ram, 1.6 Ghz processor

i only play up to standart size map. loading time skyrockets at some point (usually in a late game war..) so i try to win before the 15th century or something

 

[matthewthegreat]

I have a laptop that has 1.86GHz processor and 512MB of RAM. I never wait more then about 30 sec between turns. Although I like small maps and I don't normally play on a map any bigger then Large.
I ordered some RAM and it is coming in the mail soon. I going to upgrade my RAM to 2048MB it only costed me $67.00!

 

[Soneji]

Yeah, just now is a great time to take advantage of cheap DDRII prices.

 

[dribnairb]

You start a game, you have a settler and a warrior. The game uses (estimate) 500Mb. Look an hour later, when you have dozons of cities (hundreds including the AI), as well has hundreds if not over a thousands units including the AI. By then, its (estimate depending on setup) 900Mb for example.

Of course your memory useage will increase.

Just like MS Word would use more memory with a hundred page document compaired to a half a page document.

You cannot expect a program as complex as Civ to just sit and use the exact same amount of memory.

Also, task manager does not detail how much page file/virtual memory the program may be using.

Yes - but I can expect that if I save the game and then reload the exact same game with the same units/cities etc then it should use the same amount of memory.

Admiteddly, there may now be some extra free memory from cached objects such as graphics, but even if I talk to every AI and go through every city to make adjustments, it's still using much less memory overall than it was before the game was closed. And besides, if the difference IS due to cache I'd rather have some way to turn it off since it's actually slowing the game down.

In vanilla the difference could be 300-400Mb. In BTS it's more like 50-100Mb but that's still quite a bit. Especially if you only have 512Mb as in the original post.

 

[Soneji]

Yes, I am too used to 2Gb+ now!

 

[Iron Weasel]

I played a game for roughly 5 hours today and checked the memory usage after the 5 hours.

Civ. IV: BtS was using 851MB of my 2GB of physical memory. Total system usage was around 1.03GB.

Saved the game at that point, closed Civ. IV, and restarted my machine.
When it rebooted, I immediately ran Civ IV: BtS and loaded the save that I had just made.

Upon loading the save, Civ IV: BtS is now using 611MB and a system total of 909MB.

Difference - 240MB RAM

That's a heck of a lot of data to cache -OR- Civ. IV does indeed have a memory leak.

Now, I went back to Civ IV: BtS and simply scrolled through the map. As I did that, the RAM usage grew steadily until I had viewed the entire map. At this point, the RAM usage was now hovering around 700MB - an increase of almost 100MB just by viewing the world map (including terrain, units, cities, etc).

From my point of view and interpretation of what a memory leak actually is (When a system does not correctly manage its memory allocations, it is said to leak memory), I would be inclined to say that it is not a memory leak, but rather just a huge amount of data being cached.

Obviously, the smaller the map you're playing on, the less data there is to cache. I usually play on Hemisphere maps using the Huge size and by 1900AD, I'm using up at least a full 1GB of RAM on just Civ. IV.

Just some food for thought.

 

[Soneji]

Well I would have thought an earth simulation would use a large amount of memory, especially the faster you expect that system to repond.

 

[dribnairb]

Now, I went back to Civ IV: BtS and simply scrolled through the map. As I did that, the RAM usage grew steadily until I had viewed the entire map. At this point, the RAM usage was now hovering around 700MB - an increase of almost 100MB just by viewing the world map (including terrain, units, cities, etc).

Just some food for thought.

This does indeed suggest a lot of the RAM usage is due to cacheing data. However, it does also suggest that the cacheing isn't very helpful since the game runs more smoothly before the data has been cached. At least, it does for computers with less RAM. Perhaps there should simply be a way to turn off the cache?

And what happened to the other 140Mb?

 

[azzaman333]

Is there any way to reduce loading times between turns?

Play Civ 3?

 

[kazapp]

A perhaps drastic measure is to turn off virtual memory.

This ensures Civ will never slow-down because of using more memory than what your computer has available.

Of course it could also mean Civ crashes as it runs out of memory, but at least then you would know the reason - start a new game on a smaller map...