Just Slowdown

Pratputajao · Dec 20, 2005

Ok I am trying to get back into the game after putting away for a while because I was... well.. Bored with it. I have since discovered one of the main reasons for this boredom was the slowdown I was experiencing. I don’t have Any other problems- NO CTD, No graphic anomalies, No missing save games, etc... Just slowdown after diplomacy/ building wonders (figurehead animations seem to do it as do Wonder movies). I REALLY want to get into this game, but it is hard when I have to reboot ever 20 minutes or so. It just becomes Not worth the effort. ..."Where is Civ 3?"

I did download Harkanons (sp?) patch and it seemed to work at first.. but I was still early in the game though I did visit ever leader and allowed every wonder movie to play during that session... Seemed to move at a good speed. Then I shut the game off for the day. Next time I played It was flying! The battles were actually fun to watch, the ships sped through the seas.. it was great and I was getting into it .. and then- Isabella .. and right back to some slowdown. Not so bad after first encounter but after meeting with other leaders the game slowly became unplayable ( again!!!). I have my newest Video drivers. Disk doesn’t need Defrag. Close down all background programs I can and the other games I play, play well- NWN and UT 2004. Very quick without complaint on those. Anything else I can try? I know my Comp. can play this game on a large map FAST because I have seen it! But After Movies or figureheads performance drops slightly after 1st event, dramatically thereafter.

Oh dont have the 'official ' patch installed becouse it runs even worse with that! Arrhhgg!!

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Celoron 2.7
512 Ram.
5200 fx Nvidia 128
Virtual memory= 2500

Thanks

Stagh · Dec 21, 2005

My machine is different from yours, but I have exactly the same slowdown issues (after diplomacy/wonders).
However, these issues randomly appear in some games and not in others ones, while the settings are unchanged. I can't say why.

AMD 1.7 GHz
1 GB RAM
2 GB swap
Nvidia 6600 GT (AGP8)

robaughjr · Dec 21, 2005

Prat your ram is right at minimum which will cause slowdown especially late game. If none of the other fixes works you might need to buy more ram, an additional gig if possible. You can disable the wonder movies through the civ4.ini file in my documents/my games. As far as the leaders you can try this mod. It reduces the resolution on the leaderheads thus helping with slowdowns after diplomacy.

http://apolyton.net/search.php?q=leaderhead%20mod&domains=apolyton.net&sitesearch=apolyton.net&cof=GIMP:000080;T:000000;LW:1;ALC:004080;L:http://apolyton.net/images/site/blank.gif;LC:004080;LH:1;BGC:ffffff;AH:left;VLC:004080;GL:0;S:http://apolyton.net;GALT:800000;AWFID:1479733c6fac263c;
Also if you both could both post a dxdiag here it'll give us more info on your system setup.

Divide Overflow · Dec 21, 2005

My suggestion is to try playing games with smaller world sizes until Firaxis comes out with a patch to fix the slow down problem. Dual, tiny or small sized worlds play just fine for me, while anything large starts to have that annoying lag (and subsuquent crashes) creep in pretty quickly. Yeah, it is not the full functional experience that we deserve, but it's a workaround 'till a patch fixes things for us.

Zydor · Dec 22, 2005

Some news on the official Patch in case you not seen it

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=148872 (post 19)

Regards
Zy

Stagh · Dec 22, 2005

robaughjr said:
Also if you both could both post a dxdiag here it'll give us more info on your system setup.

Here it is:

BuddhaBubba · Dec 22, 2005

i have the same problems with the diplomacy slowdown, especially when I exchange maps, however the wonder movies don't really slow it down...also the game crashes and my video is reduced to 4-bit color and 640X480 (i have to restart to get this fixed)
however, the slowdown is normal (happened in civ3 too) i just hate the crashes and having to restart (although this does piss me off enough to do something else and not play for 5 hours straight :lol:

here's a stupid question: what is CTD?
also, does the game or windows do a log when the game crashes (i get the windows error box "Civ4 has unexpectedly quit" with a Debug and Cancel button available)?

here's my DX log:

Spoiler :

Zydor · Dec 22, 2005

CTD - Crash to Desktop ie the game went 'bang' and next instant you are staring at the desktop and Civ is nowhere to be seen

Logs - goto "My Documents - My Games". Inside civ main directory, there is the main civ ini file. At the bottom of the file, several log entries -change the value from 0 to 1

If you get an option to "report" it to MS please do so - MS are passing on crash reports to Firaxis

Regards
Zy

BuddhaBubba · Dec 23, 2005

thanks for the tips Zydor

one more question: is there an e-mail address for firaxis to send the reports manually? (or maybe Firaxis peruses civfanatics and apolyton's forums for bug reports themselves)

regards,
BuddhaBubba

Zydor · Dec 23, 2005

They do lurk forums, and will pick up trends in reported problems.

The Windows Crash Reports are passed on by MS to Firaxis, so always say "yes" in the post Crash Dialogue box to whether or not info can be sent to MS after a Crash (dont always get the "crash Box" but usually you do.

Regards
Zy

Just Slowdown

Pratputajao

Warlord

Stagh

Chieftain

robaughjr

Warlord

Divide Overflow

Chieftain

Zydor

Emperor

Stagh

Chieftain

Attachments

BuddhaBubba

Aspiring Sage

Zydor

Emperor

BuddhaBubba

Aspiring Sage

Zydor

Emperor

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