Lagging performance on recomended PC - No CTDs, BSODs or errors otherwise

[Purest Warrior]

I've been browsing this forum for a while and have to the conclusion that a lot of people suffer from the same kind of trouble I do.
That is lagging (ie. slooow) performance and intolerably low FPS videos.
I couldn't find a thread dedicated to those problems excactly, so I thought I might start one where we could share tweaking experiences.

As mentioned above, I have an, at least, recommended system, but still the game starts lagging even around 3-2000 BC and I've never even finished watching a wonder movie.
Besides that, I get no errors, crashes, black terrain, freezes, or stomach cramps (oh well, that maybe).

Please post any ideas you may have to tweaks or otherwise.

Thx in advance, PW

PS. Hmmm, can't attach my dxdiag, because I've already uploaded it in another thread

 

[tymmail]

1) Lagging is not due to dual core CPU or hyperthreading. I've turned on and off HT but no different.
2) Not a matter of how much RAM you have: many player reported huge size of RAM(>=1GB) can't solve the problem.
3) Not much use to look at dxdiag, usually it reports everything fine. If anyone suspect the video driver has problem, simply uninstall and install the new driver.
4) Unlikely to be related to cache. That rarely works, especially for in-game movies.

What I suspect:
1) Video acceleration. Have anyone tried to set a basic acceleration instead of full acceleration?
2) Windows tweaks: many player may have modified their registry to "optimize" Windows' performance, such as disk cach size, or "force no page memory". This worth mention as it may be an important co-founding factor for the problem (though I can't see any difference by setting above tweaks)
3) Poor progamming, especially memory usage and Bink Video related: I found that sometimes after i set interlace on or setting frame per second to a constant(e.g. 30 fps) can solve the intro video lagging problem. Yet it does not Always work. For in-game movies, it doesn't work. It demonstrate the BinkVideo playback module is unstable and buggy.

Suggestion:
When people post a problem, try to give information on windows tweaks applied and startup-loaded programs(e.g. antivirus, time synchronization...). As this may help to identify some subtle factors.
Firaxis should either re-write the Bink Video part or simply dump it and use simple AVI/MPEG1/MPEG4. Those Videos are very simple (esp in-game movie) and doesn't worth a complicated and resource demanding mechanism to play.

Simpliest solution for the time being:
Update video driver. Turn off all game movie. (Actually the Wonder movie in Civ4 is boring, much worse than Civ2). If you want to watch those movie, just use a separate program to do it.

MISC Problem:
Language localization file of the user interface should be separated. Firaxis should not assume everyone on Earth runs US English Windows XP. Beware of character encoding issue as it could be a big problem (esp for non-US market)

 

[Akhenaton]

Instead of trying to tweak Windoze for a game performance issue (crashes are another thing, there it's a very slight possibility that getting some other Windows-related problem fixed will actually solve a game crash, however this is still much less likely than what some suggestions may lead to believe), perhaps it would be worth a try to tweak CivIV settings instead.

For example, let's assume that there is ample amount of RAM available (1GB), then perhaps the following settings could help:

; Set to 1 to page units out when non-visible
DynamicUnitPaging = 0

; Set to 1 to page unit anims out when the unit is non visible
DynamicAnimPaging = 0

Also, some default (at least in some versions) settings leaning towards stability could be tested if they can be flipped without crashes:

; Disable caching of file system (may slow initialization)
DisableFileCaching = 0

; Disable caching of xml and file system (may slow initialization)
DisableCaching = 0

; Use managed interface textures (may be safer but shouldn't be needed, uses more memory)
GUIManagedTextures = 0

Then there are options which will affect quality or features, but may improve performance, worth testing if the tradeoff is acceptable:

; Enable Trilinear Filtering for the Minimap
MinimapTrilinearFilter = 0

; Allow Camera Flying
AllowFlying = 0

; Allow Screenshots. May affect performance on some video cards
AllowScreenShots = 0

; Sync input to smooth interface (may run slower)
SyncInput = 0

Bink settings could be tuned as well for performance over quality:

; Copy entire image each frame, not just dirty pixels
BinkCopyAll = 0

; Show movies using hi-color, not true-color (may be faster)
Bink16Bit = 1

; Copy ever other scanline during movie playback (faster)
BinkInterlace = 1

 

[Purest Warrior]

@ Akh:

Which file am I supposed to edit?

 

[Akhenaton]

@ Akh:

Which file am I supposed to edit?

CivilizationIV.ini, which in default installs is in:
C:\Documents and Settings\%username%\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\CivilizationIV.ini

 

[Purest Warrior]

It seems that the only things I could get a slight performance increase out of were these two:

For example, let's assume that there is ample amount of RAM available (1GB), then perhaps the following settings could help:

; Set to 1 to page units out when non-visible
DynamicUnitPaging = 0

; Set to 1 to page unit anims out when the unit is non visible
DynamicAnimPaging = 0

I'll try pushing some more 1s and 0s around and get back to you.

Thanks for the advice so far, PW