Long wait times?

[rockhpi]

I'm running CivIII on a 600MHz pentium. In my current game, only about an eighth (if that) of the map is visible. My pauses between issuing orders are outrageous! Sometimes I'm staring at "Please Wait" for a full two minutes, then I issue two orders and then it's two more minutes of "Please Wait." Do other users experience pauses of this length on similar systems? Do I just need to get a beefier processor? Has anyone done anything to their system that's helped speed the game up? I hate to think about the length of the waits after I've uncovered more of the world!

RockHPI

 

[Moulton]

This does not sound like normal waits to me. Mine is a 950, and I experience waits only in modern times if there are many civ's and/or a huge map.
On a huge map with 16 civs, it is a long wait -- minutes -- between turns, even early. But no waits during the turn.
Look at memory-- video card, virtual memory, hard disk space, free space left for windows to do its thing. If you crowd windows, it will stall out on you.
I am using T-bird 950, 512 mem, 40G hard disk, nearly empty, Gforce II, Win2K Pro.

 

[rockhpi]

I'm running 600MHz, 256 Ram, 80% system resources free (only way to bump this up is to disable ZoneAlarm which gets me another 10%) but to be fair I am running the largest possible map with (I think) ten civs. I have approximately 30 cities right now and I'm just discovering gunpowder. I spend far more time watching TV than issuing orders LOL. I get a big pause, then I give city orders then another big pause then I give unit orders. It runs just fine when the game isn't thinking for the computer. My units move smoothly, battles happen OK, it's just when the computer's thinking that I get the lonnnng pauses.

RockHPI

 

[Ironikinit]

I don't think how much of the world you've explored has an impact on delay. How many total units there are surely does, however.

Stick to the standard sized map, which runs fine even on my obsolete junk box.

 

[rockhpi]

I'll keep that in mind...I do plan on upgrading my processor to give me a little more horsepower and loading up on RAM when I do. But I finally have a decent civ I'm running on the large map - I hate to drop it now!

RockHPI

 

[Moulton]

Hard disk free space? OS?
In another thread, Dan mentioned that CivIII does a lot of diskswapping from memory.

Make sure you have plenty of space, and that you have a large virtual memory set.

I have never experience slowness, waits, between my orders, only between turns, when the AI is working, and when the comp goes through my cities, and then only when I had more than like 75 cities.