Massive Slowdowns late game, memleak galore?

[Kohlrabi]

I am having serious trouble to even finish my first game. When I started it it went smoothly, no hicups. This was tru until about turn 120. Then the game slowly started to get slower and slower. Action like mouseclikcs and move commands took half a second to be recognized, getting into the city view took 1 or 2 seconds. This got worse and worse, right now I'm at turn 230, and the game has become unplayable, cycling from one city to the netx takes 5-10 seconds. Oddly, I have no problems with Civ4, it gets a bit slower in the end, but never so much that it basically takes me 5 minutes to finish a turn.

My PC isn't new, but not so dated that it shouldn't be able to run the game decently:
Athlon 64 3700+, Radeon 2600XT, 2GB RAM, XP

Are there any settings I should change?

 

[Shurdus]

I am having serious trouble to even finish my first game. When I started it it went smoothly, no hicups. This was tru until about turn 120. Then the game slowly started to get slower and slower. Action like mouseclikcs and move commands took half a second to be recognized, getting into the city view took 1 or 2 seconds. This got worse and worse, right now I'm at turn 230, and the game has become unplayable, cycling from one city to the netx takes 5-10 seconds. Oddly, I have no problems with Civ4, it gets a bit slower in the end, but never so much that it basically takes me 5 minutes to finish a turn.

My PC isn't new, but not so dated that it shouldn't be able to run the game decently:
Athlon 64 3700+, Radeon 2600XT, 2GB RAM, XP

Are there any settings I should change?

If you turn down stuff that eats away memory - so most graphic settings (anti-alliasing!) and then reboot your computer and startup the game again, does that solve your issue?

Memory leaks typically do not occur straight away, but only after playing the game for a bit. Does the problem occur after a fresh load as well?

You might want to close down all apps running in the background as well, and that includes hidden progs that you are not aware off. Make sure to scan for virusses and spyware.

Please scan your computer for malicious software, reboot your computer and load up your game. Does that fix the problem?

 

[SHRIKEE]

Around turn 150 the gameplay gets choppish and sluggish for us too..

I play on a 20" iMac 2.4Ghz core 2 Duo with 4GB ram and Windows XP (medium settings, graphically)

My mate on my second computer a AMD4200 dualcore with 3GB ram and Windows XP also (medium settings also)

Civ4 (and Warlords) is slow as hell too halfway through the game. And it's deadly annoying.
Any tips ideas? (no not the "scan for virusses rubbish" it's not that, not spyware either).

Actually i think this is kinda not fixable by us, but should be patched by Firaxis as the games engine seems to be utterly broken. But hey that's just me.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Footen]

Same problem here and I also have it in Civ4, if I restart the game completely it clears the memory and runs normally for awhile.

 

[Shurdus]

Around turn 150 the gameplay gets choppish and sluggish for us too..

I play on a 20" iMac 2.4Ghz core 2 Duo with 4GB ram and Windows XP (medium settings, graphically)

My mate on my second computer a AMD4200 dualcore with 3GB ram and Windows XP also (medium settings also)

Civ4 (and Warlords) is slow as hell too halfway through the game. And it's deadly annoying.
Any tips ideas? (no not the "scan for virusses rubbish" it's not that, not spyware either).

Actually i think this is kinda not fixable by us, but should be patched by Firaxis as the games engine seems to be utterly broken. But hey that's just me.

Thanks in advance!

I think that you are right that this is not solvable for you as your processor seems kind of light for late-game civ - depending on the map size. It may very well be that your processor causes the slowdowns, as I do not experience any slowdowns.

 

[SHRIKEE]

So how many trillion megahertz's do i need then?

I go well over the recommended specs with my computers. If my computers can't handle it, how bad is it for people who meet the minimum.

I doubt my computer is the cause. But fine, try and proof me wrong

 

[SHRIKEE]

So how many trillion megahertz's do i need then?

I go well over the recommended specs with my computers. If my computers can't handle it, how bad is it for people who meet the minimum.

I doubt my computer is the cause. But fine, try and proof me wrong

 

[isi]

I had same problem with pretty high end comp, opening city screen took about 10 sec in late game. But after restarting game everything was smooth again.

 

[Zhahz]

I have late game slowdown too, with a core2duo E6750, 3G RAM, ATI 4850, Win XP Pro.

Normal sized map (with low sea level for a bit more land).

Noticeable (1-2) seconds to go in/out of city screen. When inside it can take several seconds to assign a colonist or load/unload cargo. Far worse in highly populated settlements but all around horrific. Main map is jumpy.

I never have problems like this in Civ IV.

This game is not that complex and should not have this kind of sluggishness.

I also have a 24" monitor but it's usually not an issue with my relatively beefy video card.

After posting I dropped anit-aliasing to 4 from 16 (since it probably makes zero difference in a game like this anyways but *could* cause extra unnecessary work) and turned off high terrain textures (not sure you can tell a difference there either) - quit out and reloaded my game and it's snappy again.

So, dunno if there's a memory leak or changing those setting, that I always have on in Civ IV with zero issues, but it got "cleaner."

 

[pvt chaos]

Same problems here, running a core2duo E6600, 4GB Ram, Geforce 8800 GTS and Vista.

Only solution what works far me is to exit the game and then reload my save. Changing graphical options does not improve things.

 

[SHRIKEE]

I suspect the game engine puts too much strain on routing the units and especially on doing it all simultaneously. If you alt-tab out of the game and look at resource usage colonization or Civ4 take like 400-600MB ram and a whole bunch of CPU %'s

However, a same amount of units in Civ2/Civ3 worked like a charm, which to my idea means the new game engine is broken at some point.

 

[mikeymike]

Its gotta be a memory leak problem...

I've noticed that as im playing, the RAM usage goes from about 150meg to over 600. Once its hits about the 350 mark is when i notice the slow down. Reloading the game (quit to desktop) works for me. It will reload the same game that was eating 600 and will only use about 150 on reload.

Another indication for me that its time to restart is that the music stops playing once the memory usage is way up there.

I can see this being a major killer in MP.

 

[minger]

Ugh, I'm having the same problem (I'm at work so I don't remember my specs, but I bought this laptop about 2 years ago at the near-max specs at that time). I made all the graphics down to lowest, but it made no difference. Restarting the game DID make a difference, but only for about 10 turns before massive slowdown again. This game is infuriating.

 

[Snazzye]

Yep, having the same slowdown late game. Lowering the settings does seem to help for a bit but then it creeps back. If I exit out of the game and reload it goes back to normal for awhile then comes back again later. Pretty annoying.

 

[trytogrowupkid]

this is my biggest issue with the game. In lieu of a fix in the form of a patch, would anyone know if a 3rd party memory manager program help this?

 

[SHRIKEE]

Over the past few days we've tried other things;
singleplayer, smaller maps, less indians, less AI all over, lower graphics settings and all that.

Combinations of those too.

All to no avail. Even on a small map with 2 indians and no other europeans but us 2 it broke at around turn 150/170.

This game engine is seriously broken.

 

[caspah62]

Almost every Civ game since civ 3 has had this problem. After so many turns the game crashes due to a memory leak. It was fixed in the previous games with a patch.

Its not that anyone dosnt have enough memory, or that anti-aliasing is on and such. Its the software coding... The fixes ussually work by dedicating certain caches to certain parts of the memory. When this isnt done, the memory accidenty overwrites itself and crashes the system.

 

[Dale]

Can I just point out that it's not a memory leak.

Civ4 and Civ4 Col work by using what's called LISTS in programming. Basically each category of object is in a list, players, plots, cities, units, buildings, etc.

Throughout the game these lists are fluid. IE: build a unit, the unit list gets 1 item longer. By end game, you'll have heaps of cities, heaps of improvements, hundreds of units, etc etc. Each item is stored in a list. The catch with lists is they don't flush until you deregister the list array, which in the case of Civ4 and Civ4 Col is when you close the game.

BTW, this is not a strange method for a game. Most games utilise lists. Just not many games create lists as long as Civ4s.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

Can I just point out that it's not a memory leak.

Civ4 and Civ4 Col work by using what's called LISTS in programming. Basically each category of object is in a list, players, plots, cities, units, buildings, etc.

Throughout the game these lists are fluid. IE: build a unit, the unit list gets 1 item longer. By end game, you'll have heaps of cities, heaps of improvements, hundreds of units, etc etc. Each item is stored in a list. The catch with lists is they don't flush until you deregister the list array, which in the case of Civ4 and Civ4 Col is when you close the game.

BTW, this is not a strange method for a game. Most games utilise lists. Just not many games create lists as long as Civ4s.

That's the biggest load of codswallop i've heard in a long time!

 

[caspah62]

If that was the case then I could continue to play my game when I close and reload civ. In this case I cannot... It'll crash no matter what I do. Well Im not sure about this LISTS, as that might be the problem for the majority here. But mine is definately a memory leak. Same problem I had with earlier versions of windows...