I like to play multi player games with a buddy, playing against the AI. However, game performance makes this really sad.
A couple of days ago we tested a large map in epic speed with 8 AIs (Wanted 10 but got a warning in setup screen if going beyond 8, so didn't. Dunno what that was all about though) Also set up lots of city states (24 or so I reckon)
It went fine to begin with, but after playing a while pressing next turn took ages. We desperately searched for how to fix these issues, but only found bad guesses.
After a while it could take several minutes from pressing end turn to we could do something again. At that time the AIs had spread to the better parts of the world, and built a lot of units I reckon. We had also explored a good part of the world.
- We're both using ASUS G73j computers, so pretty equal hardware.
- The game was not consuming much memory. We had plenty free.
- The game was only using like 10-15% CPU while waiting for next turn.
- Graphics was not an issue. DX9 vs DX10/11 or min or max graphics setting or tactical mode, none of these settings seemed to matter at all.
So the only conclusion we could find is that the game has been poorly developed and there's lock contention that stops the game from using the available resources.
We restarted the game on standard size map with 8 AIs but only 12 city states. This time we haven't waited more than a minute at least I think. Allthough towards end game we've been warmongering more, so the AI has probably got less units to move.
We tried to set "QuickCombat = 1" to see if that helped but didn't feel like it helped the next turn time much. It did however help to be able to fight quicker in our turns.
I find it really sad that performance is this bad. While I like the opportunity to have mods for a game, I'd much rather have a civ game that works at end game than a game written in a scripting language, if that's the root of the issues.
Is map size and number of AIs and city states the only settings we can change to improve performance related to turning?
A couple of days ago we tested a large map in epic speed with 8 AIs (Wanted 10 but got a warning in setup screen if going beyond 8, so didn't. Dunno what that was all about though) Also set up lots of city states (24 or so I reckon)
It went fine to begin with, but after playing a while pressing next turn took ages. We desperately searched for how to fix these issues, but only found bad guesses.
After a while it could take several minutes from pressing end turn to we could do something again. At that time the AIs had spread to the better parts of the world, and built a lot of units I reckon. We had also explored a good part of the world.
- We're both using ASUS G73j computers, so pretty equal hardware.
- The game was not consuming much memory. We had plenty free.
- The game was only using like 10-15% CPU while waiting for next turn.
- Graphics was not an issue. DX9 vs DX10/11 or min or max graphics setting or tactical mode, none of these settings seemed to matter at all.
So the only conclusion we could find is that the game has been poorly developed and there's lock contention that stops the game from using the available resources.
We restarted the game on standard size map with 8 AIs but only 12 city states. This time we haven't waited more than a minute at least I think. Allthough towards end game we've been warmongering more, so the AI has probably got less units to move.
We tried to set "QuickCombat = 1" to see if that helped but didn't feel like it helped the next turn time much. It did however help to be able to fight quicker in our turns.
I find it really sad that performance is this bad. While I like the opportunity to have mods for a game, I'd much rather have a civ game that works at end game than a game written in a scripting language, if that's the root of the issues.
Is map size and number of AIs and city states the only settings we can change to improve performance related to turning?
