OK, the Slowness. Who's sorted it?

[chris.giddins]

And who hasn't?. I've seen loads of *****y arguments going on about bad programme v Bad machines. My computer is allegedly good enough to play the game. It doesn't, at least in an acceptable way. What I want to know is what I do first. Buy more memory (I have half a gig) or wait for the patch. I have a gut feeling that no patch on earth is going to sort this degree of lag. On the other hand I'm loathe to buy new memory if even that won't sort out the slowness. I may just abandon the game which is unfortunate because it looks fantastic.

 

[Psyringe]

There are some theories what's causing the lag, but no certainty yet. Also, the evidence seems to be contradictory at times.

If memory leaks are causing the lags, then a patch may solve them. If it's just the game data accumulating to a point where your RAM isn't enough anymore, then a patch isn't likely to help you. If the graphics are causing the lag, then a patch *might* help you, but you may have to wait for a "low-bandwidth" mod.

But currently we just can't tell what's exactly causing the lags.

I ponder about upping my RAM also (I have 256 MB right now), but I'll wait whether the patches will have any effect on the mid-to-late game lags I'm experiencing. Meanwhile, I play on small maps, on these the lags don't occur for me.

 

[chris.giddins]

I'm only playing on standard maps. For 10 moves or so it's acceptable but it gradually becomes intolerable. It's as if the demands on the memory become accumalitive rather than greater. Start the game again, at the same point and everythings ok. There's definitly a very quick accumulation of irrelevent memory usage.

 

[Mujadaddy]

The current thinking is that processor bottlenecks first, then RAM next, then actual HARDDRIVE access speed (b/c of the HUGE paging files) .... RAM is the easiest fix, though...

OP, if your system is better than mine (in my sig), get RAM first.

 

[VimesUK]

I have just played my first game and all the way through to the modern age it played fine on the Terra map, large world.
I ran it at...
1280x1024 with 2xAA - all animations etc on.
AMD XP 2600
1GB RAM
ATI 9800pro
Even at the end of the modern age there were no slow downs, and only a matter of seconds whilst waiting for the PC to calculate the AI's turn.

 

[DukeNukem]

If its a memory leak, could that be sorted ?

im hopeing there is a memory leak and it will be sorted

 

[warpstorm]

The game uses gobs of RAM (even at a fresh load - before a memory leak would have time to accumulate).

 

[GamesMan]

Yes, I've found if I save, quit, and restart the game, things get better for a while.

 

[spa]

The game tended to lag on my machine but I have fixed it with a RAM upgrade. I have a GeForce 5200 FX, a 2 GHz Athlon processor and 768 RAM. When I upgraded I went from 512 to 768 and I was astounded by the huge difference that extra RAM made. On my machine at least, it was the RAM not the graphics card or the processor that was holding down performance.

PS I have all the animations on except I clicked display as a single unit as the crowd that represents your units if you don't looks silly in my opinion.

 

[Venger]

What's funny, is that the entire save game is less than 1 Meg - that is, everything about your Civ4 world map - units, the map itself, improvements, techs, what you are building, all of your cities, pollution, roads, unit movement left, demographics, ALL OF IT - fit in less than 1 MB of room.

But cheese and rice when you load it if it doesn't take up as much room as it possibly can. Very strange, to me...

Venger

 

[Jh00]

Yes, I've found if I save, quit, and restart the game, things get better for a while.

That's enough proof to me that there are memory leaks in Civ4. If you have just loaded the save game and all seems to me smooth, there is no reason for the game to crawl later on.

BTW, I think that there are some issues with the 3D engine as well... I notice that sometimes when I scroll the camera, the FPS sinks verticaly when displaying "something" that I couldn't figure out. Like, imagine the map full of units and buildings... When the camera is scrolled past *that one* montain, the FPS drops. So, I'm sure there is a problem with the way polygons are interacting with the terrain (or other units).

 

[warpstorm]

What's funny, is that the entire save game is less than 1 Meg - that is, everything about your Civ4 world map - units, the map itself, improvements, techs, what you are building, all of your cities, pollution, roads, unit movement left, demographics, ALL OF IT - fit in less than 1 MB of room.

Well, they aren't storing the 3D models of everything in the Save file, or any of the other 1.4 gigs of data in the assets directory which must be loaded into RAM at some time.

 

[chris.giddins]

What's funny, is that the entire save game is less than 1 Meg - that is, everything about your Civ4 world map - units, the map itself, improvements, techs, what you are building, all of your cities, pollution, roads, unit movement left, demographics, ALL OF IT - fit in less than 1 MB of room.

But cheese and rice when you load it if it doesn't take up as much room as it possibly can. Very strange, to me...

Venger

Yes, I've noticed the very small size of the saved games. Good for them. Shame it's ****e elsewhere. Anyway. I've decided to go for broke. Tomorrow I'm going to buy some extra memory, I'm also going to buy me a better graphics card. I'm going to justify this expenditure by passing on my graphics card to my daughters PC. This should provide the "control" element of all these arguments. It'll cost me £100, but it's a long term investment. If the game don't work after that............arghhhhhhh

 

[DukeNukem]

Was the whole of Civ4 developed in Python ?

 

[Venger]

Well, they aren't storing the 3D models of everything in the Save file, or any of the other 1.4 gigs of data in the assets directory which must be loaded into RAM at some time.

I wonder how much actual data from the Civ4 program files needs to be resident at any one time.

Unlike games that come on 4 CD's (like SW:BF2) where alot of the data is for scenes that are mutually exclusive - that is, the Degobah map and units and graphics never need to coexist with the Hoth map and units, etc... one could argue that potentially all of the Civ game may be needed at any one time.

Venger

 

[chris.giddins]

I wonder how much actual data from the Civ4 program files needs to be resident at any one time.

Unlike games that come on 4 CD's (like SW:BF2) where alot of the data is for scenes that are mutually exclusive - that is, the Degobah map and units and graphics never need to coexist with the Hoth map and units, etc... one could argue that potentially all of the Civ game may be needed at any one time.

Venger

Too complicated for me mate. I'll just buy the gear and see if it works. BTW, I just play the game as it comes.

 

[!scorpion]

I ponder about upping my RAM also (I have 256 MB right now)

256 is barely enough to run Windows let alone any programs on top of Windows.

 

[meowsqueak]

Was the whole of Civ4 developed in Python ?

No. C++ with an embedded Python interpreter for running the less CPU-bound subsystems such as the UI and map generation.

 

[Goombaz]

I wonder how much actual data from the Civ4 program files needs to be resident at any one time.

Unlike games that come on 4 CD's (like SW:BF2) where alot of the data is for scenes that are mutually exclusive - that is, the Degobah map and units and graphics never need to coexist with the Hoth map and units, etc... one could argue that potentially all of the Civ game may be needed at any one time.

Venger

I strongly suspect that is the case. This also probably explains why MMORPG's are hesitant to bulk up the number of armor/weapon models and such. Often someone sees the variety of weapons and armor in a single player console game or some such and wonders why it can't be done in, say, an MMORPG, and I have always suspected this was why: what happens if you walk into one of any given MMORPG's infamous "Social Hub Zones" and you see over 70% of the weapons and armor textures in the game world on one screen.

On the contrary in a Final Fantasy or a Zelda you have strict limits on how many weapons could show up at once, I.E. Link can't have the Master sword and the Big Goron sword equipped at once, or a skeleton from the 8th dungeon simply has zero chance of showing up in the 2nd. An even remotely clever programmer could exploit this(I would think anyhow, feel free to correct me.)