PC runs slow with 35 civ map but its fine with 18 civ?

[kensington888]

i have played the 18 civ map and its fine.now i am using the 35 civ mod for the new patch.i have noticed that this is making my pc very slow.i got more memory for the 18
civ map and road to war.now with the 35 civ its very slow.anyone have any ideas about this?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

You're asking your computer to do twice as much work with the same resources. Sorry, but it is going to slow down.

 

[kensington888]

are you saying that it is the amount of AI civs that slow the game down?Im only asking this as the two maps are a similar size.one having 18 civs the other having 35.

 

[AmazonQueen]

are you saying that it is the amount of AI civs that slow the game down?Im only asking this as the two maps are a similar size.one having 18 civs the other having 35.

Amount of AIs will be the main reason if there is a long wait between turns

I play on Giant Earth map which has about 40 civs and Jabarto's Europe map which is larger than GEM but has less civs starting out and GEM is much slower for me

 

[Lemon Merchant]

The computer has to do a number of calculations for unit moves and builds for each civ in the game. The more civs that you use, the more processor time has to be devoted to servicing all of those builds/unit moves, etc. This overhead, if you will, is what causes the "Turn Lag" in the late game for those of us who don't have very powerful machines, especially when using really big maps. The amount of memory also has an effect on turn lag.

When I had my creaky old Athlon machine, I couldn't even play on a map bigger than standard because of this, the lag was so bad. My new, very fast quad core is much better, but I still get a tiny bit of lag when using a huge map with more than 25 civs. An example would be sort of like opening five or six applications at once on an older machine. They all slow down because you're asking the computer to do many things at the same time, and it must divide its' time accordingly.

Now, I don't want to hear any smartie pants comments from the i7 peanut gallery about how your computer doesn't slow down. My Phenom doesn't either. I'm using a single core as an example here to illustrate my point.

Btw, kensington888, what are your machine specs?

 

[Kesshi]

kensington888,

CivIV has had a memory leak for as long as I can remember playing the game. If the game is getting too slow, try saving the game, shutting it down, and reloading your save. This may or may not improve the speed to a bearable point or not depending on the specifications of your machine.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Exactly, it's the number of AI civs. The increase in calculations is more then the arithmetical one here.

 

[phungus420]

In my experience shutting civ down doesn't fix a slow down caused by the memory leak when you play to long. I have to reboot my computer to fix that. It will usually get bad after playing for 3 or more hours straight and I have to reboot, been that way since Vanilla Civ4. I'm nearly sure this is from a memory leak, because if I press ctrl + alt + delete it shows all my computer's RAM is being used, even if nothing is running... only way to fix is to reboot for me.

In a way though it's kind of good, because it keeps me from spending too long of time periods playing Civ. Kind of an unofficial alarm clock is the way I've always percieved it.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

In my experience shutting civ down doesn't fix a slow down caused by the memory leak when you play to long. I have to reboot my computer to fix that. It will usually get bad after playing for 3 or more hours straight and I have to reboot, been that way since Vanilla Civ4. I'm nearly sure this is from a memory leak, because if I press ctrl + alt + delete it shows all my computer's RAM is being used, even if nothing is running... only way to fix is to reboot for me.

I agree. It isn't as bad with 64 bit and more than 4 GB of memory. You can go longer without a reboot.

I'm pretty sure about the leak as well, and my roomie thinks it's from the graphics drivers, but that's a bit too technical for me. I have a little gadget on my sidebar which shows memory use. Sometimes, late at night, if I've been playing for 4 or 5 hours, I'll shut Civ down and look at it. (Well, who can sleep with a good game going? ) With nothing but the OS running, it should read about 1.6 GB in use. After Civ, I've seen it as high as 3.3 GB, and like you say, I can't get it back until I reboot.

 

[deanej]

That would explain why my laptop requires a reboot at least once a day in order to function well. It's all civ's fault!

 

[kensington888]

my system specs amd athlon 64 2.4ghz. 1.25 gb ram.

 

[Lemon Merchant]

my system specs amd athlon 64 2.4ghz. 1.25 gb ram.

Ah! That might explain a bit of the slowdown. My old system was similar. Athlon XP 3200 at 2.2 GHz, and 2 GB, and the performance was lousy. Thankfully, it caught fire. (Also, thankfully while I was using it, rather than me being elsewhere and burning the house down. )

Something that will help quite a bit, is to increase the amount of memory to 2 GB, and if you have enough memory slots, go to 3. (Anything over 3 GB in a 32 bit OS is a bit of a waste, apparently.) RAM is cheap these days, and it's one of the cheapest, most effective upgrades you can give your machine in most cases. I'm assuming this is a desktop?

 

[Rockies]

OK, dumb question time....I thought Civ4 had a limit of 18 civs per game -- if these mods up that, does that imply that I could, even using vanilla BtS, go into the WorldBuilder and manually add 10 more civs on an 18-civ map, and (aside from my machine being able to handle the load) no internals of BtS will break and ruin the game?

 

[deanej]

First, you can't add more civs via worldbuilder, you have to edit the scenario file manually with a text editor. Second, to get more than 18 civs, you have to edit the SDK.

 

[quiddity]

what mod r u playin to ? I mean for 35 civ ?

 

[Abegweit]

my system specs amd athlon 64 2.4ghz. 1.25 gb ram.

Get yourself some more memory dood. It's cheap and CIV will run far better. I recently upped my laptop from 1Gig to 3Gig. The difference is amazing.

 

[phungus420]

what mod r u playin to ? I mean for 35 civ ?

Most mods now use a 50 Civ dll. Though it is extremely easy to make a gamecore with any number of players you want. You need to be able to follow directions so you can set up a compiler, but when I did this I had no previous knowledge and was able to do it, so it's not that hard (but does require following the instructions to the letter). Once the compiler is set up it's as simple as changing an 18 to whatever number you want.

 

[jeffreyac]

Thankfully, it caught fire.

Ya know, there's a sentence you don't see very often... though I understand the sentiment!

My last machine was still very nice when the graphics card/mobo blew (laptop, so hard/impossible to fix cheaply). My feelings were mixed - I'd only had it a bout 16 months (stupid 1 year warranty through the retailer!) so I was angry about having to buy a new one, but there is aways a small part of the brain that goes "Oh, good, an excuse to buy a new machine!!"

 

[Sprig]

Thankfully, it caught fire.

My old Civ3 machine caught fire, I was thankful as well

 

[3 EMS]

You (sprig) and Lemon must play hard. My machine barely gets warm.

Funny mental image. Izzy comes crashing through my borders with 50 million conquistadors and my PC just starts smoking. I don't see it because of the steam comming out of my ears.