Please wait!!!!

[Shadrak]

hi,
been playing since Dec. 2001, lately have been playing on "Huge" maps. the AI has taken up to 4 minutes to think as i get the old "please wait" message. i have an Athlon system 1.3 ghz, with 256 megs of ram. anyone else have this problem?

Shadrak

 

[Willem]

It's normal, especially with huge maps. It something to do with the pathfinding algorithims. I wouldn't even think about playing 16 civs at that size, it just takes to long for a turn.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

I am currently playing just such a map, with 16 civs too. Not only is it slow but also error-prone and crash-prone, even when I'd set the land mass to minimal. Not a very stable game.

 

[BCLG100]

i always turn animations off and i only ever watch AI moves during a war so inbetween turns only last for about 30seconds

 

[warpstorm]

Knight-Dragon, If it's crashing it is most likely your system that isn't stable. I've had next to no crashes even on ultra-huge (256x256) maps.

Shadrak, They can take a while (1-2 minutes a turn). Like BCLG100 said, there are a bunch of preferences that can speed it up a good bit. RAM helps a lot. 256M is not much depending on your OS. You might have next to no free RAM before the game starts (thank you Bill Gates). Like Willem was alluding to, the size of the map makes the computation time go way up. The search space for a Huge map is ~2.5 times as large as a normal map. More players makes the computation time go up (more cities and units to process). Changing the rules so that corruption is less can drive the time up (even more cities and units).

 

[Jimcat]

Are you playing with sounds turned off? I found that the game sounds hang my Civ3 game all the time, and if you have sound turned on within the game but muted in Windows, this may be hanging up your game and you'll never realize it.

Go into Preferences and turn off all sounds, see if this improves your performance any.

 

[Chieftess]

I've played large maps with no problems (and I have a Pentium 3, 667mhz system with 384 MEGS of RAM).

 

[Willem]

Originally posted by Knight-Dragon
I am currently playing just such a map, with 16 civs too. Not only is it slow but also error-prone and crash-prone, even when I'd set the land mass to minimal. Not a very stable game.

It's a stable game, but it wasn't really designed to play it that way. It's your sytem that's having problems with it, not the game itself. I play 256 X 256 with 8 civs and my CPU is maxed, and my 440 megs, or so, of RAM is redlining. Unless you have an uber system, your machine probably just can't take the strain. IMO, 16 civs shouldn't be used for anything larger than a standard map.

 

[DaDoo]

I play huge maps with 16 civs with a P2 400/512mb RAM system with no crashes. I usually have 30 seconds to 1 minute wait between turns and usually closer to 30 seconds than 1 minute. The only time I have longer than 1 minute wait is when more than half of the AI's are at war against each other. So maybe all you needed to do is change OS? or put in 1 more stick of RAM? *shrug*

 

[sabo]

I'm playing on a celeron 366mhz, 96meg of RAM and I usually play on large maps with the default number of civs and it runs just fine, I wouldn't dare go any higher though

 

[Republic_Outlaw]

Originally posted by Knight-Dragon
I am currently playing just such a map, with 16 civs too. Not only is it slow but also error-prone and crash-prone, even when I'd set the land mass to minimal. Not a very stable game.

My game freezes constantly after I edited the Civ3.bic file and forgot to make a copy (how stupid )