Quick performance tip

[humba3]

Looking for a quick and cheap way to improve Civ4's performance?

Creating a bat file to set the civilization4.exe to run at high priority might help (http://www.tweakxp.com/article37033.aspx). Creating the BAT file really made the game fly, the other system tweaks (pagefile, defrag, etc.) made it just playable.

Good Luck!

Civ4 runs great on my machine:
Toshiba TabletPC
WinXP Tablet Ed
1.5 GHz centrino
768 MB RAM
nVIDIA GeForce Go 5200FX 32 MB

With the patch I might even try a large game in tablet mode, rather than sticking to the laptop mode. Tabtip is just too much of a hog for that right now.

 

[Bast]

Ok I've been playing a game on huge map + 18 civs (with all graphics on high) and up to the Middle Ages. The game has started to become a little laggy. It was noticeable but no crashes.

I did this just then and played a few hours and it cut down the lags totally. In fact, it was only a little laggy in the beginning and then the rest of the game, it was VERY fast. It was like when I was playing on a standard map

The change is very noticeable. Hopefully I can keep this up into the Modern Age. And the big test will come when the Americas are discovered.

Thank you so much!

 

[ranLR]

Does this help to improve the ~30 min. load time???!!!

 

[1c0n]

at what point in your game does it take 30 mins to load?!?!? thats an absurd amount of time my load times are 30sec-1.5 mins even with 18 civs late game

 

[ranLR]

at what point in your game does it take 30 mins to load?!?!? thats an absurd amount of time my load times are 30sec-1.5 mins even with 18 civs late game

well, since youre asking:
first time i installed the game, everything worked great. No lags, no video probs, nothing.

Then I quit the game (gotta sleep sometime...)
Now when I load (huge map, 18 civs) it takes between 15-30 mins.
Ive tried defraging to no avail.
At one point the game loaded, then my XP made the mistake of popping up a Gmail notifier message. Returning to the game took another 15 minutes...
Even starting a new game, which used to take up to 3 minutes, takes 20 minutes.
frustrating, to say the least...


EDIT: Oh yeah, the load was for a game in middle ages
Specs:
AMD Athlon XP2500
ATI 9550 128mb

 

[alco75]

Creating the BAT file really made the game fly, the other system tweaks (pagefile, defrag, etc.) made it just playable.

Those of you for whom running Civ4 at higher process priorities makes a significant positive difference - would you mind posting your CPU, please?

 

[Vehem]

Now when I load (huge map, 18 civs) it takes between 15-30 mins.

I came across a similar problem when playing hotseat, though it was a long delay between each turn rather than just on loading. Solved it by dropping Anti-Alias samples down to 0 though (from 4).

It didn't look like a graphical problem initially, but it seems that between hotseat turns (and on loading initially), the game needs to redraw the whole map that's visible, which takes a long time with high AA if much of the map is known. If you have AA turned on, try turning it off and then loading.

As a note on the "high priority" suggestion as well - that should have a noticeable effect on most processors, though be careful when assigning custom priorities to programs. Assigning "RealTime" priority is probably not a good idea.

 

[Bast]

Those of you for whom running Civ4 at higher process priorities makes a significant positive difference - would you mind posting your CPU, please?

AMD Athlon 3200+

 

[gunnergoz]

A suggestion to deal with creeping instability: quit the game and delete the cache files. They get messed up with more game reboots, it seems, especially with large maps with a lot of the world exposed. This doesn't guarantee CTD's but it does seem to help my P4, as does the priorty tweak (to normal).

 

[Hardin]

I've tried running games on high priority before and all it did was disable my mouse and keyboard because the cpu was processing the game instead of the inputs.

 

[alco75]

AMD Athlon 3200+

Thanks, that's good news ...
I have an AMD Athlon 2500+ @ 3200+

 

[phalzyr]

Were is civ4's cache directory? I looked but found nothing....maybe it just got cleared...

 

[1c0n]

Were is civ4's cache directory? I looked but found nothing....maybe it just got cleared...

C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache

Those of you for whom running Civ4 at higher process priorities makes a significant positive difference - would you mind posting your CPU, please?

i dont see major improvements, and i dont bother with the batchfile, i just up it in taskmanager as needed but mine is P4 2.53 @3.06 no HT with 1GB 533 ram (corsair)


also, i find, the BlueMarble mod not only makes it look 100x better, but it also runs better.

 

[atomant]

Try:


C:\Documents and Settings\XXX\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache


where XXX is your userid.

 

[phalzyr]

C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\Application Data\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\cache


i dont see major improvements, and i dont bother with the batchfile, i just up it in taskmanager as needed but mine is P4 2.53 @3.06 no HT with 1GB 533 ram (corsair)


also, i find, the BlueMarble mod not only makes it look 100x better, but it also runs better.

thanks I searched for cache and didn't find any at the time, maybe it jsut got cleared... or something...

Upping it in task manager won't work. The game auto changes the prioity when you go in and out of the game. At least fro most I've seen say they altered it in task manager then go in/out of game and it has reset.

The batch file forces it to be high? I'll have to see if it is effected the same way as alt-tabbing is. OH and BTW the game doesn't really like ALT-TABBING I had the game ... have issues... when doing this a few times.

 

[Ad Hominem]

I tried the batch file trick but didn't work so I must do something wrong. I created the file with notepad, named it Civilization4.bat, wrote the line cmd /c /High Civilization4.exe (with those exact spaces in it) and saved.

It won't start anything! What stupidity am I pulling here? I know I am doing something stupid but after a long day at work I am not clearminded enough to find out myself. Please help somebody!

 

[Ray Patterson]

Be sure to save the .bat in your CIV directory.

 

[gunnergoz]

My experience is that it is best to run the game in windowed mode...never alt-tab out of the full screen mode, either. The less you disturb the game, the better. At least until it is patched, anyway. And purge the cache when the game map is more exposed and there is more for it to track. Starting with a clean cache file usually guarantees me many moves with little or no problems.

 

[Ad Hominem]

But I have it in my Civ dir!

 

[Ray Patterson]

ah, if you wrote exactly in the bat what you wrote here, you missed the 'start'...