Saving Game freezes for a minute

[Foar]

Hello !

My Civilization 5 has only recently started to give a lot of trouble. Whenever i save a game it freezes for a minute, making gameplay quite annoying because this involves the autosave. 60+ seconds delay on every 2-3rd turn. This freeze also happens when i load a game, and in both cases it may sometimes end in a crash.

This hasn't been happening earlier, is this a bug in the latest patch ?

 

[Foar]

Update:

By now it crashes everytime i try to load a game while playing, i need to restart CIV5 to load.

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

I am having the same problem. I have a very good SSD drive that causes me no other problems, but every save causes the game to pause for a minute before continuing and it crashes if I ever try to load a game other than when first starting.

Did you ever get any resolution to this problem?

 

[dananski]

The saves are small files written sequentially, so disk speed is not the limiting factor - the delay is because saving is CPU intensive and single-threaded.

I've seen posts before about crashing on loading while already in a game. Try exiting to main menu first. Even if it isn't crashing, I find it speeds up the loading a little.

 

[The Overmind]

Try this: set CivilizationV.exe priority to one level higher right after launch. Also, try shutting down unused background programs. Be advised, though, that changing a program's priority in task manager can backfire -- try it at your own risk!

To access Task Manager in Windows XP(and probably all other Microsoft OS's), hit Ctrl + Alt + Delete. When you find Task Manager, click on Processes tab, find CivilizationV.exe, right-click on it, point over "Set Priority" and click "AboveNormal". Tweak to higher levels if the lower ones don't work(again this may cause system instability; you've been warned).

This may sound stupid, but you're also supposed to have enough free disk space for the save files and for the page file.

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

Thanks to all who answered for the help, some more background specifics.

My system:
Intel Core i5-760 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor (not overclocked at the moment)
G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
OCZ Agility 2 OCZSSD3-2AGT90G 3.5" 90GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
EVGA 012-P3-1470-AR GeForce GTX 470 (Fermi) 1280MB 320-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit 1-Pack for System Builders - OEM
GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

I also have a 2TB data drive. I have over half the SSD drive empty, but I am using bitlocker. I am currently decrypting just to see if that is the issue. I operate out of a standard user account and Civ5 runs under those user credentials. Civ5 is installed on the SSD, the game files are in "%user%\My Documents\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 5\" which is also on the SSD. I run Civ5 in DirectX11 mode.

The game freeze (hiccup) happens whether I am playing in a window or full screen. I generally raise the Civ5 process priority to high but have not noticed this help the save game hiccup. The page file is not overly busy and Civ5 rarely takes more than 1.5gigs of memory.
I notice is most pronounced when playing Large+ worlds, small continents or archipelago worlds. It doesn't start to show until I have planted my fourth city. I do clean out my old save game files before starting a new game and I only autosave every 10 turns, keep last 4. CPU load does not peg, but Civ5 stops responding for a short period during all saves once the delay starts to manifest. There are no entries in the error logs and running procmon and resource monitor do not show any disk usage or cpu usage bottleneck.

If I play a continents or Pangaea game the effect is less. If I play on a standard sized world the effect is less. If I play small and not small continents or archipelago the effect never manifests (even on a long run culture or space victory). Changing the video settings has had no affect on the game. The game is not sluggish and the graphics are very good. It is only when saving, manually or auto that the game begins manifesting the "not responding" symptom. Once that starts. Any attempt to load a game from other than fresh start from the desktop will cause a crash of Civ5.

I have validated the cache files in Steam (and just did again), and it is fine). I have uninstalled then re-installed, no change.

Just to be clear, other than when the game is saving, the game is flying. When it starts cramping, it cramps hard and begins to crash. It always crashes on loading once this happens, unless loading from a fresh restart of the Civ5 application. When it is not saving, the machine barely breaks a sweat running the game even large/huge worlds with high graphic settings.

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

Update, decrypting and turning bitlocker off had no affect, but it may be a memory issue. I watched the process in resource monitor during loading and it was taking more than 2.8gigs at peak, but went back down after loading. I am going to add more memory to see if that is the issue. Win7 appears to be handling it though, and it is nowhere near the 4gigs on board. 1.2gigs free and it still does it.

 

[dananski]

Hmmm, try memcheck if you think the memory's a problem. As for the other components, it all sounds rather nice; just keep the temps cool.

I had similar slowdowns in my second game and was using nearly my full 4GB RAM. I decided against trying more RAM and saved my money for my next build, so I'll be interested to see what you discover. That was on a large pangaea map in late game and the Americans had taken over most of the world. About half the tiles had a unit on and they moved them all every turn.

When this lag/crash happens, is it definitely only the turns it autosaves on? Are any AI players overwhelming the rest of the world like in my game?

Is CPU hovering at 25% during lags (which would indicate it's single threaded)?

Is your SSD on the chipset's SATA or the Gigabyte one? I've had a couple of dodgy experiences with the Gigabyte SATA controller on my motherboard and have put all my drives on the Intel controller instead. It might be of particular importance with an SSD as I'm not sure the Gigabyte controller supports TRIM, whereas Intel's definitely does.

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

The OCZ-SSD has updated firmware and is running off the P55 with Intel drivers. I did re-run memcheck without issue. Fortunately, my wife got a new washer and dryer for black Friday so I have 8 more gigs of matching memory coming in tomorrow. I will update if the extra memory helps.

Civ 5 seems to be using 23 threads, and the CPU caps during the save and Civ 5 actually gets listed as unresponsive by Resource Monitor.

 

[dananski]

Well, I'm at a loss for now. The problem I was having with long saves has stopped and now saving is ~1 or 2 seconds. I suppose it's obvious, but make sure you have the latest patch?

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

It seems like it may be a memory issue. I am 335 turns into an epic huge continents game without any hitches. Resource Monitor is showing only 2GB for Civ V but the total used memory is north of 4GB (nothing else running so I smell a leak) and another 4GB in standby. With rounding, that leaves me 3.5GB free on a 12GB system with just Civ V playing. I even went so far as to force the game save issue by changing the autosave settings to every turn, keep 100. I have repeated loaded the game, and while I still get the CPU spike to 100 the words (not responding) in the title bar, it always comes back and has not crashed since I added the new memory.

 

[v3HcM3SlyG]

Well with the additional memory I was able to finish a huge continents map on marathon settings > 900 turns from an ancient start. It crashed several times, but if I restarted the system after the crash I could always get 40+ more turns in before the next crash. Not ideal and I won't try again until the patch is out.