Slow down mid-game?

[jacktannery]

I chose quick combat and marathon speed (standard map size as usual). It was the first time in several months I have used either of these two settings. I only chose QC combat I had decided in advance not to take the honour tree.

Could the quick combat setting slow down the game to this extent?

If it was marathon (this usually means more units) then it would be very difficult to get people to test it, because It takes many many hours of play to get to the middle ages in marathon. Incidently, I was forced to give up the game due to the slowdown. Even the animations (eg. brids flying over fish in the sea) were moving very very slowly. Reloading the game made no difference. This has never happened to me before, and I have played numerous games on marathon with quick combat on in much earlier versions of TBM without issues.

 

[Thalassicus]

1. Open the tuner's Game tab.
2. Select your leader on "return autoplay as."
3. Click Autoplay 100.

This runs the game with all AIs for 100 turns, an easy way to check things in midgame.

How do you get 7 second turns? Do the AIs have no units at all? Usually by industrial era there are so many wars/units moving around that it's a good 30-60 seconds per turn.

Yes, it's about that time if no AI units visibly move. AI unit movement isn't important here because changing the speed of movement or combat requires the game core only Firaxis has access to.

Quick combat is bugged and breaks any mods that alter combat (including this one) so quick combat cannot be used with mods. It's on the vanilla bugs list.

 

[zarakand]

1. Open the tuner's Game tab.
2. Select your leader on "return autoplay as."
3. Click Autoplay 100.

This runs the game with all AIs for 100 turns, an easy way to check things in midgame.


Yes, it's about that time if no AI units visibly move. AI unit movement isn't important here because changing the speed of movement or combat requires the game core only Firaxis has access to.

Quick combat is bugged and breaks any mods that alter combat (including this one) so quick combat cannot be used with mods. It's on the vanilla bugs list.

I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, but I don't understand what combat end phase is that's the bug with quick combat and mods?

 

[Thalassicus]

It's impossible for mods to detect combat with Quick Combat enabled, or in strategic view. The "EndCombatSim" lua event does not occur in these situations. That event is the only thing Firaxis provided to modders to detect combat.

 

[Sneaks]

After doing some FireTuner testing on speed comparing this mod to NIGHTS and SMAC, it does appear that VEM causes the most lag. My suspicion is that it has to do with the several utility events the mod runs on an exceptional number of events (every building being built/destroyed) etc. Given that these events may run dozens of time during the Next Turn wait, our best (albeit less pretty) bet might be to simply move some events to once a turn occurrence, rather than directly on event.

 

[Thalassicus]

The events are run only once in each of the OnTurnStart and OnTurnEnd loops.

 

[Forceman]

I've noticed the same problem. Just tried with a non-modded game and it was noticeably quicker, even at the beginning of the game. Mine manifests itself as a hitching kind of slowdown as the game processed the end of turn, where the screen moves very slowly (even the event notifications move very slowly down the right side of the screen) and scrolling is very slow. I tried disabling VEM and it still seems slow - so maybe the problem is in one of the CIVUP utils? It also takes longer to open the city screen with the mod running, for example you can visibly see it recalculate the production numbers in the top left as it opens.

It is also slow even with very few AI units - I took over all the other city states, and left just one other capital, so there were no more than 5 AI units in the whole game, but it was still very slow. Maybe something tied to buildings?

 

[Yps]

• What are your map settings like? Speed, size, number of players, any changes to advanced game settings?
• What settings do you have in interface and visual options?

Lots of details here would help. There might be a single option somewhere that's causing the longer turn times.

I use the large map, marathon game speed, 12 AI and 20 city states. The advanced game settings remain unchanged. I tried several nations and all led to the experienced slowdown.

Unfortunately up to now every release after 10.4 is not playable for me. Thus I stick to 10.4 for the time coming.

 

[Thalassicus]

If you've had difficulty with this, please try version v108 and see if there's an improvement. I spent a few days searching through the code for ways to boost performance.

 

[zarakand]

Thanks, I'll download and start messing around this weekend.

 

[Seek]

108 does seem faster so far, but I'm only ~100 turns into a game.

 

[gdwitt]

I don't notice much decrease in the mid-game lag compared to vanilla.
I had 4 armies trooping across my territory though.
Turns times are still about 1 minute, but I am just estimating.
I am delighted that the units move much quicker as in civ 4.
I use single-unit graphics and quick combat.
My computer has 6MB ram and a decent 2 year old processor and 1 year old updated nvidia graphics card.
I would like to cut out whatever portion of VEM is causing the slow down.
Can you advise please?

 

[Thalassicus]

@gdwitt
If I knew what was causing slowdowns, or why it happens for some players and not others, the problem would be solved.

 

[Forceman]

108 does seem faster. Still some slowdowns, but not as bad as before.

 

[black213]

For me VEM is a lot slower than vanilla and NIGHTS, which even has more content.

 

[Yps]

If you've had difficulty with this, please try version v108 and see if there's an improvement. I spent a few days searching through the code for ways to boost performance.

Thanks Thal (especially for the time-effort you put into it). I will try 10.8 asap and give feedback.

 

[zarakand]

I noticed a nice improvement in speed, thank you!

On a sad note, ceremonial rites is still a bit buggy. Founded 3rd city and didn't get the free monument. 2nd city was building a monument when I decided to choose it, and it didn't get it either.

 

[Bridger]

How do you get 7 second turns? Do the AIs have no units at all? Usually by industrial era there are so many wars/units moving around that it's a good 30-60 seconds per turn.

One thing introduced in 106 was new city view information by Sneaks... though I doubt that could cause it, since we don't look at the city view much between turns. I'm looking over the 106 and 106.2 release notes in an attempt to figure out what in those two versions caused the issue.

I played up through the Modern era and didn't encounter the problem (7 seconds between turns then), which is why this has been difficult to solve. If you're encountering longer times:

• What are your map settings like? Speed, size, number of players, any changes to advanced game settings?
• What settings do you have in interface and visual options?

Lots of details here would help. There might be a single option somewhere that's causing the longer turn times.

For me, it doesn't matter what size map I play as once a chunk of the map(normally by the medieval) is discovered it takes 30 seconds to 1:30 for turns to end. Some of the settings I choose are:
Quick Combat
Raging Barbarians
Standard Speed
Large Map Size (happens on standard and huge as well).

My settings are Epic speed, Standard Map Size, King difficulty, and all others default. I don't think I changed any of the interface options either. I have a pretty beefy computer (Athlon 3 core @ 3.0 ghz + nVidia GTX 275) and I get 30-50 second turn time by the middle ages. It's *really* bad but I thought that's how every game was because I haven't played it in so long. Didn't realize I might have something wrong.

Will try 108 cause even though I really like this 107 game I'm playing I really want to play with faster turns.

BTW, mine manifests the same way as Forceman. During the turn processing (after about medieval age) the screen slows to what seems like 5 frames per second and any movement or screen clicks take forever to effect the world.

I would KILL for 7 second turn times. It's not something that kicks in suddenly at any one point either. It slowly ramps up from about 3-5 second turns at game start to 30-40 second turns by mid-ren.

FWIW, I also use City-State Diplomacy. Could there be an interaction problem there maybe? Anybody else who had the problem also use this?

 

[jacktannery]

BTW, mine manifests the same way as Forceman. During the turn processing (after about medieval age) the screen slows to what seems like 5 frames per second and any movement or screen clicks take forever to effect the world.

Ditto. It is important to emphasise that this is NOT simply longer turn times. It is much more serious, with animations slowing to a crawl and clicking taking up to ten seconds per click.

Looking through Zaracand's and Yps' settings I can see that two out of the three of us experienced this problem with Marathon Speed, and with Quick Combat. This suggests it is neither of these.

I also experienced this when using CSD - perhaps the interaction between these is the culprit? But then Thal would have got it too (I believe he uses CSD in his games).

I any event, I downloaded 1.72 and played a standard speed, full combat animations game without CSD and did not experience the problem. Now I'm scared of playing with Marathon Speed, CSD or Quick Combat.

[Thal: I know we are not supposed to play with quick combat on but really I can't play a patronage game with it off - and I thought it only broke certain units and the honour policy]

 

[Bridger]

So far my 108 game is going much faster than before. I'm almost at the renessance and it's noticably faster.