Slow Turns

[aimeeandbeatles]

No, this won't effect civ 3 turn times, unless you're low on RAM. RAM access time and Processer speed are the critical problem here, not the Hard Disk. The hard disk only effects loading time.

Yeah thats why i said nto to expec too much.

 

[galdre]

I have the same problem with Civ IV - it's the processor

I've got 4g ram, but only half of that gets used even late in the game on a large map - my poor dual core amd processor however maxes out both cores each turn even early in the game so I know where the problem is

but have a new laptop coming soon

 

[iEspionage]

Hey guys, sorry I haven't posted in a while, I'm actually involved with another league called WOGL, I'm pretty active in that community aswell.

Anyways, I doubt it's my computer, because the long delay is only kicking in sometime around when the civilization's borders start meeting eachother and they can't expand any further.

I think it's just because the game is so old? It was designed when computers aren't as they used to be so.. yeah, anyone get what I'm saying? I was told this BEFORE, but I honest to god doubt it's my computer now. Games like Red Alert 2 don't have this problem.

Is it possible for someone to record themselves playing a huge, Sid, Most Agressive AI game with at least 6-8 Civs playing? I'd like to compare myself to other players.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Actually, the main problem with older computer games is they run too fast on today's processors.

Anyways, Im not sure what Red Alert 2 is, but I was fairly sure that FPS's relied more on the graphic card than on the amount of memory. Generally a computer runs as fast as its weakest component.

 

[iEspionage]

Actually, the main problem with older computer games is they run too fast on today's processors.

Anyways, Im not sure what Red Alert 2 is, but I was fairly sure that FPS's relied more on the graphic card than on the amount of memory. Generally a computer runs as fast as its weakest component.

Red Alert 2 is a very popular, fun, addicting RTS game. There's a whole series and I think many of you would be interested, it's obviously not turn based though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNw3MfwFNKo

Anyways, FPS games rely on a lot more than just a Graphic Card, I play FPS's competetively and trust me, (well the game I play is what I'm speaking for) the FPS I play requires a lot of memory, a good video/graphic card, a good processor, etc. I'm not techy so I couldn't say much.

Does ANYONE ELSE get slow turns late in the game? What's one thing I can do to stop this? I really want to play this game w/o such slowness =( I'm not patient enough

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Well, I have a bit of RAM. But when I use an addon that makes giant maps, it even takes me a few minutes between turns. One time I actually went to take a dump and came back and it was still loading.

But it was very late game and there were thousands of units all over the map.

 

[iEspionage]

Well, I have a bit of RAM. But when I use an addon that makes giant maps, it even takes me a few minutes between turns. One time I actually went to take a dump and came back and it was still loading.

But it was very late game and there were thousands of units all over the map.

WOW :|
How can you bear that?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Always have a book near the computer. Read a few pages while waiting.

 

[mdwh]

And they PLAN? I mean.. I know it's a strategy game.. but I thought the AI's were automated when the game was being developed, so they don't have to think..

Depends how you define "thinking".

Yes the AI is automated in the sense that it's programmed, however, that programming involves doing lots of calculations. Lots. And that takes time. Consider a Chess program - the fact that the logic is preprogrammed doesn't mean you think it should be instant, do you? The programmers can't decide the _moves_ in advance - only the program which then has to calculate the moves.

I'm currently writing a Civ-like game (see .sig), and some of the things that have to be considered by the AI:
* What squares might every unit wish to move to?
* What is the shortest distance (remembering to allow for terrain, roads/etc, not to mention travelling by sea) to each of those squares? (In that it's better to move to one of the squares you can reach more quickly.)
* If we decide to move somewhere, what's the shortest path?

The more civilizations, the more units, the bigger maps, the more calculations have to be done.

Civilization 3 also has additional things to calculate - most notably, I believe calculating the territory boundaries, based on every city's culture, is something that apparently takes a lot of time.

Now yes, I have heard Civilization 3 being criticised often for its poor performance - maybe there is some sloppy programming in there. But also, you can't expect everything just to work instantly. To be honest, one perspective I've gained from trying to write my own game is not why is Civilization 3 so slow, but an appreciation and wonder for how the hell they made Civilization 1 run so well on a 7MHz 68000 CPU, in 1MB of RAM...

and even if they did, their computers, their minds should be insta-made up -_-

Why? Do you have a computer that runs infinitely fast? I want one

 

[iEspionage]

Depends how you define "thinking".

Yes the AI is automated in the sense that it's programmed, however, that programming involves doing lots of calculations. Lots. And that takes time. Consider a Chess program - the fact that the logic is preprogrammed doesn't mean you think it should be instant, do you? The programmers can't decide the _moves_ in advance - only the program which then has to calculate the moves.

I'm currently writing a Civ-like game (see .sig), and some of the things that have to be considered by the AI:
* What squares might every unit wish to move to?
* What is the shortest distance (remembering to allow for terrain, roads/etc, not to mention travelling by sea) to each of those squares? (In that it's better to move to one of the squares you can reach more quickly.)
* If we decide to move somewhere, what's the shortest path?

The more civilizations, the more units, the bigger maps, the more calculations have to be done.

Civilization 3 also has additional things to calculate - most notably, I believe calculating the territory boundaries, based on every city's culture, is something that apparently takes a lot of time.

Now yes, I have heard Civilization 3 being criticised often for its poor performance - maybe there is some sloppy programming in there. But also, you can't expect everything just to work instantly. To be honest, one perspective I've gained from trying to write my own game is not why is Civilization 3 so slow, but an appreciation and wonder for how the hell they made Civilization 1 run so well on a 7MHz 68000 CPU, in 1MB of RAM...

Why? Do you have a computer that runs infinitely fast? I want one

lol I actually didn't think of this, you're right. But, is there a way to counter the waiting? Something I can do so that I don't have to wait no matter how long I'm in the game?

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Only thing I can think of is to limit the number of Civs.

 

[iEspionage]

Only thing I can think of is to limit the number of Civs.

Well I'm always wanting a Mediterranean culture group + Persia/Babylon game only, but I guess I'll only make me + 1/2 Civs so that each of our territories are very big, making the game kind of epic .. ah well

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

I just noticed something within the Windows OS Ive not seen before, called ReadyBoost. It supposedly speeds things up with a fast USB device -- looked it up and it uses the device as a disk cache.

Can't tell you if it'll improve things, though. Anyone try that?

 

[Fëanor]

ReadyBoost is worth it only if you have very little RAM.

 

[Quintillus]

lol I actually didn't think of this, you're right. But, is there a way to counter the waiting? Something I can do so that I don't have to wait no matter how long I'm in the game?

Well, you can't guarantee that you'll never have to wait. But one of the most effective things in Civ3 is to disable air and sea trade. It turns out that a lot of the time the computer spends calculating is figuring out what the trade routes all. That's why you may notice that if you pillage a road, especially one containing a resource, in the late game with many, highly-developed, civilizations, it actually pauses for a few seconds. Think of all the AIs pillaging roads (or bombing them) during the AI turns - if there's a lot of wars going on, that really adds up. If you disable sea and air trade, however, the turn times will be much faster.

To change this you'll need to create a scenario with the Civ3 editor. Start up the editor, and click on the Scenario menu, and then click Custom Rules. Click OK to the warning, and then click the Edit button in the upper-right area. This will open an "Edit Civilization 3 Rules" window, and click on the "Improvements and Wonders" tab. Select "Harbor" from the "Improvement or Wonder" list (or hit 'H' a few times to get to Harbor), and you'll see a check box 'Allow water trade' in the middle area of the screen that is checked. Uncheck it. Now select "Airport" (or hit 'A' a few times to get to it), and uncheck the 'Allow air trade' box that will be checked. Now hit the "Close" button in the lower-right of the "Edit Civilization 3 Rules" window, and go the the File menu, and choose Save As, and choose a name for your scenario, say, "Less Trade.biq". Now, in Conquests, from the main menu, go to "Civ Content", and choose the "Less Trade" scenario (or whatever name you gave it). This will start up your new scenario, with much faster turn times.

Now, the downside is, if you colonize an island that has Saltpeter, you have no way to get that Saltpeter back home (although you could take the musketmen home on ships, or send pikemen out to the island to upgrade them, and bring them back). But you will be able to play with as many civilizations as you like and still have short turn times. Maybe not instant, but much faster than it currently is.

The other two options that make a big difference are the number of civilizations and the size of the map. Since you don't want to have fewer civs or a smaller map (and I agree, reducing those does make for a less dramatic game), eliminating sea and air trade is the only other option that's easy and has significant impact. You might be able to get away with just eliminating sea trade and still getting a good impact, too, at least until airports become commonplace, which doesn't happen every game. There is one more option, eliminating all building maintenance, that I've heard makes a significant difference, but you'd have to set the building maintenance to zero for every building in the editor, and that obviously would de-balance the game somewhat (I think most scenarios that do that counter it with high unit maintenance costs).

If you still aren't satisfied with the turn times, I'm afraid the only option is a faster computer. There's a thread in Civ3 Technical Support where a few of us have compared our computers' performance on the same, slow, savegame. What the results indicate so far is that the most important factor to look for on a computer is what is called the L2 cache. More is better. Intel processors also seem to do much better than AMD ones for Civ3 - a 2009 AMD processor running at 3.3 GHz did no better than my 2007 Intel one running at 2.2 GHz, which is impressively poor - most people would expect it to perform 50% faster. And the newest Intel processors are not necessarily the fastest for Civ3, because they have less of this all-important cache.

What's amazing is that apparently most people found the game ran acceptably back in 2001. Firaxis did downsize "Huge" from 180x180 to 160x180, and Large from 140x140 to 130x130, sometime between Vanilla and Conquests, though, probably because it was too slow at the bigger sizes. I think the only reason I found it fast enough was that I usually played with 8 or 9 Civs on Huge back when I first started playing, instead of 16.

Try eliminating air and sea trade, though. It should make a quite noticeable difference.