Solution for faster game, more civ's, bigger maps

[anastazjasz]

Hey

I haven't seen that solution here for a while. It's really simple and let you play way over you used to, with faster turns, bigger maps, more civ, all the nice things we love about C2C.

There is some condition though...

As you all know HDD is slow, SDD is faster and then thereis your RAM which we can use for creating virtual disk to enjoy 10x faster game

It will only work if you have some RAM to spare, for this you need 5gb extra.

1. First, you copy your CIV4 folder to new location, and name it, let say CIV4F

2. Strip your new CIV4F folder from all other mods, including those which are included in the oryginal version, also from BtS folder. You suppose to have around 2.6 gb version of CIV4.

3. Inside CIV4F you put C2C like you normally do, or if you put it to the document folder don't this time.

4. Then you download small program called Soft Perfect Ram Disk, install.

5. With the downloaded software you create disk from your RAM memory. It is very simple, you chose letter, let say A (B,G,H), size, and file format, since all my disk are NTFS I chose that one.

""IMPORTANT""

This is tricky, thats why you need CIV 4 folder to be as small as possible.
e.g. I have 16 gb RAM, I created 5 gb virtual disk and my computer is still using 11 gb for normal operations. If you have less then 8 gb I cannot promise it will work properly, never tried.

6. Now, copy your new CIV4F folder to disk A (or whatever letter you chose). Start the game from disk A, not from shortcut you normally do. Enjoy new world of C2C .

""IMPORTANT""

There is one annoying thing about virtual disk. It will erase folder on the computer shutdown...saves are there but every time you wanna play CIV4F after switching off your machine you will have to copy it to the created disk again.

7. If you wanna use all your memory again, just use SoftPerfect to close created disk and then again you have access to all your RAM.

As always, there is risk included in any operation with your computer, so if you have any doubts don't try it. I'm using this system for 2 years now and it works like a charm.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Sounds interesting but difficult for the avg player.

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

Sounds interesting but difficult for the avg player.

JosEPh

Not really, i just tried it, its really quite simple, just follow his directions to the T.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Right now I got no want too. Sounds great but I'm just not up to the effort atm.

JosEPh

 

[strategyonly]

Right now I got no want too. Sounds great but I'm just not up to the effort atm.

JosEPh

I didn't see any difference in my game, but that was already an advanced game, dont know if u need to start fresh or not??, but anyways, Took me about 2 minutes, lol, but remember to "Just Have Fun."

 

[Keyalha]

Creating a Ramdisk speeds things up if the hdd is the bottleneck which it never really was I think in c2c. The problem is that civ4 is a x32 app and thus is capped at 3.2 gigs of ram as well as not multithreaded.

I hate the turn times as much as the next person but I think in the case of c2c we simply have to deal with it unless parts of the c2c stuff can be threaded.

 

[strategyonly]

Creating a Ramdisk speeds things up if the hdd is the bottleneck which it never really was I think in c2c. The problem is that civ4 is a x32 app and thus is capped at 3.2 gigs of ram as well as not multithreaded.

I hate the turn times as much as the next person but I think in the case of c2c we simply have to deal with it unless parts of the c2c stuff can be threaded.

i agree, i want to make a "Lite" version but i know that will take me about 2 years to do BY MYSELF??

 

[Keyalha]

i agree, i want to make a "Lite" version but i know that will take me about 2 years to do BY MYSELF??

While I can understand the sentmiment I personally would not be interested in that. What makes c2c appealing is the complexity it offers, stripping that away in any way shape or form would hurt it imho.

 

[Noriad2]

While I can understand the sentmiment I personally would not be interested in that. What makes c2c appealing is the complexity it offers, stripping that away in any way shape or form would hurt it imho.

+1 from me. If you want a challenging strategy game, vanilla Civ 4 BTS is the best choice. I play C2C because of the higher immersion and greater variety.

 

[<Nexus>]

Creating a Ramdisk speeds things up if the hdd is the bottleneck which it never really was I think in c2c. The problem is that civ4 is a x32 app and thus is capped at 3.2 gigs of ram as well as not multithreaded.

That's one never clear to me:
How much RAM can the game use maximum? 3.2 or 4 GB?
I mean: is it better on a 64bit os to have have more than 4GB RAM? I know it doesn't matter if whether you have 6GB or 16GB, but is there a difference between 4 and 5GB?

 

[tmv]

There are always more processes active rather than just Civ4, so it would certainly be beneficial to have more RAM with a 64bit OS.

 

[<Nexus>]

There are always more processes active rather than just Civ4, so it would certainly be beneficial to have more RAM with a 64bit OS.

My question was: is Civ4 capped at 3.2GB (as Keyalha wrote) or at 4GB (as it seems logical). If it's the second, than it is obviously worth to have more than 4GB RAM.

 

[strategyonly]

Does anyone have the program that u can get into the exe whereas u can put it at is highest limit, there was one here, about 1-2 years ago, but i cant remember what the program was or where its at??

 

[Thunderbrd]

Are you talking about the 3GB switch?

 

[strategyonly]

Are you talking about the 3GB switch?

Nope that doesnt get into the exe. There is a program that u can use to get it to use maximum GB

 

[Shadowclaw]

Explorer Suite (CFF Explorer)
http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php

Open game exe with the CFF explorer, and under "Nt Headers" (click the + symbol), you should see "File Header".
Then left-click File Header and in it, there is a box which says "Click Here". Let's do that.
You will get a little window full of checkboxes. There's one that says: App can handle >2Gb Address space. Check that.
Click OK, save the changes and... Done!

Several years ago I saw on this forum better way to make the game faster. Compilation dll's with Intel compiler or something like that. Why are you not using that?

 

[tmv]

AFAIK the Intel compiler isn't free.

 

[JosEPh_II]

Explorer Suite (CFF Explorer)
http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php

Open game exe with the CFF explorer, and under "Nt Headers" (click the + symbol), you should see "File Header".
Then left-click File Header and in it, there is a box which says "Click Here". Let's do that.
You will get a little window full of checkboxes. There's one that says: App can handle >2Gb Address space. Check that.
Click OK, save the changes and... Done!

Several years ago I saw on this forum better way to make the game faster. Compilation dll's with Intel compiler or something like that. Why are you not using that?

This looks very promising! Hope T-brd and/or alberts2 will look into this. I've bookmarked the link to it myself.

JosEPh

 

[alberts8]

Explorer Suite (CFF Explorer)
http://www.ntcore.com/exsuite.php

Open game exe with the CFF explorer, and under "Nt Headers" (click the + symbol), you should see "File Header".
Then left-click File Header and in it, there is a box which says "Click Here". Let's do that.
You will get a little window full of checkboxes. There's one that says: App can handle >2Gb Address space. Check that.
Click OK, save the changes and... Done!

The Beyond the Sword exe with the latest update is already Large Adress Aware so there is no need to do this again.

 

[Keyalha]

To clarify what the LAA (Large Adress Awareness) makes it possible for a program to acess the whole memory adress space a 32 bit application can in theory acess 4 gb of ram at most.

Even if you have more and run a 64 bit system you will not get 4gb ram out of it that way but a max of 3.2 gb since the os is always taking the upper adress ranges for the os layers 0 to 2.

So with LAA you can adress 3.2gb without even less. With LAA application could via segmentation acess an adress space outside of the 32 bit memory range but it had to be programmed specifically and close to hardware for this which is not the case with civ4.

TLDR: With LAA you get 3.2 gb of ram on a x64 system that has more than 4 gigs of ram. Without it you get less.