speeding up turns

[enki_25]

Hey everybody,

I'm playing a huge map with 15 civs (actually 12 now), it's about 1500 AD, and the turns take so long its ridiculous. Any tips on making the game run faster?

I have all the preferences turned off (like, show enemy moves, show wonder messages, etc.). It seems like a 1.blah GHz processor should be able to crank through all the other civs decisions in no time, but for some reason there's this huge delay.

Anyways

Thanks

 

[vmxa]

NOt a lot can be done, hold shift key during large movements. Lots of coastal towns require checking each time a city is razed or capture or founded to see if trade routes are still valid.

Lots of civs and lots of units to deal with. Any wars means many troops to consider. Even on 3+ GH boxes these can be painful. All you can do is to eliminate some more civs.

 

[garric]

Happens to me all the time, and I don't really do anything besides hold down "SHIFT" and move everything super fast then wait for it to load. It's alright, you just have to have some patience.

 

[Zakharov]

I'm playing a huge map with 15 civs

That's your problem right there. Anything over a standard size map will make the IBT take an age. Just think about the amount of units and cities on the map that need individual calculations by the AI.

Even a 3GHz+ cpu will take some time with these map settings.

 

[enki_25]

Is the difference significant with a map size one step lower?

 

[Percy]

well, obviously yes. every bit the CPU has to compute counts, so the less, the faster.

 

[warpstorm]

The game was designed to play well on standard maps with 7 opponents. More than that and it degrades quickly.

 

[wit>trope]

You can set the priority for Civ3 to high but then it would be hard to use other programs while you're waiting. Do this at your own risk. I don't even know how to do it. Maybe through the Windows task manager.

 

[Pentium]

With all animations off, it takes on late huge map about 3-5 minutes on 2GHz. With Winamp and Mapstat on. I don't know if they slow down the game, but it's boring without music.

 

[jst666]

In some older thread there was complaining, some of it done by me , about the very long turn times during player's turn. One solution was to NEVER automate workers (not that ppl would do that too much anyway). The automated workers chooses the best tile to improve by going through every single tile, and selecting the best.

 

[wilbill]

You can set the priority for Civ3 to high but then it would be hard to use other programs while you're waiting.

And leaving other programs running in background while you play will definitely slow the game down. I always exit all background programs - except my firewall - when I have Civ running.

 

[citizen001]

By a new computer!

 

[Bob1475]

Use "Caps Lock", then you don't have to hold down Shift!

 

[QuantumEleven]

Civ3 is mostly a RAM rather than a CPU hog (check the task manager when the computer takes its turns!), so increasing the amount of RAM on your machine could help slightly. By the same token, as a Windows computer (I'm assuming you're running Windows ) will use hard disk space as swap space when it runs out of RAM, freeing up some space on your hard disk and/or increasing the size of your swap file can help.

However, the map size is the main killer - decrease the map size and every calculation the computer has to do will go faster, as many of the algorithms in Civ3 seem to revolve around "check every tile on the map until you find the (best) one". It's been my experience that even on my 3GHz, 512MB RAM computer, it will struggle with a huge map after the Middle Ages...

Of course, if you do want to play Huge maps, find yourself a good book to read during the interturn, do your homework, watch some TV, read CFC...

 

[Rambuchan]

If you insist on playing on a huge map, which I do, then you just have to use the shift or caps keys. Aside from that and what you have already done you can also:

- Move scouting troops that you have placed to watch enemy troop movements (so that you don't have to see the enemy moves each turn).

- Stay clear of RoPs, or sometimes you have to give them out to get a huge stack away from your view. Point is you can get them away from your line of sight either way.

- Automating your troops with rally points speeds up your actual turn so that the inbetween turns don't matter if they are a bit slower, you're saving time overall.

- Music, smoking, reading, TV, planning the next moves are all viable out of game options.

Personally I both like and find necessary that inbetween turn time. I use it to plan the coming campaigns and/or diplomatic strategies.

Huge maps rock and I would never sacrifice the epic experience for some time saving. This doesn't mean I have to play for hours on end, it just means I don't get as many games played in say a month but may get one or two great ones played in the same time as others will play many many tiny map games.

 

[garric]

Civ 3 is very minimize friendly, so you can read Civ Fanatics.

 

[k-a-bob]

I found that just by turning off the animations that IT is much reduced. I'm playing the huge world map and doing this cut it from about 30 minutes to about 3.
I also turned off the battle animations, but then I couldn't judge where the opponent had won a battle. (especially at sea)

 

[vmxa]

Civ3 is mostly a RAM rather than a CPU hog (check the task manager when the computer takes its turns!), so increasing the amount of RAM on your machine could help slightly.

This is not my experience. When I got a 3GH box with 1GB mem about 2 years ago, I played a 250x250 game with max water and 24 civs in PTW.

I wanted to see how much of a load it was and I did not attack any civs to allow max cities and units and not eliminate civs. Anyway I have 1.6GH, 512MB Win98 system and played turns on both to see the impact.

I found that the game never used more than about 368MB, but turns took about twice as long on the 1.6, if there was much action. Meaning it was mostly CPU bound. You could see when a new city was founded late in the game. The animation could take up two minutes as the game checked routes.

 

[QuantumEleven]

I found that the game never used more than about 368MB, but turns took about twice as long on the 1.6, if there was much action. Meaning it was mostly CPU bound. You could see when a new city was founded late in the game. The animation could take up two minutes as the game checked routes.

I bow to your superior patience in testing this, vmxa - thanks for the info! Just OOC, about (very approximately) did the interturn take towards the mid to end game with your super-stress world map? Are we talking five minutes, thirty minutes, an hour, and are you including the time for movement and battle animations? I find that, as I progress past the Middle Ages, the AI's "calculating time" (where nothing happens on the screen except for the hourglass cursor) becomes far greater than the time taken to show battles and moves... was wondering if others had similar experiences, or if it was just my computer that was being weak

 

[vmxa]

On my 3GH they ranged from seconds to 25 minutes. In a turn where no cities are founded or razed and no war actions, it was quick. In a turn where all of those things were taking place it went as long as 25 minuts. This was about an hour on the older machine.

No fun at all and I cheated late in the game an crash two civs, but it was too late to make a big impact. My intention was to not do anything but wait for one civ to win and just hold my island, but it was getting painful.

Note that I play with only battles animated and I did not see many of the wars, so I did not have to use the speed up key.