This game is unbearably slow

[d3kst3r]

Just got this game. Whenever I play epic battle with 10 computer players it gets unbearably slow towards the 1700s. To the point where the save game takes 10 minutes to load, each turn takes 5 minutes to load the next turn etc. I've got a P4 2.8 GHZ with 512 DDR RAM and Geforce fx 5200. Why the heck does this game slow down so damned bad?

 

[JudgeDeath]

Not enough RAM I'd say. You'll have to either get more or tone down the number of opponents.

 

[CorruptAssassin]

keep an eye on your hdd access light. If its blinking like crazy during turn transitions, or when loading, then its thrashing; a good indication u need more RAM.

 

[NinjaCool]

I think the main problem is you play on too large maps. On large maps even I can feel the game slow down as more of the game is seen.

my system:
P4 3.0GHz
1GB DDR RAM
Radeon 9700 Pro 128MB

 

[theprivateer83]

What worked for me was buying *a gig* more ram lol - at a cost of about 100 AU dollars ... then it has worked a treat with HUGE maps, 12 players etc right into the modern age. Load times then are in the order of ~15 seconds. Other times, load times are great...

My specs:
2600+ athlon XP AMD
FSB 400 MHz ASUS motherboard with 8x AGP support
nVidia 5500Fx with 256Mb Ram
Now, 1.57 gig ram before 0.512 gig
7200 RPM 80 gig maxtor HDD

 

[d3kst3r]

Yeah my HDD blinks like crazy and I also get out of virtual memory messages.

 

[Skirmisher]

Why the heck does this game slow down so damned bad?

Besides the system requirements there are other issues.

In one game with the Germans I tried for a cultural victory, and largely ignored economics which mean I had a very low GDP. The game ran smoothly.

In another game with same map size and number of players I played as the Americans and focused on increasing GDP to the max. Around 1700 the game became excruciatingly slow.

So the larger the GDP the slower the game. Maybe it has something to with increasing calculations as shields and commerce has to be calculated for every turn.

Mind you this is only based on two games so the evidence for my suggestion is small.

 

[Forconin]

The game has loads of bugs. It's as easy as that. I am waiting for the patch before upgrading my hardware.

 

[vanle]

I get it too, well pissing me off cause if a comp that has the recommended requirements can't run it well. Then what the £"£$^&$%& were they thinking??!!

 

[ceprab]

try RAM defrag. Seems to help if memory approaches 0

 

[vanle]

got a gig, shouldn't be eating that much...

 

[brian_banks]

It's your memory home-boy. I have 3 systems running at 512 and I get VM errors and slow response also. And yes, it has to do with map size, I play one size down from the largest (can't remember the name for it). The larger map, with lots of cities and civs = lots and lots of calculations. On every one of my systems I will quickly approach 710mb of ram being consumed JUST from Civ4. If you have firewalls and antivirus running....you're getting close to or exceedign 900mb of ram used.

I posted a new thread on this. Firaxis seriously lied about their hardware recommendations just so they could sell more games. Do NOT wait for a magic patch to make the game more effecient. They're totally busy fixing the huge amount of bugs rather than improving performance.

Bottomline: If you want performance, go buy hardware. Get 1gig of ram in your system at minimum and a decent proc and video card. Memory is a huge deal with this game...the more the better.

 

[lamaslany]

Yeah my HDD blinks like crazy and I also get out of virtual memory messages.

Does Windows manage your Virtual memory (page file size) or have you set this manually?

Windows takes a long time to resize the page file and system performance while it does this is horrificly poor. And even then it only increases by a small amount which measns 10 minutes later it has to do it again!

Make sure your combined memory (physical RAM and virtual memory) is at least 1.5GB. Don't make the page file too big though otherwise you'll encounter performance issues again...

 

[Psycho]

I have to add myself to the long queue of those thinking the game has too excessive HW demands. Advices like play it on small map size against 6 AIs are... If having to play CIV4 on tiny map against few AIs I rather return back to PTW.
BTW, Where the hell do I turn off the damn autosave? It should fasten the game a bit at least... I was looking for turn off autosave check box in the options, but haven`t seen it. :-(

 

[TopCenturion]

When I played, the huge maps used about 750MB of main memory and 750MB virtual memory. I had a GIG of RAM and it would start to slow down much later in the game. I bought another 512MB for a total of 1.5GB of RAM and it runs much smoother now. Of course the smaller maps used about 600MB or less depending on the size of the map.

 

[asmodee]

Not enough RAM I'd say. You'll have to either get more or tone down the number of opponents.

No. I had 512 DDR2 ram and upgraded it to 1024 ram, nothing changed.

 

[TheBarnacle]

Not enough RAM I'd say. You'll have to either get more or tone down the number of opponents.

stop saying this. there are plenty of anecdotes out there from people who have LOTS of mem and can't play, and similar stories of people with 256mb who are playing just fine.

while RAM might very well be the problem for some folks, there seems to be no real way of knowing. i have 512mb and sometimes, it runs 'ok' (15-20 fps), while other times, it crawls (1-3fps). generally speaking, larger maps = slower game, but not necessarily.

i wouldn't spend any money on memory or worse, a new vid card, before more is known about the problem(s).

 

[Sir_CharlesIII]

No this game was poorly optimized and/or Firaxis misled people about the requirements. The game starts out fine but becomes very slow by the 17-1800s and often locks up. My Computer is a 2.4Ghz P4, 512MB Ram and a Geforce 4 64MB Card. Now I know the Gfx card isn't great but I can run Age of Empires III, on maps with 5 or 6 players, with no slow down or lock up problems. I don't understand why this game would be so slow when AOEIII runs fine and it has far better graphics. I don't know what else would cause this game to run slow, I'm sure CIVIII required just as many routine calculations. The game locks frequently if I zoom out to far and I tend to be able to play it well if I zoom in at close range - which is why I think it has something to do with the graphics - which is ridiculous.

The game's minimum Requirements are 256MB Ram and the Recommended is 512. I would hate to try and run this on 256MB, Firaxis should have been honest and made the minimum 512 and recommended 1GB. Bottom line: this game was not well optimized.

 

[Skirmisher]

BTW, Where the hell do I turn off the damn autosave? It should fasten the game a bit at least... I was looking for turn off autosave check box in the options, but haven`t seen it. :-(

In your civfolder there should be a notepad entry named civ4config. (it's the one with the mechanical wheel)

Scroll down to this line:

"; Specify the number of turns between autoSaves. 0 means no autosave.
AutoSaveInterval = 4"

Set it to "0".

Then Autosave will be off.

 

[Psycho]

SKirminisher: Thanx. From the coders it`s really a "user friendly" solution how to turn off autosaving...

BTW, I was curious how to dismantle/destroy my own cities? In older CIVs if built settler in a city size 1 it destroyed the city, but it doesn`t seem to work the same way here in CIV4. Usually I don`t destroy my own cities, but sometimes if seeing the city costs me too much and don`t want it to fall under AI control, it`s better to destroy it myself...