Tips to Improve Game Performance

[kdoran]

TIP: Try running the game *NOT* in "full screen" mode (will run in a window).


Hi, new user here, just created an account so I could share my Civ IV experience so far.

My system specs:
15" PowerBook G4 @ 1.67 mhz with 1.0 GB RAM
Radeon 9700 128 mb VRAM
Mac OS X 10.4.7 with all the latest updates installed (including latest QuickTime).

When I got Civ IV I installed it right away, hoping it would work on my below-minimum-reqs system. It installed fine, and I loaded it up. The first thing I noticed was the choppy intro video. From what I hear this is the experience of nearly everyone running the game so far, on any system, so I don't think it's me (I would like to think my system could handle a QuickTime movie . Hopefully that will be fixed with a patch of some sort. Getting to the menu screen it looked and sounded great, so that was a relief of some sort. I first went to the options menu and jacked all the graphics and audio options way up, finding out I would have to reload Civ IV for changes to take effect (this is a feature I really wish could be done without restarting, so on-the-fly graphics tweaks could be made durring game play as needed, it REALLY would have saved me some time tweaking graphics config for optimal performance.)

With all graphics maxed out I played the tutorial as a performance test and to see some of the new game features. The game ran, but slow, a little to slow for me to enjoy it. after the tutorial finished, I put all the graphics to their lowest, and started a custom game (standard size map, contenants, 4 AIs). The game ran pretty well enough, I could tell it was slower than it should have been (about a 0.5 second lag on key commands, scrolling not smooth, zoom in and out slow), but it WAS playable and, seeing as I played for 6 hours straight before I tore myslef away, enjoyable.

At work today I spent most of my time online reading these forums to see other gamers's experiences. Having spent all day wishing I could be back home playing, when I got home I immediately started it up, this time though with full screen mode off. I haven't been playing very long like this (the game is actually up now while I'm posting... need to find a good site for a new city but so far I have seen a HUGE performance improvement!! The game just seems to run "better" overall: smoother, more responsive, the sound even seems to be working better (tho the BG music goes in and out at least it plays sometimes, - the sound bug everyone is experiencing is one I hope is fixed with future patches, that is really crappy).

Non-full screen mode is one that I believe requires a restart of the game. Here's the other thing - with autohide enabled for your dock and the resolution of the game set to your display resolution, the game is full screen anyway! The two major drawbacks are the system menu bar at the top covers the top of the game and auto-scrolling with your mouse when it reaces the edge of the scren does not seem to work - but for a much improved game experiences I'll deal with these two inconviences. I know what some of you are thinking, that the game should be playable on any settings with the proper system, but from what I've read everyone is having performance issues, and if you're like me, which you most likely are if you are reading these forums, scouring for tips, you are going to find a way to play anyway. The funny thing is, I actually enjoy not being in full screen better (no cmd-tabing), it's not even as if civ IV is the only thing you can have running or else your system performance takes a hit! - I have checked my email, chatted on iChat, turned on iTunes, and posted this thread all with civ IV running and my system is not slowed down in the slightest (things like expose and dashboard work as they should for example).

Hope you found this helpful.

 

[AlanH]

Hi, welcome

It sounds as if your video card is key to your performance compared with others here, and window mode certainly seems to help.

 

[Eio]

I want to thank you kdoran for posting this. I have a PB 1.5Ghz G4 1.25GB RAM and a 64MB Radeon 9700... I'm going to pick up Civ IV today and see how it runs. This post certainly gives me some hope.

 

[ejday]

TIP: Try running the game not in "full screen" mode.


Hi, new user here, just created an account so I could share my Civ IV experience so far...

...Hope you found this helpful.

Dude, you are a rock star! My system is comparable and this is very good news.

Will buy, load, play and report!

Thanks again, kdoran!

 

[Cougarcat]

THANK YOU for that post, kdoran. I have your exact same machine (except I've a bit more RAM) and I was seriously considering sending the game back to Amazon when it comes later this week with all the horrendous experiences people have been having. There definitely seems to be a bug with fullscreen mode. Hopefully it'll get fixed soon along with the audio.

Are you still running everything on low? How much does the endgame bog down?

 

[Welnic]

I have to admit that I don't understand why this works, but it did help my G5's video performance.

If you are running in fullscreen mode you can hit Cmd-Tab and change to any other programs that you have running.

 

[kdoran]

Are you still running everything on low? How much does the endgame bog down?

I am running the game with "modified" low settings (I set to low and then boosted a couple features such as unchecking "Single Unit Animation" and raising globe graphics to medium, etc, so it isn't completely stripped down, but honestly the amount of difference high-end graphics make in this game is minimal; looks great on low IMO. (For example, the benefit of maxing out graphics is not what you would get compared to say, a flight sim with max graphics and horizon distance set to "full" - which is noticable).

The endgame? Couldn't tell you yet.. I've been playing for 2 days straight now and I am only up to 940 AD with half the map discovered (I'm one of those players who loves to micro-manage Will let you know tho how the modern era turns out.

 

[AlanH]

If you are running in fullscreen mode you can hit Cmd-Tab and change to any other programs that you have running.

That's a standard Mac OS X feature. Works whatever application is frontmost, and should work with Civ4 in fullscreen or window mode.

 

[Cougarcat]

That's a standard Mac OS X feature. Works whatever application is frontmost, and should work with Civ4 in fullscreen or window mode.

It doesn't work in most fullscreen games that I can think of, save for Halo.

 

[AlanH]

I did say "should". It doesn't in Civ3 Complete currently either, but I believe that's one of the fixes in the patch to come.

 

[kdoran]

OK, so while I was happy with the improved performance, I wanted to make my game experience even better. As I mentioned before, a drawback of running the game not in full screen is that the system menu bar overlaps the top of the game, (there is no apparent way to move the window). This blocks access to a couple buttons, the date, your treasury stats and the research progress bar - some pretty important things and a nuisance not to have.)

So I tried running it on a second display hooked up to my PowerBook in non-full screen mode, since the game has built in features for customizing how it runs on systems with multiple monitors and extended desktop. Well don't think this is going to be a viable option because, as expected, the video card strains to keep up with the game as it can only devote half its resources to the display the game is playing on. However, if the game didnt run sooo slow this way, it WOULD be the way I played it, as aside from the lag, everything was set up great.

Thanks Aspyr for adding the features to customize how the game runs on a system with multiple displays... Now if there were any video card in existance that could run your game using only half its resources I might actually be able to use this feature.

 

[Skippy_Kangaroo]

As I mentioned before, a drawback of running the game not in full screen is that the system menu bar overlaps the top of the game, (there is no apparent way to move the window). This blocks access to a couple buttons, the date, your treasury stats and the research progress bar - some pretty important things and a nuisance not to have.)

I found that you could get a window free of the menubar - but it was easy for it to get stuck. I have a 15" Macbook Pro with 1440x900 resolution. I chose 1024x768 for my window size and it was initially created free of the menu bar. I did this using the in-game options rather than the cmd-; options which access a seemingly mac specific preferences pane. If I chose a resolution with greater vertical size of it would get trapped unless I moved the window to the bottom of my screen first.

So my advice it to play around with the resolutions and use the in game options to change your window size - start with the smallest window, move it to the bottom of the screen and then try a bigger window. It worked for me...

 

[bio_hazard]

Very Cool! Glad to hear somebody's powerbook is capable of running it. If anyone with a 1.5ghz powerbook (Eio's specs above) gets it to work, please post this.

Also thanks for the tips.

 

[kdoran]

I found that you could get a window free of the menubar - but it was easy for it to get stuck. I have a 15" Macbook Pro with 1440x900 resolution. I chose 1024x768 for my window size and it was initially created free of the menu bar. I did this using the in-game options rather than the cmd-; options which access a seemingly mac specific preferences pane. If I chose a resolution with greater vertical size of it would get trapped unless I moved the window to the bottom of my screen first.

So my advice it to play around with the resolutions and use the in game options to change your window size - start with the smallest window, move it to the bottom of the screen and then try a bigger window. It worked for me...

I was also able to get a movable window this way. Note: if you set a small resolution and the window is still stuck at the top, restart civ IV. This fixed it for me. havent tried raising the resolution back to my display resolution, but i'm happy with this for now.

 

[Eio]

Very Cool! Glad to hear somebody's powerbook is capable of running it. If anyone with a 1.5ghz powerbook (Eio's specs above) gets it to work, please post this.

Also thanks for the tips.

I went and purchased the game tonight. I haven't been able to get very far due to a freak lightning storm in the Portland area tonight. I've been shooting pictures until 11PM

Anyway, the game loaded up no problems on my 1.5Ghz G4 PB. Now, the game is a little pokey. Things take a tad longer to perform. Cursor movements, map scrolling, map zooming, while "smooth" they're just slow. I'd guess it's lag due to the lack of specs.

However, the game is playable. At least for me. I own the PC version and have played it quite a bit using high detail, big resolution, all the eye candy, etc. It's like butter of course. But yet, playing on my Mac tonight, even though it's not butter smooth was still enjoyable and playable. Again, for me.

I've been waiting for Civ IV for Mac for a long time. I broke down and bought it for my PC awhile back and would still prefer a Mac version.

So while you certainly won't be getting awesome performance from a G4, I think it's easily playable if you remember that you're playing on a sub-par machine.

As an aside, I played a bit tonight on my upgraded Digital Audio 1.4Ghz 1GB RAM Radeon 9600/64MB machine and it played about the same as the Powerbook.

 

[ejday]

Very Cool! Glad to hear somebody's powerbook is capable of running it. If anyone with a 1.5ghz powerbook (Eio's specs above) gets it to work, please post this.

Also thanks for the tips.

Got it to work!

PowerBook G4, !.5 GHz, 1 GB
ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 (64 MB)

Actually have the animation running!

It's only choked once and for the beginning, it was actually fairly snappy (not the eye candy they intended but still very tolerable). I'm about to the mid 600s now and there a whole lotta stuff going on around the screen, so it gets a little choppy. Unplayable? No, not yet – though I imagine if I turn off unit animations and effects, it'll get better (I'll report back when I do...).

 

[Zaimejs]

Wow... i just tried it in a window... and WOW! it really is much more smooth. This doesn't make any sense. I've got it in a window... with all this other stuff running in the background, and yet the graphics are smoother and higher quality. Hopefully they'll get this worked out.

The good news is that (knocks wood) I'm in 1470 A.D. KICKING BUTT, and no crashing yet!

 

[crunch]

auto-scrolling with your mouse when it reaces the edge of the scren does not seem to work

At least in the PC version, there's an ini file option for that. Check it out.

; Allow Mouse Scrolling in Windowed mode
MouseScrolling = 1

 

[Thinine]

Wow... i just tried it in a window... and WOW! it really is much more smooth. This doesn't make any sense. I've got it in a window... with all this other stuff running in the background, and yet the graphics are smoother and higher quality. Hopefully they'll get this worked out.

The good news is that (knocks wood) I'm in 1470 A.D. KICKING BUTT, and no crashing yet!

In a window you're likely running at a lower resolution.

 

[ejday]

In a window you're likely running at a lower resolution.

I've got the game at 1024x768 but the screen at 1280x854. This allows me to see the top of the game (the menubar doesn't cut it off). I might poke around in the .ini file and see if that mouse scrolling command works...