Upgrading laptop: HELP!

[Trafalgar II]

Greetings Fanatics,

I want to make this as simple as possible.

I was recently giving an older HP laptop and immediately bought Civ IV plus expansions.
The game is playable on this laptop but it begins to seriously slow down and become quite choppy when: the map becomes fully cleared, all available land is accounted for and all nations are creating and moving large amounts of units. Needless to say the game becomes nearly unplayable, at least not enjoyable.

I am an experienced computer user, but not very savvy when it comes to the technical aspects, especially in modern computer gaming.

What I am asking is this. Can anybody give me some dumbed down information on what I can do to upgrade/improve this laptop just enough to allow me to play Civ IV without it bogging down on me. I literally use the laptop for nothing else and do not need the best of the best equipment. I only want to play my favourite game without disruption.

Please, how can I achieve this?

Thank you in advance.
Trafalgar II

 

[s.bernbaum]

To get any good advice about what to do to upgrade the computer, you need to post what the current status is: memory, CPU, OS, etc.

That said, in general, the thing that is easiest and most effective is to add memory, if you don't have much. Since you say it is older but it runs CIV, I am guessing that the OS is either Windows XP or 7. In that case, if you don't already have 4 GB of memory, increasing to that would be the way to go. CIV uses a max of 4 GB and it is memory intensive, so the more the merrier (up to 4 GB). The other memory related issue is that CIV has a memory leak problem (technically Memory Allocation Failure or MAF). The longer the game and the bigger the map, the worse it gets. The way to deal with this is to save the game, quit the game, and restart the game and load that last save, when it begins to slow down. This flushes the messed up memory clean.