Version 2.x bug reports

[DavidB1111]

What? Did Zap break the game, because there's no way a save on a regular map can ever hit 776KB. That's impossible! There would have to be 23 civilizations or something!

I'll try to take a look at that save, but it will be for about 45 seconds, before my computer gives me a MAF or something.

Someone else with a more stable computer will have to look at that save to help you.

Failed to load the game, sorry. Can't look at it at all. I'll need a lot more info. 2.8 beta? 2.71?

I play Giant maps now all the time, Epic speed. Only 1 CTD in 3 2.8beta games so far. My saves reach 1.5+mb.

That is madness! There's almost no way you could play this mod without MAFs every three minutes on a Giant map, unless you have some supercomputer that can run Crysis on Ultra High, at 500 FPS. you'd need 39 Petabytes of Ram!

Besides, why would you want to fill up your hard drive every 30 minutes anyway?

 

[Afforess]

That is madness! There's almost no way you could play this mod without MAFs every three minutes on a Giant map, unless you have some supercomputer that can run Crysis on Ultra High, at 500 FPS. you'd need 39 Petabytes of Ram!

Really? Your computer must be pretty old not to be able to play maps that big. My laptop can play Crysis on very high (but no AA) at a decent 40fps. (it's only a 800 dollar ASUS laptop).

 

[graham77777]

Failed to load the game, sorry. Can't look at it at all. I'll need a lot more info. 2.8 beta? 2.71?

I'm using the 2.8 beta.
I've attached my dxdiag report if it'd be helpful.

 

[Arakhor]

I think you're wildly underestimating modern computers, David. Even with half a dozen 2 Mb saves, a fairly normal 0.5 Tb hard drive wouldn't even notice the memory use!

 

[Crusis]

That is madness! There's almost no way you could play this mod without MAFs every three minutes on a Giant map, unless you have some supercomputer that can run Crysis on Ultra High, at 500 FPS. you'd need 39 Petabytes of Ram!

Besides, why would you want to fill up your hard drive every 30 minutes anyway?

What? I play on Giant map all the time, I never have a MAF. My turns rarely go over 2 minutes, my game saves reach 1.5MB, maybe more. That's .00015% of a 1TB drive. Not even I play enough Civ to fill my drive up in say.... my lifetime.

My computer is pretty high end, but to say that Giant maps is 'madness' is really just discounting something that you have been unable to experience yourself. In a giant map, you would have a VERY hard time rolling the whole world under your iron fist. That's something I've not been able to do. Not only does the cost get prohibitive, but there is a huge amount of cities involved to conquer. Maybe I'll have to try the slash and burn method sometime.

I use WinXP 64, with 8GB of good RAM, a quad core processor, and a couple of Nvidia 265s in SLI mode. I built this computer for about $1000. I got the operating system for $10 from my university at the time. That doesn't include monitor, of course. What I'm saying is that while that's a lot of money to a lot of people, you can build a better system yourself than you can get in the store for the same money, in my opinion. Plus, if you have Vista, you're pretty much shackling yourself to a lead weight, so that might be part of the issue. Just my personal opinion, but it's one that several friends of mine in IT share.

 

[DavidB1111]

Alright, so sue me for exaggerating. All I know is that a normal size Regular map should never hit 700+ KB. That's just impossible.
Also, someone else will have to look at it, because I don't have 2.8beta, mostly because the useless Atomic Gamer host.

Here's my computer's stats. Which is awesome, because it cost 900 dollars. All I know in advance is that the ROM megapack causes me problems... Which on my older computer it didn't.

OH, and I have XP. I hate Vista.
2.56 dual Core Cpu
2 Gigs of Ram
250+ gig hard drive with 28 free
An old monitor, KDS USA
A nice video card 8600 GT with 512 Megs of Ram
A kind of weird sound card, an IDT.

I can run both Oblivion and Fallout 3 at very high, so I don't think there's any problem here with running Beyond the Sword.

All I know is that if I tried to play on big maps, I'd get crazy lag, and every turn would take a long time. Also, lots of problems.

 

[Afforess]

I can run both Oblivion and Fallout 3 at very high, so I don't think there's any problem here with running Beyond the Sword.

All I know is that if I tried to play on big maps, I'd get crazy lag, and every turn would take a long time. Also, lots of problems.

But those games can use multiple cores of your CPU, BTS can not. Also, your RAM is pretty low, try getting it to at least 4gb.

 

[DavidB1111]

THat's silly, I can't use 4 gigs. I don't have a 64 Bit operating system. And still, I don't feel like going to all the trouble to be able to play at anything bigger than Regular. I'm not even talking about the convoluted thing you have to do to get BTS to recognize more than 2 gigs of ram.

Also, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are not really that well designed for more than one core as well.

 

[Afforess]

Also, Oblivion and Fallout 3 are not really that well designed for more than one core as well.

Apples and Oranges. BTS vanilla plays very smoothly. You're comparing a modded game to an unmodded one.

 

[JosEPh_II]

David,

I built this computer in march for $700+ dollars, the specifics:
Dual Core IBM Wolfshead E7400 chipset 2.8 GHz
8GB of G-Skill 1066 DDR2 Ram
500GB WD Black caviar HD
ATI Radeon HD 4650 Vid card with 512MB of DDR3 ram
Win XP Pro 64 bit OS

Since I built this computer I've had only 2 total CTDs over the RoM versions that have occurred since March.

I play Giant Maps all the Time, I prefer Archipelago or Custom Continents (6 cont.) or Lakes. But I have tried many of the other Maps for RoM. I've played every version of RoM that zap has put out. But there are some Options I don't play with, Revolutions is the main one along with No Vassals. The CTD I had with 2.8Beta was a system hiccup and Not RoM. The earlier CTD was when BarbCiv had a known Bug.

RoM since version 2.2 has had a high demand for Ram, both system and video.

The biggest help for my previous computer was NOT letting windows control my ram usage under the Video performance Tab under system properties. My old comp was a PIV 2.8Ghz with 1.5GB of ddr 400mhz ram and an ATI radeon X1650 video card with 256 MB of ddr2 ram with Win XP Pro 32bit OS, 80 GB HD. Even on that system I played Huge Maps and my Save game size would hit 1.2MB+ once I hit Modern Era and Beyond.

And you can use more than 3GB of ram on a Win XP 32bit OS. You need the 3GB/ switch added to the boot .ini file.

Don't despair just start looking into what you can do to tweak your comps performance. Even a $50 pair of better Ram or a better vid card can make a world of difference.

There is one other thing that many 32bit win OS system owners neglect, defrag that HD on a regular basis. The simple maintenance items can mean a big boost in performance.

JosEPh

 

[DavidB1111]

Sigh. Well, I'm happy at the moment. But yes, if in the future I wish to play on some huge map, I'll do that. You can all be assured of that. But for the moment, I'm fine.

No need for massive maps.
Also, isn't 776KB for a Regular sized map a little large?

 

[Arakhor]

XP can address 3.4 Gb of RAM, so you can still upgrade to 4 Gb and make use of 75% your upgrade.

 

[DavidB1111]

Also, isn't 776KB for a Regular sized map a little large?

Please answer this.
I'm aware of how XP works, thank you. I'm just not upgrading to play maps.

 

[Afforess]

Please answer this.
I'm aware of how XP works, thank you. I'm just not upgrading to play maps.

The save file size is dependant on many factors, not map size alone.

Things that will increase it's size:
Map Size
Number of AI's
Number of Units
Era (Modern Era has more things to calculate then ancient.)
Modmod's you play with. (Graphic - heavy modmod's like the extra civ pack increase save size.)


Anyways, size is not a good representation of anything, so I don't understand the deal here.

 

[MrAdam]

The save file size is dependant on many factors, not map size alone.

Things that will increase it's size:
Map Size
Number of AI's
Number of Units
Era (Modern Era has more things to calculate then ancient.)
Modmod's you play with. (Graphic - heavy modmod's like the extra civ pack increase save size.)


Anyways, size is not a good representation of anything, so I don't understand the deal here.

Well don't bigger saves = higher ram requirement = more ctds?

 

[Afforess]

Well don't bigger saves = higher ram requirement = more ctds?

Not quite. It should be:

Bigger Save Size = More RAM = Higher chance of MAF Error.

Big saves cause MAF, not CTD.

 

[DavidB1111]

The big deal here, is I thought it was a little too huge for a normal sized map. Apparently I didn't know that more than the AI and Map Size cause this super inflation.
I'm guessing at least 20 AIs.

As for Era, well, like I said, even in the Future era, none of my games has gone over 350 or so.
So, when I saw a 700+ save, I freaked out a little.
Hence why I thought "Zappara broke it."

 

[Carwyn]

Also, isn't 776KB for a Regular sized map a little large?

Not in my experience. I just looked at my saved games and, once I get out of the early parts of the game my saves run from 500 KB to 1.3 GB. These are larger maps, but not even late game. My early games on Large are smaller than that, but I don't currently have a mid game save for a Large map. I practice starts a lot for my multiplayer games. We found that multiplayer Huge maps don't work really well once we get going because of turn lag and bandwidth on my DSL doesn't move the file fast enough sometimes and breaks the game.

This is NOT vanilla Civ, which is boring as can be. I never could play that. This is a very large and intricate MOD and, yes, the coding of the game is clumsy which is really unfortunate. However, I can't see playing Civ without a good mod to make it deep, detailed and challenging. However, if 1 GB saves will "fill up your hard drive", I recommend deleting the older saves. On my 500 GB drives, it's not a problem.

I will admit to upgrading my whole computer just to play ROM more easily!

 

[Commander Bello]

I'm currently playing a game and I got as far as the medieval ages but I got a lot of random CTD. I say random because when I reload, I can continue just fine. It seems to me to be a memory problem but I got a nvidia 8800 gtx (512mb or 768mb, dont remember) and 4 gig memory (3.25 usable) which seems enough usually. My question is, how can I limit these CTD ? Turning graphics to a minimum ? Or do everyone put up with it and there is nothing I can do ?

Thanks!

Great mod btw

My old computer had the same graphics card (768 MB) and 3.5 GB usable RAM. What saved me from the MAF's was the 3 GB switch, which I would highly recommend to make use of.

That is madness! There's almost no way you could play this mod without MAFs every three minutes on a Giant map, unless you have some supercomputer that can run Crysis on Ultra High, at 500 FPS. you'd need 39 Petabytes of Ram!

High end maybe, supercomputer for sure not.
I am currently in 2 games (RoM 2.71 each), giant map with 28 nations (1970 AC) and gigantic map with 32 nations (1330 AC at the moment). All the fine things like RevDCM, barbaric civs, and so on are switched on. Biggest save file size is 3636 KB.
Both run smoothly and without any problems.

What I have to admit is that in the first game, turn change times may be up to 4 minutes if a lot of wars are going on, in the second one currently it takes less than a minute.

 

[DavidB1111]

<facepalm> Only a madman would play four minute turns.
The most I have ever found was 30 seconds at maximum. On a normal, Regular sized map.

Sorry, but anything over 360K for a normal sized map is a bad thing. It makes no sense for a Regular saved game to be over 700K. I'm sorry. It makes no sense.

I'm going to stop bothering everyone, because apparently, I'm always wrong.