[TOT] Very bad performance on Windows 10

AyCe

Warlord
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Mar 3, 2019
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117
This affects Civ2 and ToT.

Under Windows 10 the performance of the game seems to sometimes be incredibly bad. Just moving the viewport of the map takes up to 2 seconds to show the new terrain. The cursor blinks more slowly. The units move slowly. This seems to happen randomly, maybe just for some saves. To be clear, nothing is going on, it's not like the AI is performing their turn.

Is this problem known, and what is a possible solution? (Other than to downgrade to Win7 which never had those problems.) I read somewhere that it may be related to the game using outdated DirectDraw libs, but surely an improvement for that should exist, since it should affect all older games that use it?


EDIT: MY SOLUTION

I fixed it by setting compatibility mode and disable fullscreen optimizations!
Civ2: Compatibility mode for Windows 7 - no videos but at least the game works
ToTPP: Compatibility mode off - everything as it should be

It seems windows tries to switch the game to fullscreen in a loop, which doesn't work because it's a windowed game and this causes performance degradation.
 
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Find civ2.exe in your file browser, and right click. Select 'properties' and then the compatibility tab. From there, fiddle with compatibility settings until you find something that works better. I can't tell you what will work, since I play Civ II on Linux, not Windows.

Hope this helps. Good luck.
 
Windows XP SP3 seems to be required to even make the game start without crashing. Other settings will either show the same symptoms or not run at all. This is of course the first thing I tried.
But does anyone use windows XP anymore... or are you talking about virtualization?
 
Find civ2.exe in your file browser, and right click. Select 'properties' and then the compatibility tab. From there, fiddle with compatibility settings until you find something that works better. I can't tell you what will work, since I play Civ II on Linux, not Windows.

Hope this helps. Good luck.
Aparently it doesn't always happen, but in your opinion would it be best to go for virtualization?
 
Aparently it doesn't always happen, but in your opinion would it be best to go for virtualization?

It only costs a bit of time to try it out, since nearly all Linux based operating systems don't cost anything to download or use. I've linked a guide to installing ToT in Linux Mint, though it should work for other Ubuntu based distributions (and a more light weight one might make sense if you're going to run in a virtual machine). I included a link to a video explaining virtualization in that thread. I always had good results with Civ II virtualizing 32 Bit Windows XP Pro, but you might have to come up with a license for that. These days I just run TOT directly on Linux Mint, which is my regular OS.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/installing-test-of-time-in-linux-mint-20.666105/

My only experience with Civ II on windows 10 was running a virtualized instance of Windows 10, and following Catfish's installation guide. Fiddling with the compatibility settings made at least some improvement.
 
But does anyone use windows XP anymore... or are you talking about virtualization?
I'm talking about the compatibility setting in file properties. This is of course the first thing one fiddles with to make old things work.

It only costs a bit of time to try it out, since nearly all Linux based operating systems don't cost anything to download or use. I've linked a guide to installing ToT in Linux Mint, though it should work for other Ubuntu based distributions (and a more light weight one might make sense if you're going to run in a virtual machine). I included a link to a video explaining virtualization in that thread. I always had good results with Civ II virtualizing 32 Bit Windows XP Pro, but you might have to come up with a license for that. These days I just run TOT directly on Linux Mint, which is my regular OS.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/installing-test-of-time-in-linux-mint-20.666105/

My only experience with Civ II on windows 10 was running a virtualized instance of Windows 10, and following Catfish's installation guide. Fiddling with the compatibility settings made at least some improvement.
This might be an option for a technically more adept user, but for normal users using a non-Windows or Apple OS is out of the question. Virtualization? Forget it. I used to run a Win98 VM in Windows Vista days to play Anno 1602. It was very inconvenient, but at least I could play the game I loved without it crashing.
The game DOES run under Win10, it's just that sometimes it behaves very weirdly and slows down for "no reason". This is a bit infuriating.

Since "remastering" old games seems to be in fashion right now, one can only hope for a version of those games fixed for modern OSes... ;)
 
All of a suden I think the problem is not the game but maybe the pc or windows 10...
 
Ok I've made up my mind, I'm going for virtualization.
But how do I go about it, cam somenone plese help?
 
Ok I've made up my mind, I'm going for virtualization.
But how do I go about it, cam somenone plese help?

This video should get you started on virtualization:


Here, I have instructions for installing civ II on Linux Mint, though these will probably work for other linux distributions.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/installing-test-of-time-in-linux-mint-20.666105/

If everything seems to work, but performance is kind of bad, I would try Lubuntu

https://lubuntu.net/

(I haven't tried it on Lubuntu, but I don't think any of my instructions were Mint specific)

Of course, if you have or can get a copy of 32 bit windows xp, that would work best.
 
This video should get you started on virtualization:


Here, I have instructions for installing civ II on Linux Mint, though these will probably work for other linux distributions.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/installing-test-of-time-in-linux-mint-20.666105/

If everything seems to work, but performance is kind of bad, I would try Lubuntu

https://lubuntu.net/

(I haven't tried it on Lubuntu, but I don't think any of my instructions were Mint specific)

Of course, if you have or can get a copy of 32 bit windows xp, that would work best.
I have a acer laptop recovery cd's with windows xp... do you think that woud work?
 
I have a acer laptop recovery cd's with windows xp... do you think that woud work?

It would definitely be worth a try, but there is a chance that they'll recognise that you're not using the original hardware and not work because of it. I would first try installing a Linux distribution (not putting TOT on it), just to gain a bit of experience on something that will work, before trying something that might not work.
 
I fixed it by setting compatibility mode and disable fullscreen optimizations.
Civ2: Compatibility mode for Windows 7 - no videos but at least the game works
ToTPP: Compatibility mode off - everything as it should be

It seems windows tries to switch the game to fullscreen in a loop, which doesn't work because it's a windowed game and this causes performance degradation.
 
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I fixed it by setting compatibility mode and fullscreen optimizations off.
Civ2: Compatibility mode for Windows 7 - no videos but at least the game works
ToTPP: Compatibility mode off - everything as it should be

It seems windows tries to switch the game to fullscreen in a loop, which doesn't work because it's a windowed game and this causes performance degradation.
But how do you switch compatiblitiy off for TOT?
 
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