What do you do about unplayable games?

[Praesidian]

Every once in a while I have games that are literally unplayable. I have one now, normal map size, that i cant even SCROLL around the map it is so laggy. Its not that there are a ton of units or cities -- it is mostly water -- and it was completely fine until i hit end turn, and then it went to crap. I cant even exit the game without waiting 5 minutes for the triangle button to "respond."

I have another now thats on the Huge World map, and right in the middle of an attack turn (I attacked with 3 units and realized I couldnt move the 4th) it just stopped responding. When I go back into the save, same thing happens. Its just "stuck." It seems to happen a lot to me, and it means that i cant finish many games.

I originally thought it was my computer not being fast enough, but i transfered one game from my desktop (old and crappy, but the one i normally play on) to my laptop (amazing sager that is faster than most people's desktops) and neither can run the save game without waiting 10 minutes for a response to a click.

Is there a way to fix this?

 

[Blackbird_SR-71]

this is the wrong forum. i think you should ask in the Techinical Forum. as for your question i'm not sure except maybe you need a faster computer or more RAM.

 

[punkbass2000]

Try reinstalling. Try restarting. Try closing every other program except 'systray'. Try to free up some Hard drive space. TRy defragging your computer. If you're willing to spend any money at all, the cheapest way to see results is usually adding RAM. Having a nice 3Ghz machine isn't gonna do crap if you've only got 256MB of RAM. That's all that jumps to mind ATM.

 

[lech]

It sounds like the .sav files are getting corrupted. I would bet reinstalling civ3 would fix the problem, at least temporarily. Although it wouldn't fix the corrupted .sav files.

 

[SanPellegrino]

are you running the latest patch? I remember with the vanilla civ out of the box I had the same problem, but patched never again. I can play even huge maps on my 800 Mhz.

 

[Matt_G]

We need more info.

1) What are your system specs? (speed of processor, RAM, etc.)
2) What OS are you running?
3) Do you keep Windows patched thru Windows Update?
4) Are you having problems with any other apps? Unexplained popups, slowdowns etc., which are indicative of spyware.
5) Do you have SpyBot S&D and Ad-Aware on the system and have they been updated and run recently?
6) Do you have current anti-virus software on the system?

That will do for starters...