What spec machine do you need to run Civ IV smoothly?

[ston]

I've recently started playing the BTS version of Civ IV (started with Civ IV 'vanilla').

I found the vanilla version to be bad enough performance-wise towards the end of a game, but BTS is far slower from the get-go and virtually unplayable towards the end game (I'm only talking about standard sized maps here).

I've gleaned from the forums that neither version has multi-core CPU support (which is a shame). My machine is based around a Athlon X2 5600+ Dual Core processor with 2GB of RAM and a high-end ATI GPU.

It runs games like Crysis without too much trouble at all, even at fairly high-quality settings but really struggles with BTS.

So, I'm just wondering what spec of machine can run it well? Aside from the obvious 'lower the graphics quality', are there any other in-game settings which can help with performance?

I've found some aspects of the slow-down rather incomprehensible, for example, opening a city screen. Why does an action like this slow down dramatically as the game progresses?

Anyway, I suspect that there's not really a great deal that can be done to improve the overall late-game performance given my system which is a bit of a shame as I think I'm going to have to call it a day with Civ. It's been a fun ride though

 

[ori]

two things that slow down the game:
1) insufficient RAM - if the game starts using the swap file it will slow down - this is mainly noticeable in the interturn when all the calculations of the AI are done, but also when opening screens. Depending on map size the game will use 1-3 GB of memory by itself (your machine has 2GB of which some is used by the operating system and (depending on what graphics card you have) maybe also from the graphics card
2) the 3D graphics engine is not very efficient - this part of the game has the feel of it being the first 3D game this studio created which means that some effects and animations do not play nicely with some graphics cards and cause some very noticeable slowdown.
There are a few things that can be done to try to improve this:
1) ensure that the graphics drivers are uptodate
2) ensure that DirectX9c is uptodate
3) turn off any other programs running in the background
4) lower graphics settings in the ingame options
5) turn off anti-aliasing in the ingame options and the graphics card driver options
6) turn on the hide background setting in the civilizationIV.ini
7) play around with the bik/bink options in the civilizationIV.ini

now when do you experience the most lag?
could you post your dxdiag results file?

 

[ston]

Cheers ori

It definitely seems to be the graphics which are slowing things down. I just tried turning the resolution right down, anti-aliasing off and all the other settings to 'low' or 'medium' (as well as your other suggestions) and the game flew along.

That's now a bit too crude, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find a happy middle-ground