Why does Civ 5 run so slow later in games??

[robbie380]

It takes almost 30 seconds on average for the game to process the other players turns. When I click anywhere on the map the screen moves at like 2 frames per second. I don't understand it. I have a 2.8 ghz i7, 12 gb of ram, and a radeon 5970 with 2 gb of ram. I have checked my display drivers and I think they are up to date. I don't have problems with any other games. I have checked my resource monitor too and it doesn't show anything hogging resources.

Also, if I click anything while it is processing the AI turns the screen will flash to black and it will give the 'Not Responding' mouse icon thing for a second. Is this a DirectX thing?

Any suggestions?

 

[FeiLing]

The screen shouldn't turn black and flash. That might be caused by driver problems or even heat issues at the gpu. A turn taking ages though is 'normal'. I am however a bit surprised that say your i7 doesn't really perform better than a good old q6600 in this game.

 

[Helmling]

Direct X? Are you running it in Windows?

The number of entities the game is tracking in the late game gets pretty huge. Slow down in the late game is endemic to all the Civ games, but has been much worse in IV and V. I switch to Strategic View in the late game; it speeds things up a lot.

Oh, and I watch TV while I play.

 

[robbie380]

Direct X? Are you running it in Windows?

The number of entities the game is tracking in the late game gets pretty huge. Slow down in the late game is endemic to all the Civ games, but has been much worse in IV and V. I switch to Strategic View in the late game; it speeds things up a lot.

Oh, and I watch TV while I play.

Yeah I am running it in a window in Windows. I have tried switching to strategic view but it doesn't seem to matter too much. I also have my video settings all on minimum. This really sucks cause it makes it pretty much unplayable on larger maps.

What kind of setup does it take to actually be able to play lag free?

 

[robbie380]

And why is the game so unresponsive when I first load it and it's showing that opening intro video? I hit anything to bypass it and it takes forever for it to respond. I have this problem on my machine at home and at work.

 

[FeiLing]

Because it loads the game. And it skips the intro when it is finished loading and you clicked at least once at any point before. Didn't you notice it stops at pretty much the same moment every time?
You'll easily find how to not play the intro via the forum search or google, however instead the screen will just stay black for the same time (won't make it load faster).

 

[robbie380]

Because it loads the game. And it skips the intro when it is finished loading and you clicked at least once at any point before. Didn't you notice it stops at pretty much the same moment every time?
You'll easily find how to not play the intro via the forum search or google, however instead the screen will just stay black for the same time (won't make it load faster).

No it doesn't stop at the same moment everytime. Sometimes it's responsive and other times it is very slow and I will get a not responding message. I don't have these problems with any other game or application that I run. Does Civ 5 just have some jacked up code or something?

 

[Lord Smiley]

Direct X? Are you running it in Windows?

The number of entities the game is tracking in the late game gets pretty huge. Slow down in the late game is endemic to all the Civ games, but has been much worse in IV and V. I switch to Strategic View in the late game; it speeds things up a lot.

Oh, and I watch TV while I play.

The switching to strategic view used to work for me too but since Gods and Kings it makes no difference and between turns takes ages especially in the late game.

I'll try the watching TV thing.

 

[timtofly]

@ robbie380

What else do you have running in the background? Do you have any programs that "speed" up your gaming experience? Are you running other optimizing software? Is there any other program that accesses HTML or online services? If there are even a handful of background applications that are fighting for bandwidth and CPU space at the same time, it will slow down your gaming experience.

It has been mentioned, but if your system is overheating, your computer is programmed to slow down and allow it to cool off, otherwise it would be damaged and you would have to keep replacing it every month. Make sure you are giving it a cool environment and dust free as possible.

Late game slow down is caused by a huge amount of resources the game is processing. The game should be quicker at the start with not much variation after mid to late game. If the game is slow from the start and gets really bad, then there is more applications running (in the background) than your computer can handle. Lowering the graphics setting will only reflect what your GPU can handle. It does not make that much difference in game turn time. Game turn time is related to the CPU for the most part. If you play zoomed out there will be more graphical calculations going on, so you may try playing zoomed in more with better graphics than zoomed out with lower graphical settings.

It is possible that your GPU driver is not optimized that well and you could try a different one, or try setting things back to factory default and try tweaking things as they are needed.