Will more RAM increase performance?

[ranger101]

I have an Athlon Barton 2500 and an ATI X1650 video card with 1 GB of RAM. I recently played a large map (Hemispheres) with 2 extra civs added (11 in total). By the time I reached Industrialism, the game slowed considerably - to make me abandon the game and think about only playing standard size in future.

Last time I played things weren't so bad, but I recently added the BUG mod and started plating Better AI with it. I am wondering if that had something to do with things getting slower, as my previous game ran satisfactorily, even in the modern era.

 

[ori]

any mods have the potential of reducing performance if they add stuff that requires calculations.
large and huge maps in later eras use more memory than 1GB (up to 2 in unmodded games) - this means that the game starts using memory on the hard drive instead of RAM which is considerably slower - more RAM will help here...