19-12-2003 17:17									#1
	Question about slowdown Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

What affects game slowdown more? Large maps or many civs? or both?

I'm just wondering because on a huge map with many civs, the game turns get slowww in the industrial age.

Now, i'm wondering (and will eventually try it out)...would the time between turns be reduced by simply reducing the number of civs on a huge map?

Or, would it be the same since even if you only play with 2 civs, those civs will be much larger and have many more units , so the same calculations need to be made.

I'm thinking that a huge map will be slow whether you are playing 2 or 20 civs. not sure yet

	19-12-2003 19:46									#2
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

heh. as i just posted in the other thread, it's my belief that number of civs, more than anything else, controls the length of turn (given roughly the same total number of civs, units, and moves).

on the other hand, the fewer civs there are, the bigger your civ is... and the REAL bear in the late industrial and into the modern era is your own worker armies trying to railroad everything and clean up pollution (well, in my experience anyway... is it normal to have 300 workers? )

Last edited by pauli on 19-12-2003 at 20:06

	19-12-2003 21:51									#3
	Support Apolyton, buy Civilization 2

One of the biggest waits comes from the game trying to figure out trade routes. When you build a new city in a game with lots of civs, you can see it come to a halt on the fastest system around.
You see iit when a city is captured or razed, at least if it a coastal city and later if airports are available. In both cases they have to check to see if any trades would now be broken. So checking all the the civs connections is very time consuming.

So the biggest contributer is going to be the number of civs in the game. It also means the game goes well into the modern age and the AI will have massive numbers of troops. So if war breaks out, lots of units get shuffled around.

	19-12-2003 22:06									#4
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but is that trade routes between different civs only, or all routes even within one civ?

although it seems a bit odd that every turn would last so long in the late game if it were the trade routes. Unless there were major city swapping/destruction every turn.

	20-12-2003 06:06									#5
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Every road built, every harbor, every airport, every road destroyed, every city captured, etc. causes at least part of the trade network to be re-evaluated.

	20-12-2003 06:12									#6
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right, but i'm trying to understand why the lag is there when i'm not at war destroying raods, cities etc...

but the lag seems very constant, and if the lag were due to roads, cities, etc being destroyed, or battles between civs, then i would expect the lag to vary, (be shorter during relative peace, longer when many civs are at war)...yet it doesn't seem to vary

	20-12-2003 09:47									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

It normally does vary. In AU208 on 250x250 map with 24 civs. I deliberately did nothing for most of the game. iwanted to see how bad the lag would get on my then new 3.06GH system.
I tried to not eliminate any civ until the game was nearly over.
It got down to about 16 left and ended on 2050.

So late in the game some turns took as long as 25 minutes and the next may take seconds. It depended on what was going on.
One settler creating a city would last up to 5 minutes.

	22-12-2003 09:57									#8
	Put an end to popups!

Well the AI must move it's zillions of units around too, even if we don't see the nice animations. There are probably a zillion things the computer does in that time, including reassessing relative strengths, Demographics etc.

	22-12-2003 20:37									#9
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I've found that disabling the animations for friendly moves helps get rid of lag times between turns. Unfortunately if you have a lot of civs and a map greater than standard size you will have unavoidable lag.

	22-12-2003 22:54									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Since the game came out people have been wondering why the game is so slow. Even on Normal Civ3 with 10 civs on large map turns take a long time late in the game. IT's just how it is, there is no way of minimising it....I have tried many many times by cancelling AI movement, fast AI, hide map.....name it.

We just have to deal with it.......


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