17-01-2002 19:52									#1
	Slow, slow, slow turns.... Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

There is nothing new in this, I believe majority of the people in this forum have complained about slow turns in Civ3. So maybe it is time for all us to try to convince Infogrames to address this issue in some patch?

	18-01-2002 05:54									#2
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I agree. I don't mind waiting a minute, it even makes me think more about my own moves, but 5-6 minutes is over the top. Makes you think: "Hmm, it will take me about two hours to move that unit from A to B...so why bother..."

I find it very unlikely that the code is optimized, given these problems, at least not for a huge map with 16 civs. A patch that helped with the message pop-ups that halts the AI or made it possible to do something (manage cities, browse the civ-pedia) while it thinks would be a great improvement also.

	18-01-2002 09:44									#3
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Now running these huge maps with 16 civs you have a dual Athlon 1800+ MP running Win2K with 1GB of ram right?

If you meet the system requirements, you can play the game, it doesn't say its lightning fast when pushed to the limits.

I have a 1.4GHz and 512mb and late games with huge pangea or continents with 8+ civs do take 5+ minutes a turn sometimes. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Ever play a real computer chess game on the hardest setting? Turns take a long time because its plotting every possible move for many turns ahead. Civ3 is the same way, except instead of 64 spaces and 32 pieces to deal with, towards the end of the games it may be well over a thousand pieces with how many squares on a huge map? Plus the rules of chess pale compared to those in Civ3.

If anything, that time spent waiting would probably best be used to go to the bathroom and actually eat and drink something, stretch, go get some fresh air, etc since I know I don't get any of those things during the half and hour it takes me to complete my turns sometimes.

	18-01-2002 21:01									#4
	Full PM-box? Change here!

quote: Now running these huge maps with 16 civs you have a dual Athlon 1800+ MP running Win2K with 1GB of ram right? If you meet the system requirements, you can play the game, it doesn't say its lightning fast when pushed to the limits.

I don't blame myself for assuming that having a system not far beyond the sys. req. I shouldn't be kept waiting for 5-6 minutes between turns, not even a minute. Do you?

quote: I have a 1.4GHz and 512mb and late games with huge pangea or continents with 8+ civs do take 5+ minutes a turn sometimes. I don't see anything wrong with that. Ever play a real computer chess game on the hardest setting? Turns take a long time because its plotting every possible move for many turns ahead. Civ3 is the same way, except instead of 64 spaces and 32 pieces to deal with, towards the end of the games it may be well over a thousand pieces with how many squares on a huge map? Plus the rules of chess pale compared to those in Civ3.

Yes, I do play chess sometimes, and I can safely say that I will never beat Chessmaster set to do its best for only 3-4 secs. But that's beside the point. You shouldn't assume that a civ-game AI must use a chess-like algorithm (traversing the tree of every possible moves), but I get your point. Nevertheless it would probably be more valid to compare it with another civ-game-AI, like CTP, where these delays do not occur to my knowledge.

All I said was that I doubt that the AI is fully optimized for speed. If that happens to be the case then at least I should be able to do what you were suggesting (take a shower...etc) but usually when I do that I find that a message has popped up after 25% of the AI moves and that I still has to wait several minutes. I haven't found a setting to alter this behaviour; note that I do want to recieve these messages.

To sum it up: I do not want to sacrifice for AI skill for speed, but there is still certainly much room for improvements.

	19-01-2002 19:26									#5
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quote: Originally posted by copcartman I agree. I don't mind waiting a minute, it even makes me think more about my own moves, but 5-6 minutes is over the top. Makes you think: "Hmm, it will take me about two hours to move that unit from A to B...so why bother..." I find it very unlikely that the code is optimized, given these problems, at least not for a huge map with 16 civs. A patch that helped with the message pop-ups that halts the AI or made it possible to do something (manage cities, browse the civ-pedia) while it thinks would be a great improvement also.

It's not really practical to play 16 civs on a huge map. If you lower that to 8, the turns will take a lot less time. The game has to go through all the AI moves in the game as well as your own, and with a huge map, there's going to be a lot more cities/units.

	20-01-2002 17:50									#6
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

No matter how many civs there are there will still be about the same number of cities and units after a certain time, am I right? So I don't see why that would improve things by much.

Another strange thing that I forgot to mention before. When I conquer a city in the middle/late game and choose to raze it, it takes about 2+ minutes before the message dialog disappears and I can continue my turn. Clearly there must be something wrong in the code; the AI has no real option there so why should it take more than a fraction of a second to check effects on trade routes and dimplomacy (for instance)?

	20-01-2002 20:21									#7
	Put an end to popups!

quote: Originally posted by copcartman No matter how many civs there are there will still be about the same number of cities and units after a certain time, am I right? So I don't see why that would improve things by much. Another strange thing that I forgot to mention before. When I conquer a city in the middle/late game and choose to raze it, it takes about 2+ minutes before the message dialog disappears and I can continue my turn. Clearly there must be something wrong in the code; the AI has no real option there so why should it take more than a fraction of a second to check effects on trade routes and dimplomacy (for instance)?

Not necessarily. With the corruption level as it is, it gets harder and harder to create new cities and units as the empires grow. And there's other calculations it has to do as well, though I can't think of what specifically. I do know that if you want to play on a huge map, 16 Civs is not practical unless maybe you have a really fast machine. I play on maps that are 256 x 256, and I quickly gave up on the idea of 16 civs and went back to 8. My turns still take awhile, but it's nothing compared to what it was before.

	21-01-2002 21:44									#8
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

from what i've seen, a large portion of the issue is the border calculation algorithm. it be slow.

	22-01-2002 01:55									#9
	Support Apolyton, buy Call to Power 2

Agreed. This is precisely the reason why I have not played a game past 1600. Are you telling me that the braintrust at Firaxis sat through 10 minute turns while "playtesting" and then still *excitedly* put it out?

If everyone wants to complain, start sending emails to Infogrames instead of Firaxis; thats what I've done. If you have lousy service at a restaurant, you tell the manager, not the waiter.

	22-01-2002 02:14									#10
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

quote: Originally posted by The Eliminator Agreed. This is precisely the reason why I have not played a game past 1600. Are you telling me that the braintrust at Firaxis sat through 10 minute turns while "playtesting" and then still *excitedly* put it out? If everyone wants to complain, start sending emails to Infogrames instead of Firaxis; thats what I've done. If you have lousy service at a restaurant, you tell the manager, not the waiter.

Well chances are they have the latest gear running at 1+ gigahertz. So it's not inconcievable that they didn't realize that us common folk with slower machines might have to wait much longer. I understand that with a top of the line processor, the wait time isn't all that bad.

	22-01-2002 11:07									#11
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

I dunno, I'm running a 900mhz with all of the goodies, and I still have a fair wait time between turns.

I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that angers me the most is when you build a city and nothing happens for like 15 seconds. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGG

I didn't pay $70 for a brand new game to run like crap on my new computer.

	22-01-2002 11:59									#12
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

quote: Originally posted by The Eliminator I dunno, I'm running a 900mhz with all of the goodies, and I still have a fair wait time between turns. I don't know about everyone else, but the thing that angers me the most is when you build a city and nothing happens for like 15 seconds. AAAAAAAARRRRRRGGG I didn't pay $70 for a brand new game to run like crap on my new computer.

15 seconds!!! Man, are you impatient! That's squat, it wouldn't bother me if it a were a minute or two, I'm not going anywhere. Maybe you'd be better off playing a shoot-em-up.

	22-01-2002 22:54									#13
	Remove this text

i think i'm going to have to start timing how long my turns take and how long building/deconstructing cities takes... several hundred cities on a 256x256 map makes things slow

i guess i need more than my old dual 840's now. ::sigh::

	23-01-2002 02:44									#14
	Full PM-box? Change here!

hahahahahah shoot em ups!

I know I'm impatient, but I believe that it really takes away from the game. Remember in Civ2, it was pretty much instantaneous.

	23-01-2002 08:16									#15
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quote: Originally posted by The Eliminator hahahahahah shoot em ups! I know I'm impatient, but I believe that it really takes away from the game. Remember in Civ2, it was pretty much instantaneous.

Well I guess we were playing different versions then, since I distinctly recall spending time waiting for the computer to do it's thing. Instantaneous it was not. Faster maybe, but then Civ III is a more complicated game so it's bound to take longer.

	23-01-2002 08:39									#16
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

civ2 ran on a 486. civ3 is slightly more demanding. thus, playing them on the same machine slightly skews the performance curve

	23-01-2002 09:06									#17
	Inflate your Upload Space

I think it's no good alternative, using 8 civs and small maps. When playing civ2 I always missed a really huge world, almost impossible to fully explore, and a large number of diverse cultures and nations, like in the real world. Now finally civ3 has come a bit closer to achieving this. The huge map that can be used in civ3 is a great step forward from civ2 or any other strategy game so far, and 16 civs is a lot better than 7, (even though the real world has over 200).

To make games better and more realistic, you unfortunately have to sacrifice speed. Civ3 is probably the most complex game to date, and it's just a fact that complex games require good hardware. Now, the alternative, playing on small maps with fewer than 16 civs, is not at all appealing to me. I want complexity, huge worlds, cultures, nations, every aspect of the real world. It's annoying, of course, if a game is slow. But if we want games to develop, to become more realistic and more complex, that's what we'll have to put up with.

	23-01-2002 10:20									#18
	Increase the size of your Attachments

thing is, i was always pretty much happy with my civ2 maps maxed out at 80x125.... 10,000 squares. now i'm feeling cramped at 256x256, which is six and a half times bigger... and i play with fewer civs than i did in civ2!

	24-01-2002 23:40									#19
	My tips for speeding up your turns Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I have played a few games, and learned a few things that make this slow game more tolerable. Here's what I do now to speed up my turns in this game (haven't found a way to speed up the other civ's!). I'm running 1.16f.

1. When you build your first city, Have a meeting with the governor and set the governor to maintain city attitude for all cities, and make it the default for all cities.

2. In preferences, turn off manual and automatic moves. Turn off animations too. Personally, I want to see when the other civs get close to my territory, so I leave their moves turned on, but still turn off animations.

3. Set any scouts or wandering ships or wandering military units to explore. Don't worry about what they're doing. They will find villiages on their own, and will tell you when they get in contact with other civs. (Don't turn off "wake on xxx moves" in preferences).

4. Automate most of your workers. Keep only a few manual to build roads to cities or resources or other civs.

5. When not using military units, fortify them. Preferably in strategic places so they will be near barbarians when they arise. I keep a few active in strategic places I want to personally keep an eye on though.

6. Use the GOTO function liberally. I especially like doing this for settlers. I have them goto a place where I want a city. When they get there, they will be ready for you to build a city. Try to do this with an accompanying military unit too.

7. Use the build queue. When deciding what a city should build, hold down the shift key, and queue up what they should build. Then the governor will only bug you when the queue is empty. I have "ask for build each time" turned on, and even with this, I can usually just hit enter to agree with the next choice.

7. If you stack military units in one place (which I don't), use the right mouse button and the shift key to wake them all at once when you need them. There is no way to make them all move together though (yet?).

8. If you can stand it (I can't), zoom out (use the Z key). There is only one zoom level, and it's too far zoomed out to be useful for me, but the less scrolling around that has to be done, the better.

Once all this is done, you can spend your time with your advisors and telling your governors what to build instead of what they think should be built (which is almost always different than I want), or with other civs trading.

Any other tips?

	25-01-2002 04:46									#20
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

Put more memory in your computer. Civ3 eats hoards of memory as a snack.

Make use of the Ctrl-r and ctrl-shift-R to have a worker build a road/railroad from present location to selected destination.

This is especially nice when you first get railroads, cause you can use it to force work to railroad from one end of your empire to the other.

	20-02-2002 00:22									#21
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

Ah come on !

I run a 1.4Ghz, Geforce3 & 512mb DDR - Basically the equivalent of a Mainframe 20 Years ago and a mid range 10 Years ago (Probably faster than alot of the old Mid Range Systems still in use !!)

I ran Civ2 (Large Map, all the Trimmings - loads a Civ's etc.) on a 386/20 with 8MB with NO problems.

I have yet to see ANY improvements which would Justify the additional system overheads.

Back to playing Alpha Centuri I think (& thoroughly enjoying for the umpteenth time !).

	08-03-2002 15:35									#22
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Here is my hardware information:

AMD Athlon 1200mhz 256
384MB PC133 SDRAM
ATI Radeon 64SDR AGP
Windows XP Professional (Build 5.1 - 2600)


A game with 16 civilizations on a huge map runs fine until around the year 1200-1800 AD. The game becomes progressively slower until each turn takes 5+ minutes to complete. Something totally heinous, especially when there is not much to do each turn.

The problem is only made slower on huge maps with less civilizations because it takes longer for each civilization to settle the entire world.

I have thought about upgrading my memory, but I have realized this is not the case. This is a CPU usage problem. This is very bad. It is my estimate that a 4GHZ system would be needed to cut the wait times down to tolerable levels later in the game.

If someone is using similar hardware and not experiencing this problem, please shed some light.

--Mike