01-04-2002 12:05									#1
	The 1 Thing Civ NEEDS Enter the AD-FREE zone

The 1 Thing Civ NEEDS, not "could be better with", or "i think this would be cool", is to be SPED UP. between turns takes to long, and the game takes forever. i dont care whats to blame, pathfinding, culture, map drawing, whatever. the fact of the matter is Marla's Earth Map is a KICKASS map, but the in bewteen turns lapse take 5 minutes in the mideval ages. i haven't even touched industrial or modern yet.

	01-04-2002 12:14									#2
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The speed issue is a serious problem... If you play on a small world with less civs, it's not bad at all. However... You are totally correct.

	01-04-2002 12:51									#3
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

No (sorry Ming) what is needed is a P4 2.2G with 1 Gig of RAM.

I'm sorry, but Firaxis has stated that they included the mongo maps to satisfy the demand for them, EVEN THOUGH they would perform like pigs on many of what would have been good computers a year ago.

So they built at least one aspect of the game with the future in mind. What are they going to do? Reduce the maximum map size? Dumb down the path finding?

I have a Duron900 (effectively), 256M DDR, Matrox G550. Large maps work well for me. I tried Huge maps twice. They worked well too, only I don't want to go through that much territory to conquer the world.

Last edited by notyoueither on 01-04-2002 at 13:55

	01-04-2002 14:52									#4
	Support Apolyton

With all the complaints about the speed issue, i haven't tried a huge map yet. Though i will soon just for the experience.

PII 266 @ 300 (512 L1 cache), 224 RAM, 66MHz bus, Diamond Viper II w/ 32 meg, SB Live sound, Win98. I run seti@home when not playing and work units average about 18 hrs for me. (seti is a good way to find out how well your motherboard is tuned)

I always play large maps, usually with 7 AIs. The main waiting period for me is when i can actually see the other civs units moving. More civs = more units moving = more pathfinding.

Since i have such a low end sytem, i assume that what i see on a large map is similar to what many see on a huge map with a better sytem. Could i be right?

	01-04-2002 18:26									#5
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

Civ needs plenty things (starting with a scenario editor), but not to be sped up : it was meant to handle at most large maps with 8 civs, but Firaxis wanted to please the fans, by allowing them playing on huge maps with 16 civs.
With my PII-400, I don't try to play on Marla's map, and I still hope someone will make a good earth standard or large map. I'm playing on stadard maps with 8 civs, and it works perfectly ; I can finish a builder's game in an afternoon. Speeding-up is the last thing Firaxis needs to do because the CPUs will catch up with huge maps eventually without Firaxis doing anything, as opposite to improving the AI or adding a scenario editor.

	01-04-2002 18:32									#6
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I don't understand everyone's slow problems. I have a P3 - 550Mhz with 256MB of SDRAM.

On Marla's World Map with 10 civs, I only have a 30 second wait between turns in the INDUSTRIAL age.

Here are some suggestions that I think will help your game play.

Find the program FreeMem, with this you manually remove data from the RAM (it goes to the HD, which is Windows Virtual Memory). Before I start any game, I free up 160MB.'


The next is StartUp Cop. It prevents unwanted programs from loading when you start your computer. A must have.

Also, don't forget to do some HD cleanup. Runnning scan disk and disk cleaner before Defragging your HD is a good thing. And when you do defrag, uncheck the option to place programs where they run faster, because this will make your HD more fragmented. This will help with swap files.

I hope this has been of some help. Play On!

	01-04-2002 21:12									#7
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

I do wish the game didn't slow down so badly (for me) on huge maps. Large maps are generally ok, a little slow at the end. Marla's map got insane. Utterly, completely insane. 45 minute turns in the Industrial Age. The map's nice, but not that nice.

400mhz
64 MB RAM

So yeah, my computer isn't nearly top-o-the line, and the game works well on Normal Maps (aside from the fact that I did have to shut off the music, which stuttered and skipped and slowed down the game). Eventually I will cave in and get a better system and things will probably be fine. By then, they'll be up to Pentium VI or whatever... with God knows how much speed & memory.

-Arrian

p.s. I play with "friendly moves" and "animate auto moves" off. This occasionally leads to real surprise at an AI attack, but it does speed up the game.

Last edited by Arrian on 02-04-2002 at 00:10

	01-04-2002 21:29									#8
	Inflate your Upload Space

True A.I. who make better units instead of hundreds of bad ones and build cities in god places... not everiwhere, and a Scenario, I mean SCENARIO Editor.

	01-04-2002 22:03									#9
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quote: Originally posted by notyoueither So they built at least one aspect of the game with the future in mind. What are they going to do? Reduce the maximum map size? Dumb down the path finding?

Well, you could code the pathfinding and other regularly used time-consuming AI routines in assembly instead of in a high level language. Although you wouldn't notice the difference if the routine was run once, when it's run hundreds of times the slightly shorter time it would take to run could speed up things considerably.

	01-04-2002 22:25									#10
	Avatar Enlargement: We've got the solution

might as well throw my specs out into the fray:

athlon 1.5ghz
512 SDRAM
160 gigs of hd space (100 gig 7200 rpm - 40 gig 7200 rpm - 20 gig 7200 rpm)
Geforce 3 64
funny how i can run shooter games like Counter-Strike and Quake 3 at 70+ frames per second but i can't play civ on a huge(or marla's giga) map

	01-04-2002 22:43									#11
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

I never have trouble with the time for AI moves but some of mine take forever to do the automated moves. I found holding the shift button will speed up the movement.

1 ghz, 512mb

	01-04-2002 22:51									#12
	Got spare money?

Let me throw mine in as well

Intel Pentium III 550MHz
256MB 100MHz SDRAM (2x64MB, 1x128MB)
HD C = 13.1 GB ATA/66 <-Civ3 on this one
HD D = 15.1 GB ATA/66
DVD E = 8x/48x
CD-RW F = 4x/2x/24x
Zip250 G = External USB Port
16MB AGP Voodoo3 3000D
Turtle Beach Montego II Sound Card

Windows 98SE with IE6

All Hardware are 100% Dx8a compatible.

Programs that run well on my computer, and their screen res that I play on (if required). All color depth are 16-bit

AL|ENS v. Predator: 640x480 (I play AL|EN at 800x600 with no problems)
Jedi Knight: 1280x1024 (Max Monitor Res)
Quake3: 640x480
Force Commander: 640x480
MechWarrior4: 1024x768
Metal Gear Solid: 1024x768
Unreal: 1024x768
Civ3: 1024x768

Programs that I have tried to use but don't run well.

AvP2
Q3: Team Arena
Half-Life


As I posted before I this thread, I don't have a problem between turns.

	02-04-2002 01:10									#13
	Support Apolyton buy from Amazon

i have a:

366 mHz Celeron
64 MB RAM
4 GB HD
4X CD Drive

and normal maps 8 civs work perfectly, which is what civ3 was designed for. consider anything above 8 civ normal map to be a "freebie" and it wont seem like such a rip-off. after all the only practical alternative was to leave large/huge maps out altogether, which would be even worse IMO.

Edit: AoK TC runs poorly on my computer, SWGB runs very poorly on my computer, and Counterstrike is completely unplayable despite a DSL connection. So its really a nice surprise that civ3 runs at all.

	02-04-2002 04:00									#14
	Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

There are a lot of reasons that Civ II runs slowly on large maps. The foremost being that after the civs have expanded a bit there is a massive amount of information needed to process the game. Some optimization can be always be done, but there is a limit for the minimum amount of memory needed to store that information. No amount of whining is going to change that. The main consideration when trying to solve this is your RAM. When the system runs out of memory it will start pagin out a lot of memory to the hd. This means that it will have to read and write to the hd constantly while processing. Using a NT or even worse DOS based OS you are talking about extremely stupid paging algorithms, so the game may have to page memory in and out several times in what would normally be a very quick process. So if you have any more room for RAM expansion do it, otherwise it might be a good time to get a new machine. They've never been cheaper.

	02-04-2002 04:00									#15
	Inflate your Upload Space

I meant Civ III not Civ II of course.

	02-04-2002 14:04									#16
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UberXrux: Lets not forget that you have special hardware ideally fitted for shooter Games (a GeForce3 Gfx Card). Without this specialised Hardware you couldnt play any shooters at 70+ frames. Civ3 on the other hand cannot make use of any specialised hardware. Civ3 has to rely on pure Computing Power. And on huge maps there are 16 civs!! You want them to be competitive and that takes up enormous calculating power. I think it is not that the maps are so huge that everything is slow. Rather it is the amount of civs. Eliminate some of the civs and I think you should experience a speed up.

	02-04-2002 14:10									#17
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dubwai: And not forget to take DDR-SDRAM over normal SDRAM. Ofcourse only if you have a motherboard that supports DDR-SDRAM. If you have a P4 pray that you have the i850 chipset that supports Rambus RD-RAM. P4 sucks with any type of SDRAM.

	02-04-2002 14:17									#18
	Full PM-box? Change here!

DP

	02-04-2002 14:18									#19
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

I have tried to generate for myself these obscene slow turn times. I created a map with all floodplain, and 16 civs. The empires should grow huge. My civ expanded to fill about 2/3 of the map after a while, and by industrial, my average turn time, over seven turns, was 12 minutes, 19 seconds. With an entire 256x256 map filled with cities. I don't understand what people are b1tching about here.

Specs:
Athlon 1400
1024MB PC-2100DDR-RAM
2x Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM drives in a RAID 0 array
GeForce 2 Ultra 32MB DDR

Steele

	02-04-2002 14:26									#20
	Suffering from ads?

Mike Breikutz has said the main thing slowing things down on larger maps is the pathfinding algorithim. Its not a bug from what he said. The time the algorithim takes exands exponentialy with map size. A lot of algorithims expand exponentialy as the number of choices expand.

Also I doubt the number of Civs matter as much as the number of units. Certainly if the pathfinder is the main time user anyway. On smaller maps the number of civs might be the determining factor as less time is spent on units and time spent on dealing with other civs become more significant.

	02-04-2002 14:30									#21
	Enter the AD-FREE zone

quote: Originally posted by steelehc was 12 minutes, 19 seconds. With an entire 256x256 map filled with cities. I don't understand what people are b1tching about here. Specs: Athlon 1400 1024MB PC-2100DDR-RAM 2x Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM drives in a RAID 0 array GeForce 2 Ultra 32MB DDR Steele

I sorta think the time you had there is exactly what people are *****ing about.

Of course with you takin up 2/3 of the map the AI isn't spending a lot of time doing things.

Showoff.

	02-04-2002 14:44									#22
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quote: Originally posted by Atahualpa UberXrux: Lets not forget that you have special hardware ideally fitted for shooter Games (a GeForce3 Gfx Card). Without this specialised Hardware you couldnt play any shooters at 70+ frames. Civ3 on the other hand cannot make use of any specialised hardware. Civ3 has to rely on pure Computing Power. And on huge maps there are 16 civs!! You want them to be competitive and that takes up enormous calculating power. I think it is not that the maps are so huge that everything is slow. Rather it is the amount of civs. Eliminate some of the civs and I think you should experience a speed up.

He has more than I do, except for the chipset and 256M DDR vs 512M SDR. I have played Huge with 16 civs and not noticed a problem. Video generally should not effect AI turn times (the GPU is not calculating paths). Something else has to be going on here.

I completely beleive that UK and others are seeing slow performance where others are not. I just wish I, or Infogrames (they are responsible for support) could figure it out.

Marla's does seem to be a common denominator for slow performance. Is it over-sized huge? I mean bigger than random huge. Is there some other problem with it?

	02-04-2002 14:57									#23
	Support Apolyton, buy Alpha Centauri

I think the # of cities matters pretty much. Check the time the computer needs to recompute things when you found/capture/raze a city at a huge map. The more cities are at the map, the longer takes it. Not only linear, but may be even exponential.

My old specs: PII/350, 128 MB SDRAM, RIVA TNT 16 MB, SB AWE32. Standard maps were ok, large ran quite slow, huge and oversized (Marla's) were absolutely unplayable. My only try at Marla's ended in the early industrial age with 40 minutes AI moves. It's history, as this machine is now a DSL router .

My new specs: Athlon XP 1800+, 512 MB DDRAM, GeForce2 64 MB, CMI8738 onboard. Sufficient for me as I'm not much into ego shooters. First test, in the mid-medieval age with 12 (of total 16) civs on my continent, AI moves take about a minute, even though I REX'd and ICS'd like a madman. I think after finishing the first "huge" game I'll give Marla's another try.

	02-04-2002 15:40									#24
	Support Apolyton or Terrorists Win

I said I was having times of 12 minutes. People are complaining about times of 35-45+ minutes. I have never seen anything approaching that. The largest time I found was 12 minutes 56 seconds.

Steele

	02-04-2002 16:03									#25
	Browse Apolyton AD-FREE

i run avp1 on 1024*768 the whole time, never any slowdown, even when surfing net at the same time.

my specs are:
geforce 2 mx
512 ram the older type
1ghz athlon
20gb hd

	02-04-2002 16:07									#26
	Help yourself to an AD-FREE life

quote: People are complaining about times of 35-45+ minutes. I have never seen anything approaching that.

You have four times the processor power and 16 times the ram of the person that had 45 minute turns. Somehow I don't think they had have something ELSE bizzare going on to get such long times.

	02-04-2002 16:12									#27
	Increase the size of your Attachments

Good point. My obscene amount of RAM may be related to this issue. But what about the people with P8 57Ghz 400GB RAM infinite HD machines complaining about super-long times?

Steele

	02-04-2002 16:55									#28
	Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations

Sorry I haven't a time machine to check on this. Where did you purchase yours? I might be interested in buying one myself. It would come in really handy if the energy cost isn't too high.

	02-04-2002 18:03									#29
	Tired of ads?

quote: Originally posted by steelehc I said I was having times of 12 minutes. People are complaining about times of 35-45+ minutes. I have never seen anything approaching that. The largest time I found was 12 minutes 56 seconds. Steele

I hard time trying to understand why you are even getting 12 minutes of turn time.

Somthing is a miss here.

	02-04-2002 19:01									#30
	Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

The only time I've had *any* issues with turn times is on Marla's gargantuan earth map.

I've played games on random-generated huge maps, 16 civs, that lasted right up and into the 2000's in modern times, and the turn times never exceeded about 30 seconds or so. And I don't have *that* powerful of a machine:

Athlon 1.4GHz
512MB regular SDRAM
2x40GB 7.2k drives in RAID-0 <--Civ3 on here
1x20GB 5.4k drive (emergency backup & storage in case RAID array ever fails)
VIA KT133A chipset m/b
Windows 2000 SP2
Tons o' tasks running in the background (just after opening windows BEFORE running any programs I'm already using 175MB of physical RAM)

And on Marla's map, the turn times, while annoying, were still bearable, at around 45 seconds/turn in the year 700AD (late part of middle ages era)