Slowdown on 966Mhz PIII on Huge Maps - Page 2

Akaoz · November 19, 2001, 07:04

Glad we could help...

-Alech

CAB · November 19, 2001, 10:43

I'm currently using an AMD 1400MHz with 266MHz FSB and 512MB 266MHz RDram.

The game flows great and I play on a large huge map with 12 civs. I have almost no delay at all, perhaps a ten seconds or so and I am in late industrual age now.

Though enemy moves are a pain in the "bottom".

TheDarkside · November 19, 2001, 11:08

I'm telling you, Firaxis is using us to solve the ancient Towers of Hanoi problem during the time you think the AI is doing it's turn... or maybe they were funded by SETI to gradually allocate resources on our machines as the game progresses towards processing their raw satellite data. I shall release a report entitled "Covert Distributed Computing".

No really, it's silly how long it takes for the AI to take it's turn! My system is not the fastest, but my turn actions are responsive and quick. I run a database off my sytem with almost 1,000 tables and tens of thousands of records that never has delays as long as this, even if I process entire tables using inefficent techniques like brute force search.

Akaoz · November 19, 2001, 18:24

Is there any chance they can fix this? It is really putting me off playing...

-Alech

Bakunine · November 19, 2001, 19:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Akaoz
Is there any chance they can fix this?
-Alech

Must be or otherwise their ...

nickersonm · November 19, 2001, 19:35

I'm pretty sure that memory is the major factor here. I am playing a game on a 256x256 map w/ 12 or so civs, and there are 2-5 minute waits in the aincient ages. However, I only have a Athlon 650MHZ with 128MB of PC133 RAM. My friend with a P41.4GHz and 512MB RDRAM800 experiences only 20 second delays at the releatively same time period, but with more units+cities.

I also found that the number of civs really affects the delay. 16 is unmanagable on my computer, on almost any sized map, but reduce it to 12, and it is loads faster. Reduce it one more, and it's very managable (for a little bit, at least) on 256x256.

- nickersonm

jonasf · November 19, 2001, 21:15

My machine is an Athlon 1600 with 1Gb RAM and a GeForce 3 TI graphics card and windows 2000.

i can tell you that the game is so slow it is not even possible to play it on this machine... And it supposed to be a really fast machine in todays market(it does give me over 100fps in other games...).

The only people I've heard that get good performance is people that use a system based on the windows95 core, like windows98 or ME. People using the 2000 core, XP for example get HORRIBLE performance!!!

For some reason this fast machine of mine runs the game much SLOWER than my old pentium II 300MHz laptop, so I use the laptop to play the game.... Doesn't make much sense does it???

This game is buggy as hell and I wonder if they actually ever played it themselves... if they did they must have seen that things were not working..... It just isn't playable on anything but tiny maps...

star mouse · November 19, 2001, 21:29

I wonder if what we're seeing here is an example of the computation problems associated with NP-completeness. An NP problem is something where computation of a dataset of size "n" can only be computed in a time that is proportional to n! (n factorial). Such problems become impossible to compute even for small values of 'n' (less than 100).

Testing the connectivity of the trade network may be an example of this. During a turn, every player must test the connectivity of its trade network with every other player. This could be why people playing with a lot of civs in particular are noticing slow turns.

John-SJ · November 19, 2001, 21:58

Mouse,

You might be right, especially if the algorithm used is based on the unit pathing algorithm which is horrifically SLOW!

John-SJ

Kaesar · November 20, 2001, 04:25

The time problem people are experiencing on huge maps occured even back in civ2, it's not a bug, it's just the sheer number of units that are created when you have a huge map. I'm playing a civ3 game continental huge map myself and it does take a lot of time between turns. I control probably 20% of the map with about 50 cities. There's probably close to 300 cities on the map and a quick estimate will probably tell you there are probably 2000 units in the game. Ever tried to play a RTS game with 2000 independent units? Doesn't exist. It's not the cpu. It's not the graphics card(although you should turn off animation. It's not that it is gpu intensive, it's just that it takes time to show the animation) CPU speed doesn't really help because it's not complex calculations. A little basic CPU architecture knowledge will tell you that a P4 2G will make little difference for this game than a P3 500. The calculations required to make the moves is similar to what's needed to run a spread sheet with a thousand functions. So I really don't see anyway Firaxis can fix this.

dexter4dxm · November 20, 2001, 05:48

Quote:

Originally posted by ElitePersian
Well, i bet Firaxis is already paying the price for this, i'll bet a lotta ppl arent playing the game anymore cause of the slow turns - that shows really how long some ppl have to wait in between turns.

how does that make them pay the price? they have our money, and they aren't giving it back. if you mean they are paying the price already because legions of loyal fans are now cursing their name, then okay i agree with you (although i doubt they even care. i guess we'll see when the patch comes out.)

ElitePersian · November 21, 2001, 01:39

Quote:

Originally posted by dexter4dxm

how does that make them pay the price? they have our money, and they aren't giving it back. if you mean they are paying the price already because legions of loyal fans are now cursing their name, then okay i agree with you (although i doubt they even care. i guess we'll see when the patch comes out.)

thats exactly what i mean - word gets outs, ppl dont buy game.

tmarcl · November 21, 2001, 01:49

Oddly enough, I'm not having too many problems. I'm playing on a large map with 9 civs, and the wait is only a few seconds between turns-even in the Modern Era. I did have problems with 16 civs though-half an hour wait between turns.

One thing that's helped, as someone else has mentioned-shut down all your background programs so that only Explorer and Systray are running. Granted, that doesn't do much for the 16 civ games, but it helps on the lesser amounts. For the record, I have a 333mhz processor-just above minimum requirements.

Marc

SirSebastian · November 21, 2001, 19:31

Well... I happen to be running on a PII- 300mhz with 128 megs of RAM. Standard map, 8 civs... sure... later on it can take 2 minutes for the AI's turn... but... it never seemed unbearable. I have no innate desire to play on a Huge map like the rest of you though.. it seems... pointless and silly.

Akaoz · November 24, 2001, 21:24

*bump*

This question comes up a lot...

-Alech

7EA · November 24, 2001, 21:59

I use Windows ME and have a Celeron 533MHz clocked to 850MHz with 128Mb RAM and Radeon 7200 graphic card.

With 8 civs on standard map in late industrial age it runs quite alright. I have no complaints at all, but perhaps it will slowdown if I play on huge with 16 civs.

As someone else mentioned it may have something to do with the OS. If that is the case then it seems we all have to use ME.

Styx · November 25, 2001, 05:58

I have a PIII 800mhzEB 1gyg SDRAM windows2000Pro
Asus V7100 videocard, soundblaster live.

I have the same problem, hughe maps seem unplayable later on in the game.
Remarkable that the saved file takes a long time to load also.
They have to solve it, its not the movement, I turned all off including sound.
Maybe a lower resolution will work, haven,t tried that yet.

Deathray · November 25, 2001, 06:43

Ok, I have an Athlon 1.2 Ghz, 256 mb DDR Ram and a 64mb Kyro II based graphics card (forgot the name). Started with Windows 98 SE. Anyway, I was running Civ 3 happilly for a few games, I always play on 16 Civ Huge map. When I got near the end of my fourth game, however, the thing started to get progressively slower. Anyway, after completing the game, it was about twice as slow as usual (still very bearable). So, I restarted the computer, reloaded and voila! It was fine. There is a know memory leak bug with Windows 95/98, so I think that was my problem. I now play Civ 3 by using Linux to emulate Windows 98, and its running faster than ever.

Akka · November 25, 2001, 10:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Kaesar
The time problem people are experiencing on huge maps occured even back in civ2, it's not a bug, it's just the sheer number of units that are created when you have a huge map. I'm playing a civ3 game continental huge map myself and it does take a lot of time between turns. I control probably 20% of the map with about 50 cities. There's probably close to 300 cities on the map and a quick estimate will probably tell you there are probably 2000 units in the game. Ever tried to play a RTS game with 2000 independent units? Doesn't exist. It's not the cpu. It's not the graphics card(although you should turn off animation. It's not that it is gpu intensive, it's just that it takes time to show the animation) CPU speed doesn't really help because it's not complex calculations. A little basic CPU architecture knowledge will tell you that a P4 2G will make little difference for this game than a P3 500. The calculations required to make the moves is similar to what's needed to run a spread sheet with a thousand functions. So I really don't see anyway Firaxis can fix this.

Well, listen, if a computer can run a RTS (remember : REAL TIME) with 1500+ units, it should be a breeze for it to run even 5000 units in a turn-based.

"Ever tried to play a RTS game with 2000 independent units? Doesn't exist."

Sorry to disapoint you, dude : TA runs on a P166, and with a mere P2 400 you can run it with 800 units. On my Duron, I can run it with 2500 units.
Starcraft can have up to 300-400 units for each player (zerglings), and it run REAL-TIME fast on a Celeron 400-500.

All this, and the fact that people seems to have trouble with high-end systems while some other run normally with low-end system, tends to make me think it's not a CPU-related problem.

Quote:

Ok, I have an Athlon 1.2 Ghz, 256 mb DDR Ram and a 64mb Kyro II based graphics card (forgot the name). Started with Windows 98 SE. Anyway, I was running Civ 3 happilly for a few games, I always play on 16 Civ Huge map. When I got near the end of my fourth game, however, the thing started to get progressively slower. Anyway, after completing the game, it was about twice as slow as usual (still very bearable). So, I restarted the computer, reloaded and voila! It was fine. There is a know memory leak bug with Windows 95/98, so I think that was my problem. I now play Civ 3 by using Linux to emulate Windows 98, and its running faster than ever.

Well, it seems that I am perhaps right. This guy is not having issue with speed. And he has a Kyro rather than a nVidia chip. I would like to know what is the video card of all the people having trouble with extremely slow games.
I would like also to know if the slowness happen while you SEE the computer moving its units (then it's really probably a video card issue) or if you just have to wait in front of your computer waiting for something to happen (then could be a AI bug or something related to calculus).

moomin · November 25, 2001, 10:28

Let me just throw in this little trick here:

Download and install the no-cd patch. It made my games (huge, 16 civs) run 10x faster, or something like that.

System: Athlon 1600+, 1 GB RAM, GFORCE2/64MX and 1 GB dedicated swap partition. Win98SE for gaming.

Play is endurable, if not exactly speedy, now.

protista · November 25, 2001, 10:34

I am running a PIII 733 w/256K 133HZ ram. Everything seems to run fairly well, but I rarely play with more than three civilizations, as it seems the challenge is greater with a few selected ones.

My graphics drivers are the original ones, I did not update the Nvidia drivers at all. Many systems have system specific video drivers, which are optimized for the setup. It may be possible to download the original drivers.

One thing you might try is to close down all non essential applications, including the so called "intelligent" or "internet" keyboard apps, messenger programs, as well as anything else you can. I found early on with Ultima9, that the "intelligent" keyboard apps/drivers really slowed things down.

I suspect the problem lies in two areas, for those experiencing it.
One: some kind of bug or problem with later graphics chips/drivers, such as nvidia.
Two: a memory leak which is greatly accentuated when running huge maps with many civs.

Hopefully Firaxis will address this problem quickly. This is a super simulation, but problems such as this will sour people quickly.

Bricktop · November 25, 2001, 10:58

These are the two things that i do to help with the frustrating lagggg. First, CTRL-SHIFT-M. I use this shortcut all the time. It shuts off the map for the cities. When i want to see something on the cities on the map, I turn it on.

Like before the start of the next turn when it asks you to hit the spacebar, i turn it on to make sure that my cities aren't going to produce a swordsman. this is my pet peeve with the game. I'm producing modern infantry, i have 4 tanks surrounding the square so as not to piss off the town's occupants that the city is too crowded, and the AI assumes (I'm guessing) that I'm leaving my town defenseless and wants me to make swordsman to defend the town. Yeah, i have the option to make Marines, Friggin' ICBM's, Powerful Tanks...sure, i'll go braindead for awhile and produce swordmen, or catapults or those weak B-17's. Anyway, i got sidetracked, but that just irks me.

Back to CTRL-SHIFT-M. Other than the end of turns, and key points during my original moves (basically for orientation) it stays off. The key is to make sure that it's off when the automated moves start. If not, god help you. i got so frustrated with it last night during the move animations, when I forgot to CTRL-SHIFT-M, I almost CTRL-ALT-DELETE'D out of the game.

Another thing, I saw one of the guys complain about hitting the "g" key and being frustrated with the computer calculating his moves. This is what i do and it helps tremendously. Pick the square you want your unit to move too before you hit "g" and rest your mouse on that square. Now hit "g" and move your mouse slightly. The move line will appear and it won't get that movement lag.

I love this game. I'm new to the Civ series, but this game is the Shiznit. It can be frustrating as hell too though.

Hope this helps someone.

CHaNT · November 25, 2001, 13:14

Quote:

Originally posted by ElitePersian

thats exactly what i mean - word gets outs, ppl dont buy game.

Exactly, i live in Spain, i´ve been waiting months for the game to arrive here, last friday it arrived... and i didn´t buy it. And i won´t until slow turns, bugs, AI and everything is fixed.

Thanks to all the people that has talked about the many problems the game has. They´ve prevented me from buying an unfinished game. If Firaxis wants my money, they have to deserve it

wal35 · November 25, 2001, 14:05

Well my 1 year old PC 900MHz Athlon, 384Mb RAM, Geforce2MX, Win98 runs Civ3 perfectly first time straight out of the box.

No scrolling problem, no refresh problem, no AI turn problem, I've got it to mid 1800s on standard map with 8 civs (actually only 6 now

) and as I said everything is fine.

Just to confuse matters too I haven't stripped my PC down - still running SETI client, ZoneAlarm firewall, etc etc in system tray.

What problem

-AC- · November 25, 2001, 15:06

Ok, he's my analyzis of the problem.

1) The slowdown will happen with large and huge maps. Maybe with smaller sizes when they're fully settled.

2) Slowdown occurs whenever there is a major change in the trade network.

3) There is no way to cure this (without a patch, maybe not even with one).

The way the game works is that it will build a weighted graph out of the squares, with the corresponding weight for each connection from the square to another (railroad=0, road 1/3, airport/harbour = -1, no improvements=given terrain move rate). This net is then used to determine a) if a city is connected to the resource/trade network and b) unit movement.

Now, depending on the algorithm used, the adding of a new connection is either fast or slow. Apparently whoever coded this implementation of the graph, used some very bad method to add (or remove!) a new connection that majorly changes the trade network.

I think what happens is that it will start building the trade network again from scratch, whenever a city is connected/disconnected to the network (or when a connecting improvement is built). This will drastically slow down the computer turn/build turn.

Now whenever the computer/player uses the 'Go' order to move a unit, the computer will use an algorithm to calculate the shortest route. This is generally much faster than changing the network, which is why it will only take less than a second (short trip) to couple seconds (=very long move). This might slow down the game a bit, but not drastically.

Ok, this 'analyzis' is probably not correct to the very details, but the basic reason is there: changing the trade network takes too much computing from the CPU, which causes a drastic performance drop.

However, a better implementation of the trade network is possible. Question is, can or will this be done by the developers, or are they aware of the problem or the reason for it. I'm going to e-mail to them and ask about this and maybe even help to solve it if they're not aware of it yet...

Akaoz · November 25, 2001, 19:54

Quote:

Originally posted by wal35
Well my 1 year old PC 900MHz Athlon, 384Mb RAM, Geforce2MX, Win98 runs Civ3 perfectly first time straight out of the box.

No scrolling problem, no refresh problem, no AI turn problem, I've got it to mid 1800s on standard map with 8 civs (actually only 6 now

) and as I said everything is fine.

Just to confuse matters too I haven't stripped my PC down - still running SETI client, ZoneAlarm firewall, etc etc in system tray.

What problem

READ BEFORE YOU POST! This is a problem on HUGE maps with 16 civs!

-AC-: Thank you. I think you nailed it. But the question remains: Can it be fixed...

-Alech

GMguy16 · November 25, 2001, 20:45

I have a AMD Thunderbird 1.2GHz @ 1.5GHz with 256 Megs 2100 DDR and a Geforce2 Pro. The game runs great with about 15-20 seconds in between turns in the modern age, with a huge map, and 15 Civs. There is about a 1-2 second delay when capturing a city. With the amount of civs, units, AI strategy, and cities its processing, I can understand some peoples problems. I dont think it really can be fixed without making the game worse, and I know getting another computer isn't optional for most but I built my computer for $420 and it rocks...for a much slower Intel processor like the 2Ghz I would have paid that much just for the processor. Anything under 500 Mhz. seriously needs to be upgraded soon for any serious modern gaming. My friends 750 Duron plays this very well too and he only paid $30 dollars for his processor. So buying a new computer might not be that big of a deal.

-AC- · November 26, 2001, 09:10

Also forgot to mention:

Declaring war will cause a major slowdown because the trade network needs to be adjusted accordingly.