The games does get pretty slow on bigger maps

from GalCiv2 Forums
First off, I enjoy exploring and finding planets, so I tend toward the bigger maps. Well I did, until the slowness of a turn got to be so noticeable.

My computer is a 3.2 Gig, 1 gig of memory, using Windows XP Pro. When I say 'forever' in the following descriptions, I really mean 5-10 seconds.

Things that are really slow that I can't figure out why?

When I have a fleet and I invade the planet, if I hit the -skip- button twice for the invasion, it skips the silly graphic but takes for ever anyway.

When attacking a planet and there are multiple ships guarding it, and you are attacking one at a time, it can take forever to set up each battle and fight it, and if you hit the -done- button twice, instead of once, like you would on an invasion, the second 'press' of the button is really a press of the -turn- button, so you turn is ended. Quite a bother. So you have to sit there and wait, forever it seems, to set up a fleet vs 1 ship battle, and then hit the -done- button once and wait forever to get out of that mode.

When managing a ship into a fleet, it can take forever to do.

Lots of times, fleets that haven't moved are 'found' by the -find- button, and I have to go into the 'ships window' and look at fleets there to find a fleet, highlight it, and be able to give some orders for it.

Clicking on 2 ships in a square and hitting the 'create fleet' button can take forever.

So what's happening behind the scene, and the screen , that makes everything happen so slowly on the bigger maps.?Even in the end game when there are only 1 or 2 civs left and they have very few ships and fleets, nothing gets faster.
8,257 views 25 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i think you're just overly impatient, my computer is slower than yours and i have no issue with the time it takes to do any of those things, and i happen to enjoy watching the invasion video thing, also, clicking more than once on a button tends to slow things down in general... and the whole thing with attacking one ship at a time is rather rediculous anyway, all the defending ships should defend at the same time, just like attacking ships attack at the same time
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
5-10 seconds? Wow, that's fast. Seriously, that is actually pretty good. Some people get down to 2 mins.

And the usual drill, if you could bring a debug.err, we might be able to shave some seconds off.
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Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
mine is generally like this as well, but, on the largest map, my game crashes about once every 20 minutes, so i tend to stay at medium sized maps, works fine on that, and i usually have no lag between fights and such
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In 1.0 I could play a gigantic map with every set to abundant and the only time I had an issue was when I forgot to turn off my virus scanner.

In 1.1 I could only play gigantic with every set to rare without it crashing every 10 minutes.

Now with 1.11 I can play gigantic with it set to ocasional but will still expirence a CTD on ocasion with a ramdom event notice.

I really would love to get back the to the abundant settings on gigantic.
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
actually yeah, 5-10 seconds i would love, i wait a lot longer then that on the bigger maps. sometimes late game the invasions take up to 5 minutes for me to run through even after hitting skip
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
5-10 seconds is really not that bad considering what the AI is calculating on the larger maps. 3.2GHz is a fairly fast machine, but you still need to have a bit more patience with this game. I have dual 2.8GHz with 3GB of ram and it can take up to several seconds per turn, and yes up to 10-15 sometimes depending on what is going on.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
1.10.029 is noticably faster for me. Those memory tweaks of carielf did wonders. They will be included in the 1.2 beta,

It is almost instant, only at most 2-3 secs maximum, on a large map, even late in the game. Although I don't add a lot of jewelry to my ships.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I haven't had any problems once I managed to get into a turn... the problem is between turns it would take a couple minutes *after* all the computer players had moved their ships. I'm running an Athlon 64 3700+/1 gig as well.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
so i guess im lucky that mine is normally instantly finished on huge ? and if your having trouble try smaller maps
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I have a Celeron 1.3 ghz with 256mb RAM and I can play large maps with 7 AIs and common everything with what I think is minimal down time between turns up to 20 sec at the aboslute most, usually around 10 to 15 mid game. Most settings off however, besides start/planet textures, weapon graphics and such ( cant look at white and blue circles for stars) 5-10 seconds isnt bad, but if you want lower, bite the bullet and turn down some settings
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Is the AI really running while your turn is going ? I personally hate the time gaps that he's talking about. I'd much rather it be at the end of the turn. Its extreamly annoying when you say fleet, or do something and it takes 5-10 seconds. Or even go to upgrade something, and it feels like it's going to crash, but then it catches up.

Back on OS2 the original GC was definately multi-threaded, and for the time ran extreamly well. Perhaps its just crappy windows priority/threading issues that are causing these gaps. (i hope the player isn't waiting on a mutex the AI has accessed,)
Reply #13 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Another thing some of you may want to try, because it has been shown to make a difference.

Exclude the GalCiv folders, both the main program folders and the ones in My Documents, from your virus checker's real-time monitoring.

I did it when I heard of it, and it did inprove the game's speed.
Reply #14 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I'm not sure if the AI takes so much time to calculate. My Computer isn't up to date (Athlon XP 3000+, 1 GB Ram, Geforce 4400TI 128MB) and so I encounter some slowdowns especially on huge galaxys (didn't try gigantic yet) too.

But zooming out to tactical view helps a lot and if you move the focus to lonesome space the AI turns are calculated in "just no time". So sometimes I think the "problem" might be the graphics engine. Maybe I need a new graphics card, turning antialiasing off was sad because I love some eyecandy.
Reply #15 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Yes, I have a new Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB RAM and a 6600GT GeForce and I have the same problems as Jim48. I play only the biggest maps and the game really gets slow later. I have not touched the settings (only resolution and 4xAA) and I left it as the game set it. I really wonder what causes such a huge slowdowns. It is not graphiscs IMO. Maybe the memory gets full? 1GB should be enough right?
Reply #16 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Well I haven't noticed any massive slowdown ata ll, maybe 2-3 secs for a turn. I am running 3000+/1 gig with a 7800 GS.

Might be the gfx card having to process all the ships etc?
Reply #17 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I also have a SATA II so maybe the graphics card is a bottleneck. But my turns are fast. But whenever any combat is about to begin (space or land) it takes a long time to load.
Reply #18 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I only play on medium or smaller maps with all the settings on abundant. The game zips along with few noticeable delays. I found gigantic to be a nightmare, even with rare settings, the game slows down to a crawl later on. I guess I just do not have the machine specs to play on gigantic, maybe after my next upgrade.

Noticed the cut scene movies flow real smooth at the start of the game but later on become really jerky and slow. Obviously some memory is being used up somewhere to cause this and I suspect there is a real issue with older graphics cards even with updated drivers.

Have to say I am impressed with the save/load game speeds now. These were real bad before the last patch or two but now it seems to take a fraction of a sec to save. I after go back just to check the game has saved because its that fast now, not sure I did it or not.
Reply #19 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Have to say I am impressed with the save/load game speeds now. These were real bad before the last patch or two but now it seems to take a fraction of a sec to save.

Thats right, there are amazing improvements with evey patch, thanks to Stardock. They say something about DirectX improvements in the Journal, maybe this will help with my slowdown issues (for example the blue arrow of rally points on the map moves up and down in slowmotion when zoomed in and hitting "turn"). However the game speed is acceptable for me even on huge maps wit AA turned off and zoomed out to tactical view before hitting the turn button.

If I would just be able to find a GeForce 6600GT with passive cooling for AGP somewhere ...

Well, the last time I bought new hardware because of a game was when I played System Shock 1 years ago on my 486dx2-66, but GalCiv2 would be worth it again
Reply #20 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
i uppgraded to 512MB X1800 pro and things couldn't run any faster. a huge difference from the 256mb 9600 pro i was using. running it on a 3.2 prescot w/ 2gb dual ddr and dual sata hdds.

i only play on the biggest maps (wish they could be bigger). i also make a lot of custom ships with tons of eye candy.

so yeah... better video card... better speeds. atleast in my case it was a huge improvment.

congrates Stardock on making a game more addicting than heroin
Reply #21 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Whats a few seconds here and there when a game can take weeks anyway

MD
Reply #22 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I disable my networking and virus/adware scanning before playing a game. Still I see delays do to swaping on my 2.8MHz P4 with 512MB RAM. I'm seeing a delay of about 10 seconds between turns mid-game on a gigantic map (everything abundant) so I guess I should consider myself lucky. Restoring a saved game takes several minutes. Looking forward to v1.2!
Reply #23 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I play gigantic maps with most things left the way they are setup by default and not noticed any lags. I hate the crashes and I report the debug when it happens but no real lags. I think the difference is that I turned off the combat viewer. I leave it on if I am not sure what is going to happen against a particular opponent but usually I have it off. If there was something you could do as part of the combat I would keep it on but since you can only watch what will happen anyway, why bother. It takes a long time to play on abundant gigantic and having the combat viewer on means you will need to book some serious game time to complete a single game. If tactical combat was an option I would choose it but seriously why waste soo much game time watching these long battles the entire game.
Reply #24 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I sat here with a stopwatch earlier. Gigantic map, all 9 civs plus dread lords. 45 seconds per turn.

AMD Athlon XP, 1.99 GHz, 1 gig RAM, Geforce fx 5700

Then I started playing the campaign for the first time. It starts on a tiny map and good god what a difference in speed.
Reply #25 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
512MB is really not enough. I have 3GB and it will usually get into the 1.6-2GB range on the huge maps. I am not crazy about the gigantic maps, so I have not checked the memory usage with them. But it really gets up there.

And don't make that a complaint point because Stardock advertises that 512 is enough. It is enough to play the game, but not at full speed obviously. This is a game that can actually utilize serious hardware configurations (like lots of ram and dual processors), but that can also get along with more marginal hardware as well. But those that don't have the fastest and biggest have to be prepared to be a bit more patient in the game play because of it.