Massive game slowdown

Insanity

from GalCiv2 Forums

Hey all.

I'm playing a rather nice game with the ideal map and everything. The game is, however, getting really slow in the wait-between turns. I hit TURN button and wait 2 - 5 minutes for the turn to process. I'm playing version 2.02 Twilight, and I'm playing with max settings on everything (graphics, 9 races, Immense Galaxy, abundant everything, etc.)

The issue is that earlier in this game I'm playing, there were no slowdown. I only needed like 5 seconds per turn processing. It cannot be the graphics settings. So on a hunch, I checked the amount of ships. I only have 17 active ships total. I checked the other AI's and I was blown away. The Dregin, Arceans, Thalans, Torians, and Drath have almost 3,000 ships EACH, and the Yor comes in with 1,000. The Iconians, Korx, and Altarians have only 100 - 300 each. I'm guessing that this is why the game is becoming agonizing slow between turns.

That brings me to my question. How do I get rid of thousands of ships in a hurry so I can have quick turns again? 5 - 30 second turns? I only have a single solution but its cumbersome. I was thinking of building several top heavy ships with maximum defense, then place them to surround one spot on the map, preferably in the corner. Then trawl over the entire map with the cheat "control + T" for teleportation of a scout ship. I have Eyes of Universe so my sense range is at maximum 15 parsecs. Then teleport every last enemy ship onto that small square surrounded by my invincible defense ships (the best offense the enemies have is a mass driver score of 2 per ship, and Thalans similiar power with beams, so max armor and shields on my ships). Thats gonna take forever to do!

Is there any other way? A cheat to delete or destroy all AI ships? A cheat or console command to switch to one of these AI empires and delete all these thousands of ships that clog up game turn processing? Or is there any other way? Please let me know! I can't bear 2 - 5 minutes per turn. Gaaaah!

7,173 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

It may not be the most cost effective method, but a CPU upgrade might be in order.

How far out are you zoomed when you hit the turn button? If you are all the way out it will slow things down considerably. Zoom all the way in before you hit the turn button, and try to be zoomed in to an area with no active ship paths or systems in view.

Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

You've got to quit playing the game on that 486sx25 puter. ;) Get a REAL computer like my I7 X58 4ghz with 6gb of 7 latency ram. ;) Then you won't have those silly old computer problems. ;)

All too many gamers think when a game says MINIMUM requirements that the game is going to run full blast full speed ahead with minimum GRAPHICs on, but, that is not the case. It means the bare minimum for the game to run at all. lol

Star Control: Origins
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

How do I get rid of thousands of ships in a hurry so I can have quick turns again?
End of quote

Fairly simple, it's a combination of cheat-mode "creativity"...

Buy out the most lethal ships (CTRL-M + CTRL-R), teleport (CTRL-T) as many as you wish right near every planets they have... and clean up what they stockpiled in orbits.

Mop up whatever remains as fleets roaming around.

But, in my mind, you still lost a game. }:)

(PS; There is also whole Race elimination through key shortcuts, IIRC; CTRL-shift-W)

Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

My computer is actually very recent. I bought the computer this past fall. It has about 3 gb ram, 1 tb hard drive, a ATI 4780-x2 card with crossfire, a quad core processor (9550 I think). Basically the whole rig set me back 3 grand bucks, and it was pretty much the top of the line in sept. / oct. 2008. So thats why I'm confused on exactly why I'm suffering such massive slowdown.

Another thing of note, I have like 300 planets colonized, and their sensor radious are all 15 thanks to the Eyes of Universe wonder. There's like 300 Arcean task forces traveling through my area (not at war), and there's like 300 - 400 Dregin task forces scattered all over the map, they're at war with everyone. The Torians and Drath have theirs concentrated inside their own territory where I have no line of sight.

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Yeah, eliminating all those ships is pretty much the only way to speed up your turns; there is no way 11k ships can get moved, battle, etc without using major processing time. The fastest way to get rid of them (in terms of your time, not turn process time) is to build insanely fast ships that can eliminate a dozen or more fleets a turn. A huge hull with about 8 hyperwarp 3 engines, a couple nightmare torpedo launchers, and filled with the relevant defenses will clean up a truly astounding number of ships each turn. BTW, tack on a survey module and this is a standard end-game survey ship/cleanup vessel design for me :grin:

Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Hi!

9 races, Immense Galaxy, abundant everything
End of quote

You're just paying the price for exaggerating with the game size. Game engine is simply not designed to process such large numbers of ships. Even if you somehow remove all AIs' ships, they'll rebuild them, and you'll be at the start of your problem again.

So either you need to be patient with turns, or don't play immense abundand games.

BR,  Iztok   

 

Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I'm the type who likes epic games, namely hundreds of planets, populations in the trillions, large space battles, etc. Thats why I play immense abundant games.

I did some more testing. Apparently when I do the Task Manager, Galciv only uses 25 - 30 percent of my computing power, and I tried increasing virtual memory from 2k to 8k. Still same effect. I then tried unchecking "Force AI to use Max computing" and tested it with that option on and off. Still same effect. I teleported all my 17 ships together, in a dense sector to see if graphics slowdown happens. It didn't. Everything went smoothly. All the animated parts moved smoothly without choppiness, and same for spinning starbases, planet rotations, moon orbits, etc. Everything checked out.

So apparently it must be the ships themselves, not the graphics or number of planets or other factors. I'm thinking of a new solution but this would require me to start a whole new game. I was thinking of increasing the maintainence costs by at least 10 - 50 times, so a maintainence 1 ship would cost 40 per turn. That should cut 3k ships per AI down to maybe 200 - 300. The problem is, I'm not sure how to do this, and if the AI would be limited to that, or force themselves into bankruptcy and -10000 turn income to maintain the 3k ships at 40 - 50 maintainence per ship.

Thoughts, guys?

Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Quoting WIllythemailboy, reply 5
...is to build insanely fast ships that can eliminate a dozen or more fleets a turn. A huge hull with about 8 hyperwarp 3 engines,
End of WIllythemailboy's quote

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Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

I was wondering where or how to find and then alter the maintainence costs? I can't seem to find anything in the XML files that changes maintainence costs. Like "Ship size = huge, maintainence = 10" or something like that. Does anybody know how to increase the maintainence costs by 10x? Then these 2l, 3l, 4k ships per empire will be reduced to 200 - 400 ships, thus saving a hell a lot of processing power. All these ships only have 1 attack point and 0 defense, while in my current game, I'm researching the first level of Invulnerability Shields (best shield tech), and have Arnorian Battle Armor, and Particle Beams. So basically I can just spam ships of my own that are far superior and invincible to the AI's mindless swarms. I'm afraid that willl only make the turn waits even worse, so thats why I don't have hundreds or thousands of ships roving around. Hell, I have a hard time keeping track of 100, let alone 3,000 ships of my own.

Again, if anyone knows how to change the maintainence costs to 10x their value so the AI will only build 1/10 yje amount of ships, please let me know. I'm hoping this will solve the crippling turn wait times. Thanks!