Thanks kryo! I solved the problem already. You tipped me off just by mentioning that file storage location tidbit. I set up a local my documents folder and only copied the "my games" directory to it. Sure enough, there is a massive increase in the overall speed of my gameplay in Dark Avatar, and the lags I mentioned in my first post are gone. It will be a bit awkward to have to take an extra step to actually get to my real "my documents" folder in office applications, etc.
phoofdawg
Okay, I'll get that debug file. However, that file location may just be the problem. My user's my documents folder is a mapped drive to a server (where it is backed up) and writing the debug data to a remote file may be part of it. While I get the file, can you tell me if there's some way to change the default debug.err file location?
Everything seems to work fine overall so this is not near as important as some of the game crashes on here...however, there is a noticeable lag when clicking on techs or before bringing up the fullscreen announcement screen when a new tech is discovered. I've tried every combination of video settings and even disabling them all does not eliminate this lag. I have to wonder if the problem is coming from the white wireframe thingys that are displayed in only those two screens. They look