How comes scenario's are so slow?

kolpo · September 25, 2003, 16:09

In some scenario's take turns a very long time, this while I don't have that problem in the normal game. I have a P IV with 3GHZ and 512 MB DDR so that can't be the problem. Is there any way to solve this problem or are scenarios just slow in civ3?

Gramphos · September 25, 2003, 16:20

Scenarios are very slow. The loading time depends on the number of cities and units to be created on the game start (compared to a savefile the scenario holds mush less data, and most data has to be generated at start up, compared to a save which holds almost everything that is in ther memory while the game is running)

maciek · September 25, 2003, 18:55

Scenarios aren't slow, Civ3 is.

Gramphos · September 26, 2003, 00:18

The actual loding time is slow on huge scenarios. But playing them makes no difference.

wotan321 · October 1, 2003, 16:53

I have found that on some large scenarios, during gameplay, it can take 20 minutes between turns and that is with the AI searching turned off in the .ini. Its just no fun.

Flamegrape · October 3, 2003, 13:52

Wait a minute.... I have a 1.2 GHz machine and I have to wait for up to a minute between turns later on in realistic Earth maps that fill up with tons of cities.

Are you guys saying that even if I get a 3GHz machine, the time between turns will NOT change? Oh my GOD!

Gramphos · October 3, 2003, 14:50

It will get faster, but you will still ahve a little wayt depending on thenumber of units and cities the AIs have.

Saint Marcus · October 29, 2003, 18:02

Quote:

it can take 20 minutes between turns and that is with the AI searching turned off in the .ini.

how is this done, and what else can I put in the .ini file?

Willem · October 30, 2003, 13:43

Quote:

Originally posted by Saint Marcus

how is this done, and what else can I put in the .ini file?

The latest patch has a command line in the ini file , something like AIPatrol. If you set the number to 1, then the AI won't send it's troops around and around in circles, doing nothing in particular but wasting time.

Gramphos · October 30, 2003, 18:29

Shouldn't you set AIpatrol to 0 and the default value is 1? Or is the setting NoAIPatrol?

Willem · October 31, 2003, 14:49

Quote:

Originally posted by Gramphos
Shouldn't you set AIpatrol to 0 and the default value is 1? Or is the setting NoAIPatrol?

Maybe, I'm just going by what I've read here. I don't actually have the latest patch, so I don't know even know exactly what the line says.

Saint Marcus · October 31, 2003, 15:24

and how much does it help? are the effects only marginal, or does it make a real difference?

Willem · November 1, 2003, 17:37

Quote:

Originally posted by Saint Marcus
and how much does it help? are the effects only marginal, or does it make a real difference?

I suspect that it makes a big difference, though I haven't had a chance to try it out yet. In a game I had a short while ago, the Spanish had this mass of troops circling around and around in this city radius near my borders. It took quite awhile before they were finally finished wasting my time.

S.P.R.I.N.G · November 17, 2003, 08:30

What consumes loads of time is the AI re-establishing the trade connections of and between all available civs. Ergo; lots of resources and possible trade combinations seems to be a major problem: The larger the map; the more civs on it; and the more different resources- the larger the AI time-gap..

Dis · November 19, 2003, 01:01

well it's not too bad on my old P3 700. Even on the Rise of Rome scenario with over 200 units.

And I still haven't turned of showing enemy move animations. it takes a while to watch all the other civs galleys move past my field of vision.

Even with that my turns seem to be under 1 minute (though I haven't timed them)

Willem · November 19, 2003, 13:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident

And I still haven't turned of showing enemy move animations. it takes a while to watch all the other civs galleys move past my field of vision.

You should try adding NoAIPatrol=1 to your Conquests.ini file, it might help.

Sim · November 19, 2003, 20:54

Yes, it's VERY disappointing.

I've spent the last four days making a historical scenario (Imperialism in 1903) on the huge 362x362 world map, about 12 hours each day.

When I loaded the unfinished version, it took about 5 minutes at startup to load - so far, so good.

But now, after I've configured the 24 civs (set which techs and money they have, renamed them), when I try to load it, it has not finished loading after one hour (!) - and I've not even placed units yet !!!

Has anybody here an idea what I can do in order to prevent the last 50 hours of work on that scenario from having been useless?

asleepathewheel · November 21, 2003, 00:39

Quote:

Originally posted by Dissident
well it's not too bad on my old P3 700. Even on the Rise of Rome scenario with over 200 units.

And I still haven't turned of showing enemy move animations. it takes a while to watch all the other civs galleys move past my field of vision.

Even with that my turns seem to be under 1 minute (though I haven't timed them)

Diss, some of these scenarios involve the max 512 cities and probably close to the max ~4000 units. Quite a few more calculations and moves for the AI (and you) than one of the Firaxis conquests, thankfully Firaxis (probably the beta's) knew not to make larger conquests as a part of this expansion.

Saint Marcus · November 21, 2003, 17:36

Quote:

Has anybody here an idea what I can do in order to prevent the last 50 hours of work on that scenario from having been useless?

nothing can be done about it.

Try building a scenario on a 140x140 map, or wait a few years till PCs are fast enough to effectively run bigger maps.

Dis · November 22, 2003, 04:33

Quote:

Originally posted by asleepathewheel

Diss, some of these scenarios involve the max 512 cities and probably close to the max ~4000 units. Quite a few more calculations and moves for the AI (and you) than one of the Firaxis conquests, thankfully Firaxis (probably the beta's) knew not to make larger conquests as a part of this expansion.

and thank god for that

. Rise of Rome map was plenty big enough for me. It takes a long time to get 20% of the land. It took me over 14 hours of gameplay. And I played as Rome- the easiest civ to play as.

I guess you guys like those mega huge scenarios maps. I guess it does kind of suck for you guys. I don't know why things slow up so badly. Much of it has to do with map calculations I suspect. And calcultating trade routes.

kentonio · December 5, 2003, 13:07

Quote:

Originally posted by Sim
Yes, it's VERY disappointing.

I've spent the last four days making a historical scenario (Imperialism in 1903) on the huge 362x362 world map, about 12 hours each day.

When I loaded the unfinished version, it took about 5 minutes at startup to load - so far, so good.

But now, after I've configured the 24 civs (set which techs and money they have, renamed them), when I try to load it, it has not finished loading after one hour (!) - and I've not even placed units yet !!!

Has anybody here an idea what I can do in order to prevent the last 50 hours of work on that scenario from having been useless?

There is only really one option and that is to leave it to load fully and then save the game immediately on starting. Then when you release the scenario you can provide the savegames with it. We were forced to do this with SOE due to a 5-8 hour loading time (seriously). It seems people dont really mind downloading and using a savegame as long as they get to play the scenario.

mathgoulet · December 20, 2003, 05:19

PC speed doesnt affect much at some point. I just upgraded and I havent seen any big difference in the loading time of a huge scenario. Most of the time it matches the loading time said in forums.

Has it has been said, traderoutes and culture adds a lot of calculations. You can noticed the in-game freeze when you build harbors/airports or when you destroy a key road. This problem appears also when a city is captured at some place jammed with cities with a lot of culture points. It might also be because of the resource calculations. Once again, I havent seen a lot of improvement on that when I went from 1.5Mhz 256megs ram to 2.8Mhz 1Gig ram.

Sim · December 20, 2003, 06:02

That's strange - I've just upgraded my system from a 1.4 GHz/512 MB RAM to an AMD 2500+/512MB RAM, and the speed has increased remarkably:

Initializing scenarios now takes only two thirds the time it did before, and playing has even improved more.

And I've the impression there is a "critical number" of cities: In the last scenario I made, I had begun with a lot of cities, and it took 9 minutes to initialize. So I deleted two civs and dozens of cities (30 or so), and I was not down to 7.5 minutes - but after deleting only four cities more, it was only 5 minutes.

vmxa1 · December 20, 2003, 14:40

Going from 1.4 to 1.83GH will have some impact. What was the FSB speed on 1.4, 2500+ is 333. What about the mem types?
HD types?

Sim · December 21, 2003, 04:27

The RAM was SD DDR on 266MHz before, now it's DDR on 333MHz by Infineon.

The old processor was an AMD Athlon 1400+ on 266MHz FSB.

I didn't change the HDs.

I'm really happy that buying the new board+processor+RAM did have influence on the Civ speed, as this was the main reason for me to buy it.