Painfully Slow Endgame?

[JimboOmega]

Maybe this should be in tech support or bugs - but is anyone else noticing the game slows down incredibly later on? Once your empire gets really really big - or maybe it is a result of rampant colonization (and thus more provinces for the game to track) - days tick slow regardless of game speed and each time the month rolls over it takes a good 10-20 seconds to crunch.

Worst of all though is looking at lists of people. Sorting any of the lists of people takes a hugely long time, so my favorite technique of looking for disloyal governors through the assassination interface is no longer practical. I haven't timed it but I would guess off hand it might be as much as a minute. Of course finding a high charisma governor, it is much quicker to scroll the list than to sort it. Weird thing is the list tends to come up pretty quick, but takes forever to sort by some other trait...

If anybody else has this problem do you have any advice for fixing it? I don't run at high resolution or anything. Maybe I need more memory - is 1GB just not enough for the game? It sort of sucks staring at the screen just waiting for it to crunch down a month of income, rivalries, etc.

 

[SirGrotius]

Let's move this to the bug reporting forum, and see if others have had similar issues.

 

[POemil]

I have the exact same 'problem'
In the early years all goes fast and fine, but the more years pass, the slower it gets. I suppose there are to many characters and provinces to handle fast then? I have played the Romans 3 times, and the macedonians once, and I always had to quite somewhere passed 650 avc because it became irritatingly slow.

 

[unmerged(97178)]

Same problem. Intense activity, like civil war in Rome, after the years 700, causes frequent 1-2 seconds interruptions, even at the lowest game speed.

 

[podcat]

Could you guys with slowdowns post your dxdiags, or type down what processor type/speed you have as well as RAM, grapihcs card + gfx memory.

 

[POemil]

hi,

I have:

Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Card name: Radeon X1950 Series
Display Memory: 512.0 MB

 

[SonofWinter]

Here is a solution, don't use the assassination feature to look for disloyal people. Each year, I go to the rosters and look through them and autosort all the people in my kingdom, by loyalty, from lowest to highest. Then I know what the issue is, when I click on their picture, maybe all you need is to make them not have any loyal units. Its called a disband button, g/l.

Use the character roster, I believe its page 3 in the second tab.

This is also a great feature, for finding that character with a high finesse who should be doing your research. And if you have a large empire, you can't find someone suitable, or you don't know, where you made him a governor, this will tell you.

 

[JimboOmega]

Here is a solution, don't use the assassination feature to look for disloyal people.

I was referring to looking for foreign governors to bribe over to my side.

As for my computer... It's an AMD Sempron (I *think*), I forget the model number(3000, I think?) but the clock is 1.6GHz. 1 GB memory.

Card is a NVIDIA GeForce 6800, 128MB Video RAM.

 

[unmerged(38830)]

Some endgame slowdown, not above 10-15 seconds at most so far.

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 5/8/2008, 21:37:53
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.070227-2254)
Language: English (Regional Setting: Swedish)
System Manufacturer: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD
System Model: MS-7125
BIOS: Phoenix - AwardBIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3000+, MMX, 3DNow, ~1.8GHz
Memory: 2048MB RAM
Page File: 306MB used, 3123MB available
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Series GPU
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 6800 GT
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_00F9&SUBSYS_21201682&REV_A2
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1680 x 1050 (32 bit) (60Hz)
Driver Name: nv4_disp.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.9424 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 4/19/2007 13:26:00, 4543616 bytes

 

[podcat]

I was referring to looking for foreign governors to bribe over to my side.

As for my computer... It's an AMD Sempron (I *think*), I forget the model number(3000, I think?) but the clock is 1.6GHz. 1 GB memory.

Card is a NVIDIA GeForce 6800, 128MB Video RAM.

That CPU is actually under the games system requirements so It might be running a bit slower than it should.

That doesnt explain POemil having slowdowns though.
Out of curiosity, here is something for you to try: open the task manager, locate the rome process, right click on 'Set Affinity' and make sure you only have one processor selected. Does that make a difference?

 

[POemil]

That CPU is actually under the games system requirements so It might be running a bit slower than it should.

That doesnt explain POemil having slowdowns though.
Out of curiosity, here is something for you to try: open the task manager, locate the rome process, right click on 'Set Affinity' and make sure you only have one processor selected. Does that make a difference?

No it made no difference.
Currently I am Carthage somewhere near the year 650. I have about 62 provinces, and moving around on the map goes very very laggy. Changing month takes about 5 seconds, sometimes more sometimes less. Sorting when assassinating someone is also very slow.
I play on speed 3 or 4, there doesnt seem to be much difference in performance between those two.

 

[Asmodeous]

I have an MP game with a buddy of mine that upon reaching about 670AVC we had to turn the speed down from 4 to 2 in order to get the game to just respond to mouse clicks, and oftentimes we need to pause in order to do something that requires a lot of clicks. For instance building an army.

Dump from DirectxDiag:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 11/23/2007, 21:57:20
Machine name: DISCORDIUM
Operating System: Windows Vista™ Ultimate (6.0, Build 6000) (6000.vista_rtm.061101-2205)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: System manufacturer
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: Phoenix - Award BIOS v6.00PG
Processor: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+, ~2.2GHz
Memory: 2046MB RAM
Page File: 731MB used, 3595MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 10
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 6.00.6000.16386 32bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce 8800 GTS
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_0193&SUBSYS_042110DE&REV_A2
Display Memory: 1372 MB
Dedicated Memory: 604 MB
Shared Memory: 767 MB

The guy I'm playing it with has the same issue, I have only a vague idea what his specs are. I know he's got a faster CPU that is an Intel Core2 Duo or Quad, I don't know what he's using for a video card. I believe it's an 8800 series nVidia.

Me.

 

[Mad Max]

I don't think capability of the computer matter. I recently bought a new PC and the game dramatically slows down every end of month as well as when autosaving at the end of the year. My current PC is:

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
4 GB Ram but the OS (XP Pro) is 32bit architecture, so it only recognize 3Gb
Geforce 8600 GTS with 512Mb DDR3
HD SATA300

When I got the game I was wondering whether it was aware of multicore architectures but I'm pretty sure it's not, otherwise it would have better performances even at the end of the game in which there is a huge amount of provinces and variables to compute.

 

[Surt]

I don't think capability of the computer matter. I recently bought a new PC and the game dramatically slows down every end of month as well as when autosaving at the end of the year. My current PC is:

I have auto save for each month and the game hangs for X sec each month for the save, I wished they'd made a copy of ingame data and set a seperate process/thread to make the saves so the main thread doesnt hang until its written, my save games are now at 18 MB which should only take a sec to write down.

Intel Core2Quad Q6600 2.4Ghz
4 GB Ram but the OS (XP Pro) is 32bit architecture, so it only recognize 3Gb
Geforce 8600 GTS with 512Mb DDR3
HD SATA300

Nice Me want!

When I got the game I was wondering whether it was aware of multicore architectures but I'm pretty sure it's not, otherwise it would have better performances even at the end of the game in which there is a huge amount of provinces and variables to compute.

The program appears to be using both cores in my CPU so its using some of the features of a multi core CPU, dependent on the actual architecture of your quad there could be some cache issues which causes you to not get the optimal use of it, I think the quad is really 2x dual core glued together so ther e could be an issue there, even if I don't think you would get a slower system than a dual or a single core in any case.

 

[Mad Max]

I have auto save for each month and the game hangs for X sec each month for the save, I wished they'd made a copy of ingame data and set a seperate process/thread to make the saves so the main thread doesnt hang until its written, my save games are now at 18 MB which should only take a sec to write down.



Nice Me want!



The program appears to be using both cores in my CPU so its using some of the features of a multi core CPU, dependent on the actual architecture of your quad there could be some cache issues which causes you to not get the optimal use of it, I think the quad is really 2x dual core glued together so ther e could be an issue there, even if I don't think you would get a slower system than a dual or a single core in any case.

No Surt, I just checked the task manager while playing and it's clear that the game is not aware of multicores. The 3rd core was busy at 90%-95% usage while the others were at 10-15%, which perhaps is due to some game related activity performed by the OS.

I'm around 715 avc and have a huge empire as Rome. The game became unplayable though because of the terrible speed, but mainly because each time I win over the seleucids (the only real opponent left in the world) I can only ask for 4-5 provinces even if I get 100% war score due to the fact that each province is worth 25%-30%.
I really don't get the point of this province score calculation, in my view the entire national territory should be 100%, while this way I should fight something like 10 more wars to cancel the seleucids from the map the as they still have more than 30 provinces :wacko: