Game slows down with each upgrade

from GalCiv2 Forums
The game keeps running slower and slower with every upgrade. With 1.0 I could play Gigantic maps to about 5 years gametime before it slowed down noticeably. When 1.1 was released I couldn't play Gigantic more than a year without a significant slow down. When 1.2 was released I switched to Huge as Gigantic was then unplayable. At this point Even huge maps slowed down to a crawl at about 5 years. I then switched to Large maps and the speed was acceptable. Now with 1.3 I cant play large maps more than 3 years without the game taking an incredible amount of time to make its move. When I send a ship to a rally point it takes that ship about a minute to move 23 spaces. At that point in the game I usually have about 100 ships to move around. Does anyone else notice this? I hope you see my dilema. I hope this trend gets reversed as I want to be able to play the larger maps to score well on the Metaverse. Thanks for your time.
15,648 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Can you please post your debug.err

Might help us understand your situation
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

Thebestaintyou,

Is it just that the ships are taking forever to move, or do you have a low framerate and slow response time?

Also, does it help if you set some of the performance options like turning off the planet textures?

ObjectDock - Access shortcuts and frequently used applications from an animated dock.
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think it is because of the more aggresive memory management.
The game does not use nearly as much ram as it did back then, and I think it has taken performance hits because of that.

Some of the changes, like using a single set of textures for every ship of that type, probably helped it. But I have noticed things getting slower and choppier with the updates as well.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top

By chance are you playing a non-English version of Windows? 

Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is no debug.err to send because the game is not crashing. It is just extremely slow on the larger maps and getting progresively slower with each update. I am using the same settings i used on the earlier editions. The ships start to move right away but like I said in my first post a ship that can move 23 times in one turn will take about a minute to complete the 23 moves. If I click on the map in an opposite corner away from where the ship is moving, it moves much faster. The problem seems to stem from the amount of ships in the area you are sending the new ship to. If there are a lot of ships (mine or alien) allready in the area, any ship sent through that area moves incredibly slow. I am using an english version of Windows XP. I am in the English speaking part of Canada. Sorry My Dogs are howling. Time to hook them up to the sled and Mush in to town. Hope this helps. Bye for now. TBAY
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
3 seconds for each movement point?! That's not right... What system are you using?
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
There is no debug.err to send because the game is not crashing.


The game generates a debug.err file every time you run it, crash or no. And it might help us to at least see what your system info is to figure out why it might be running so poorly.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ya, that does not sound right. Mine does not do that, but it did seem to run better overall when it was using more of my ram.

But that kind of slowness is not normal. It does not matter how many ships are in the area, my ships chug along at about the same speed when it is their turn to move.

It could be a background task getting in the way. I know with both my machine and my nephew's, turning off the Media Center background processes speeds things up quite a bit.

If you are using the Media Center Edition of XP, look in Control Panel/ Administrative Tools/ Services for these three, and stop them before running the game.

Media Center Extender Service
Media Center Receiver Service
Media Center Scheduler Service
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Just a thought, since earlier versions of the game were released, its gotten aLOT hotter outside, meaning higher ambient temperatures. the heat's had a dramatic affect on my performance, a few graphic intensive games i play crash twice as much as usual because my 6800U is hitting temps in the high 80's C.

perhaps try installing a temp monitoring program and see if theyre climbing higher than usual during gameplay. if it is a problem you could try vaccuuming out your case or running with a side panel off and a large room fan blowing into it.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Are you running it on a system that is used for other work aswell? If so check if your virus scanner is not causing this issue.

I had the same that mid games turns were taking average 5-10 minutes and after i disabled the scanning of the Galciv2 directory for the virus scanner everything was a lot faster and speed improved and responce is not a lot faster.

Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Here is my take on Version 1.3 Beta 2.

It HAS slowed. Some of the animations on my machine are noticeably slower. On the whole however its not really slowing my game play much. (It might take a second longer to scroll threw the tech tree.)

One of the BIG things is that this patch fixed some long standing memory issues. This is the first time in a long time that I can load a game while in the middle of a campaign and not have the game crash. If I have to pay for this stability with a few seconds of lag I'll take it!
Reply #12 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I got a similiar problem. I always played only medium map since 1.1 and didnt notice any slow down till 1.3 beta 2 (not beta 1). From the start, the game runs alot of slower than b4 now. Especially the tech window is just a pain now. while in beta 1 it still ran smoothly, its a dia show with beta 2.