A speed enquiry.

from GalCiv2 Forums

I'm currently running GalCiv 2 ToA off a laptop, and not a great one at that, so I understand that I am to expect some speed issues, but I did also expect some improvement with the new and highly praised graphics system.

Every time I have a ship on my screen, though, the game slows to a snails pace. I dialed the graphics all the way down to the lowest and still it runs slow, but only when ships are on the screen, for some odd reason.

I have the system requirements, with 12 GB of spare system memory, a video card with 64MB of video memory and a processor of 1.66GHz. I only have RAM of 502MB though, is this an affecting factor?

Overall, my question is: I meet the system requirements for ToA, so why is it as slow as, if not slower, than DA? Is there something I can do to make it run better, with the shiny new graphics turned on?

Thanks for assistance, and I hope I'm posting this in the right area.

3,552 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi!
Every time I have a ship on my screen, though, the game slows to a snails pace...
Is there something I can do to make it run better, with the shiny new graphics turned on?
End of quote

I'm affraid there's nothing you can do. IMO your graphics card is simply not strong enough to render all the 3-d ship graphics fast enough. At least I had the same issue with my old Radeon 8800LE card. I solved the problem by making tactical (icon) view my default play mode.

BR, Iztok
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Hi Walf - I had the same problem, but mine was fixed by a driver update. I think in upgrading my laptop from XP SP2 to SP3 it switched to software-rendering mode which is god-awful slow. I uninstalled the video driver, installed the latest, and the game ran beautifully after that. Please try that, even if you haven't done any big system changes recently.

An indicator of this is CPU usage at 100% (or 50% on a dual core CPU) even when the game is idle.

Cheers
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I used to play at tactical view level, just adjust the zoom level and you wont have to play zoomed out all the way. The only problem is not being able to read planet names and stuff like that unless you hover your mouse over the object. But it does make the game go considerably faster.