Major lag problem

[AirBoss]

While playing Voice of Sobek I started getting some major lag. A person will move for a second, stop for a second, then move for a second, etc. It's not my video card. If someone want's to see it i'll post it.

[Mulluane]

I had the patch affect one of my saved games that way, was it a fresh play or a pre-patch save?

[AirBoss]

This is a post-patch new game.

[MAX-1]

Can your CPU handle this game. It needs the power to run smooth. I meet all minimum except CPU MHz. Mine runs like a slug running a snales race with the game set on 2.5 Xs and I'm still loseing. Ugh. :mad:

[Hans Schroeder]

If someone want's to see it i'll post it.
Please do. I'll load it and see if I can find out what's going on.

[Greg Sheppard]

Hi AirBoss,

Please post both.

Thanks,

Greg

[iamzeus]

I have experienced a similar problem: the game gets choppy and it is impossible to play. I would believe that the problem relates to the city's size. I turned graphics to best performance, turned off all sound, made all the other recommended alterations to improve performance. It worked for a while but it lasted about 15 minutes before it started getting choppy again.

In case you are wondering, I am operating on an AMD Athlon XP 2600+, 1GB RAM, plenty of free HD space, Windows XP home, and a Radeon 9700 graphics card. All unnecessary apps are closed. It's not my system, and I installed the patch (didn't fix it), and then uninstalled and reinstalled CotN and the problem persists.

[Blair Evans]

Iamzeus:

If you could post up your DXDiag, that would help us eliminate the possibility of any driver or other issues that may be hampering your otherwise solid system.

Please also post a copy of your savegame and we'll take a look and see if we can track down the source of your performance issues. One from before the chop would also be useful if you still have it. Thanks!

[MyrddynX]

I've noticed a few things re: slowdown in the game. The first is obvious: the larger your city gets, the slower the game will run. This makes sense, since there are more polygons to push and more AI to calculate. As my cities reach the 15-20 noble size, I find I have to drop to "simple" shaddows to keep my game running smoothly.

I've also noticed, though, that the game runs better within a single play-session. I.E. If I build a large city in one go, the city runs quite smoothly the whole time. If I build a large city, then save my game, turn off the PC and come back to the game later, it seems to run more slowly. That is to say, if I load a savegame of a large city, it seems to run worse than if I build that same city from the ground up within a single play session. I'm sure that's more of a problem with my system than the game itself, but I'm curious to know if other people have noticed the same thing

All in all, though, the game runs really well and crash-free on my system, so I can't complain! (even though I'd like to run with MAX graphics settings all the time, I can live with simple shaddows! :D)

Just FYI, my system is a P4 2.6GHz with 1GB RAM, 128 MB Radeon 9700 Pro video card.

Cheers

[mathfed]

I am having the same issue. Everything starts to lag like crazy. People will move for a second, stop for a few seconds, move again for a second, etc. It's only happened since the patch, but I don't know if the patch is the reason. I think the lag started when construction began on a building. My system should be able to run this game no problem. I have the following specs:

P4 3 Ghz
1 gig ram
eVGA Geforce 6800

This machine runs Half Life 2 like butter, so CoTN shouldn't be choking it. Drivers are all up to date.

I have save games before and after the lag started. They are attached. There is only about 5 minutes of play time between the files. I also attached my DxDiag file. The game becomes unplayable when this lag happens. It is like trying to play with less than one frame per second.

[Heresy]

You might want to try this. It works. Atleast for me it did.
turn down clipping and turn off building sounds.
sounds silly but my game stopped lagging.
I am running an
AMD 2.0
128mb Nvidia FX
and ... wait for it....
256mb memory.
It seems to work out for me...

[Keith]

If you are experiencing lag, you might also want to try using a lower screen resolution. If you are set for 1280x1024, you may want to dial down to 1024x800 or 800x600.You can also try the 16-bit rather than the 32-bit settings to see if that will help.

[Hans Schroeder]

P4 3 Ghz
1 gig ram
eVGA Geforce 6800

We'll check the save games on Monday and see if we can find out what the problem is. Have you checked for spyware and defragged recently? That could bog your machine down.

[mathfed]

We'll check the save games on Monday and see if we can find out what the problem is. Have you checked for spyware and defragged recently? That could bog your machine down.

Thanks. Hopefully, this will give some insight into what is causing lag issues that several folks are having. My machine is set to defrag twice a week. I run Spybot and Adaware every few days. I have Norton Utilities, and I run WinDoctor if things are acting funny. I've done all of these things, and still have the lag issue. All extra programs get turned off before I game, so there isn't anything else running in the background.

I've tried changing resolution, reducing texture quality, lowering bit depth, lowering sound quality, etc and nothing seems to be affecting the lag. One thing is noteworthy in the game, and is maybe causing some of the problem. In the save games I attached, there are 3 groups of 4 nobles houses. I am trading with two peddlers. One of them is named Aiu Petolmiri. If you look at the merchant center, there are about 15 peddler stalls in and around it. Almost all of them are for Aiu Petolmiri. If you look in the center of the left group of noble houses, there are about 10 Aiu Petolmiri standing there doing nothing. It seems like this merchant appears in my city repeatedly, but doesn't leave. So, there are several versions of him in the city. I don't know if this is related to the lag at all, though.

I'm not griping. I really am enjoying this game. It pulls me away from Half Life 2 pretty often. Great game. I hope this helps shed light on the lag issue.

Happy Thanksgiving.

[Heresy]

If you are experiencing lag, you might also want to try using a lower screen resolution. If you are set for 1280x1024, you may want to dial down to 1024x800 or 800x600.You can also try the 16-bit rather than the 32-bit settings to see if that will help.

I just figured I needed more memory.
256 for XP isnt the best to have

[mathfed]

Was anything found out regarding the lag issue? I've decided not to build any cities with more than 10 noble houses. After 10 nobles, the lag seems to become a major factor as the city advances. With 10 nobles or fewer, I haven't had a lag problem. I don't know if it is caused by the number of nobles though (and indirectly the amount of subsequent farming activity).

My machine is pretty close to top of the line, so I am surprised a game based on the Empire Earth engine is giving it fits.

[Hans Schroeder]

Nothing yet, but I am seeing the lag on my machine too. (first save is fine, 2nd has a good bit of lag) Still looking into it.

[lord titan]

hi,

i have the same problem, i read a topic that someone has the same problem and he had put brick floors under his city.
I did that 2, you guys also?

cause else thats the problem
or perhaps when you put bricks under a specific building dunno

[Helle]

I have the same problem, it seems to happen once in a while with a really big city. But if i go back to a previous save it doesnt happen again.

My machine is also above the requirements for the game.

[lord titan]

hi,

i have the same problem, i read a topic that someone has the same problem and he had put brick floors under his city.
I did that 2, you guys also?

cause else thats the problem
or perhaps when you put bricks under a specific building dunno

ofcourse, by bricks i mean plazas

[Hans Schroeder]

Could you post save games of your cities with lag? Thanks.

[lord titan]

hers my savegame

[Helle]

went back to previous save and saved over the lag one sor dont have it anymore but next time i save it for posting here.

[Hans Schroeder]

hers my savegame
So I can't find any obvious problem with your save either. There aren't large groups of people stuck or any obvious pathing issues. I tried deleting the city walls to see if that helped, but it didn't. Will look into more. Thanks for the save.

[lord titan]

so cant it have anything to do with the plazas under the entirte city

[Hans Schroeder]

The plaza shouldn't be slowing anything down. I myself am a fan of pave-the-earth when it comes to CotN, and haven't seen any problems stemming from this.

[lord titan]

yeah those plazas make the city look so great

here are some more saves from before the save i sent you,
maybe there usefull

you can see the evolution of lagging

[Wideshire]

Bubastis

City running very smoothly, recently started work on second medium pyramid (unfortunate pharaoh death when my first medium pyramid was at 99% :mad: ). Game suddenly becomes laggy.

P4 3.2
1 Gig Extra Low Latency RAM
9800XT

Whenever I load the save game the lag is there. I reverted to a previous save game and played through until I was at the same point where I experienced lag and nothing - game runs perfectly smoothly.

It's almost as if an event occurred that causes the CPU to get bogged down in a calculation it can't recover from. Very odd. Can post save if required.

[Greg Sheppard]

Hi Wideshire,

Please post both saved games; before & after the lag starts.

Thanks,

Greg

[Wideshire]

Hi Wideshire,

Please post both saved games; before & after the lag starts.

Thanks,

Greg

These should be the files... very odd, must be a bug in the code somewhere as I played the 'before-lagging' file past the point where I found issues in the 'lagging' file with no problems or slowdown. Hope the files help.

[Raccoon_TOF]

The plaza shouldn't be slowing anything down. I myself am a fan of pave-the-earth when it comes to CotN, and haven't seen any problems stemming from this.

Actually I noticed that they DO seem to have an effect still. Apparantly the citizens are still trying to path across the plazas even when they are covered by buildings. Large areas of plazas with nothing on them doesn't slow anything down, but large amounts of plazas under buildings, combined with a large city (I started noticing issues at about 3k pop on my system IIRC), do have an effect. I had started noticing serious slowdown, went and removed the plazas from under all the buildings (except my nobles and palace...), and everything went back to being fast again as usual.

[Hans Schroeder]

These should be the files... very odd, must be a bug in the code somewhere as I played the 'before-lagging' file past the point where I found issues in the 'lagging' file with no problems or slowdown. Hope the files help.

Thanks for the saves. We'll take a look at them and let you know if we can find out what's causing the problem.

[Morticcia]

I have lag issues as well, and will try some of the suggestions re: window size and sound, as I have reduced my settings with the exception of fog, as I do like to see my city as I play :rolleyes: .

One thing I did notice when replaying Son of Ra yesterday was that the chugging happened quite early. I was trying something new by not placing nobles until I had a priest, apothecary and mortuary up and running. Before even placing the priest I put down four gardens to demarcate my shrine zone and the chugging took hold. Not too much, at that point, but still noticeable, considering all I had was a palace, 12 or so farms, a set of common and luxury shops each, eight or 10 brickmakers, and two or three bricklayers.

Now I'm not up on my specs, but the husband tells me we have twice the computer specs we need and he plays MMPORGs Star Wars Galaxies and the new Warcraft without a problem.

M

[Helle]

Ive noticed that i only seem to get serious problems when playing usermade senarios. When playing the original ones i can keep the problems with lagging down if I just defrag ever couple of hours. Especially if the computer have been used to a online game. COTN seems to run best if the C drive is optimized. Its a drag but it works.

BTW my mashine is at least twice the required.

[sitearm]

Are the maps on the user scenarios bigger than the in-game?

... only seem to get serious problems when playing usermade scenarios...

[Helle]

i have no idea, its nine steps of bast i tried and had to give up due to lag.

[Raccoon_TOF]

9 Steps of Bast is a VERY large map. Try some of the smaller user-made scenarios and see if you still have problems. I believe most of the "chugging" is caused by the pathfinding routine, which seems to depend on processor speed and system memory more than video quality (though of course high video quality settings can compound the problem by tying up memory that the pathfinding routine could otherwise be using, and/or causing more swap file usage...). This is why even large maps with very small "cities" and zoomed way in still seem to cause more problems than larger cities on smaller maps.

[Helle]

just think its wrong that a mashine thats 2.8 ghz, 1024 Ram, 128 mb video card cant play the game smoothly. No matter how big the map is.

[Raccoon_TOF]

Hmm, I've got an Athlon64 3200+ with 1G RAM and a GeForce FX 5700 Ultra and I don't see any slowdown problems except on very large maps once they hit large population levels. If you are seeing problems on all maps, there is probably something else going wrong there, as theoretically your system should be pretty much on par with mine...

[Helle]

Its not in all maps, its only really been in nine steps of bast. Ive had a very few problems in some others but they sorted them selves out when i loaded a previous saved game. But nine steps of bast i just had to give up. There was no way to get around the lag problem, when i got more than 16 nobels.

[sitearm]

Helle: My machine has the same specs as yours. Last month, somebody sent me an Excel spreadsheet that took 15 minutes to load. When I finally opened the spreadsheet, I found it contained nothing but colored cells (used to draw a pattern). But there were, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, tenthousands and tenthousands of them...

You can overload ANY system, especially with geometrically / exponentially increasing math calculations (like pathing on a large map) or graph images (like colored cells in a grid). That's the bad news... the good news... no matter how powerful these uppity computers get, we humans can still blow their minds!... :D

just think its wrong that a mashine thats 2.8 ghz, 1024 Ram, 128 mb video card cant play the game smoothly. No matter how big the map is.

[Helle]

So is there any way around this pathing problem (trys not to look to IT challanged). :cool:

[NeilV]

one thing i have found that helps as well as rebooting every couple of hours is I have turn the in game music off I do this with most games and it alwalys helps if the game takes a lot of the system to run. if you still want to hear the music put it on to a CD and play on a CD player.

[Raccoon_TOF]

Yes, turning off music, any background applications, and turning graphics detail down can all free up some system resources to allow the pathing engine to have access to more "power" to work with. Ultimately though, when you start talking about calculating the paths for 3-4000 individual AI's or more, and how they interact, it just comes down to not having enough brute force to get it done, even with your current system (or mine...). Frankly, I think it's livable, and if necessary (like on 9SoB) I will occasionally just set the speed up, zoom all the way in on a non-busy portion of the map, and just let the game run for a bit while I go read a book or something, and come back to it later...this only works once you have a stable city going, but can be useful for building up resources.

[Wideshire]

There are two separate issues being discussed here...

The first is the broad issue regarding the computational power of your system to cope with the modelling in the game... the bigger the city... the more calculations... at some point your system begins to struggle.

The second and more specific issue is the game 'lagging'/'chugging' within a scenario where the city size is within the bounds of your system to process easily. This second instance is the one I've observed in my previous posts in this thread. There is a bug in the code which results in (most likely) a set of calcs which slows down your system prematurely.

As per my previous posts, I'd managed to play past a 'lagging' point in my game using an earlier save and grew the city even larger (than when I observed 'lag') with no issues or lag whatsoever.

[milton]

I have a near-super computer (3.60 OC'ed to 4.0ghz P4 HT, Dual-channel 2GB 1024mhz RAM and GeForce 6800OC ;) ) so anyways I was playing 9 steps of Bast (very nice map) and i managed to get a huge city. So huge that even my vid card cant handle it if the speed was set to more than 1.50. so i saved the game with the speed on 1, and when i loaded it, theres a major lag problem which goes away in a short while. Just telling everyone, I'm not complaining since by the time my city grows that large, i grow bored and mess it up (e.g. what happens if i destroy all hospitals? hmmm....)