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game is too... slow?

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I found out that when the speed is "below normal" or lower, the game is okay. Anything faster creates horrible stuttering.

I really don't think that with 3Ghz CPU and 2GB Ram, I have all that poor system. I think the game could benefit from multithreaded code and some optimization. In calculation-intense moments, the games speed could be automatically slowed down, but the poor GUI responsiveness really cannot be justified.
 
Kamamura said:
I found out that when the speed is "below normal" or lower, the game is okay. Anything faster creates horrible stuttering.

I really don't think that with 3Ghz CPU and 2GB Ram, I have all that poor system. I think the game could benefit from multithreaded code and some optimization. In calculation-intense moments, the games speed could be automatically slowed down, but the poor GUI responsiveness really cannot be justified.
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I have a 2.8Ghz CPU and 1GB ram and the game runs smooth for me on very fast.

A couple of weeks ago I still played it on my old PC (1.5Ghz 526MB RAM) then it indeed was sluggish and slow especially later in the games, but with my new PC the game runs fine.
 
Just to butt in here a bit.

The main issue here is the slowdown when the game advances one turn, ie. moves from one day to the next. That particular slowdown is caused by the game engine processing all the AI and event related stuff.

Noticed that myself when playing the latest beta's, while I was still using my old, trusted AMD XP1600+ system. My slowdowns were in the ballpark of 1-2 seconds. And, in fact, this is perfectly in line with what the OP experiences. When comparing speeds, a P4 1.8 GZ compares, roughly, to something like an 1.0 or 1.1 GHz Athlon. So my 2 second speed bumps scale to something like 3 seconds on his processor.

And before you burn Paradox: The minimum system specs on the box apply to the original 1.0 version, not the later versions. And, especially with the 1.04 beta's, there were a lot more events, and with a lot more complicated event triggers. That all needs CPU time to evaluate. During the public beta process I explicitly experimented with this, by simply disabling all those events. And, all of a sudden, the game was lightning fast. Put back the events, and the speed bumps were back too.

And minimum specs are just that, minimum specs. They simply indicate what you must have in order to run it at all. It says nothing about how smooth it will run. Same applies to minimum specs of Microsoft operating systems. Ever checked min. specs for XP? You will get a good laugh out of them. The norm is, usually, that recommended = minimum times 4. Which, in your case, would yield something like a PIII running at 1.8 GZ, with 512 MB RAM. Unfortunately, there is no PIII at 1.8 GZ. The nearest P4 speed equivalent would be a 2.8 GHz model. And, as you can see in the thread, people running on that kind of hardware report they don't notice the speed bumps. ;)

As a side note: The event writers have been made aware of this issue, but it's really a choice between a rock and a hard place. The current, much enhanced, event system needs those elaborate triggers to work properly. Remove that, and the game becomes much less of a challenge.
 
First thing i would like to say: it doesn't matter at what speed i am running the game. Like jpd said, when a day passes, i always have to wait like 2-4 seconds, be it in Very Fast, or Below Normal.

Second:
i tried the latest patch, the beta, and even tried playing without any of those and still it is slow.
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That means i even tried to play with 1.0. When i noticed that the game was VERY slow, i though that a new patch would resolve my problem and so i came to these forums. But it didn't. It didn't become any slower, but it didn't become faster either.

Thirdly, i am not burning Paradox. I am just saying that with a P4 1,8 GHZ the game is pretty slow, so if i had a P3 450mhz, i guess i would have to wait like 20 seconds for each day. I still got to try CK in my Celeron 600, i want to laugh a bit.

And, i noticed that some people resolved their problem with a defrag but i didn't have the time to do such a thing yet. The last time i did a defrag was like 1 year ago :p
 
Defragmenting your hard drive would not impact the speed bump one microsecond, if in fact you have optimised memory usage with the tips and tricks, as outlined in the FAQ, to the point that the swap file is not needed to run the game.

Defragmenting the hard drive is a relic from the distant past, where hard drives were much, much slower than today. Especially in the head movement (aka random seek) department. Then it made sense to create relatively small partitions, and move the most used files towards the vicinity of the directory cluster that holds the entry for the file.

Modern hard drives, from the moment LBA was introduced, decoupled logical from physical placement info. In short, you are only thinking you are optimising. In reality, you are doing nothing of the kind. LBA tells the system you drive has 255 heads (or 128 platters), while in reality there are only two, or at best three platters. So, even if the software thinks it is keeping files on the same cylinder, in reality that is not the case, and you are simply replacing one set of head seeks with a different set of head seeks to access the files.

And as for your time estimate regarding the 450 MHz PIII. You scaled wrong ;) A 1.8 GHz P4 performs equally well as a 900 MHz PIII. So you are looking, in worst case scenario, at roughly a twice as large speed bump as with your current system. In fact, it would probably be less than that. That, granted, slower processor is paired with a much more efficient chipset, and a much more efficient memory interface (aka front side bus).

I know that from my own 450 MHz PIII system, which is running on a Intel 440BX chipset. The most efficient (and thus fastest) chipset Intel has ever made to date.
 
Well... you were right: the defrag didn't do anything. I guess i am doomed to play CK with a 2-4 seconds delay... until i get a better pc... or unless you got any other tips... Thanks again for replying.
 
BurningEGO said:
Well... you were right: the defrag didn't do anything. I guess i am doomed to play CK with a 2-4 seconds delay... until i get a better pc... or unless you got any other tips... Thanks again for replying.
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To make you aware, I'm working on a "CK Lite" version (check the scenarios & mods forum for the thread), albeit I've been travelling for the past couple of weeks and haven't had time to work on it recently. It's a bit of a rough hack, but I'm trying to trim down CK enough to run smoothly on my P3 450 with 700 mb RAM, we'll see how it goes. I too have had serious problems with speed, sometimes it runs really slow (about 4-5 hours for approximately 5-8 years of game time, on any speed setting), sometimes it runs impossibly slow.

I'm working on slicing down some of the event chains, particularly those that are more related to NPCs (i.e. muslims) and what I would call "out of the way" countries to my Western-Euro-centric view. Once that's finished, I'm going to see how it affects gameplay speed, and then if necessary, try and consolidate some families, trim down AI aggressiveness, see about cleaning up the visual interface (this seems to have a particularly harsh effect on gameplay, I know nobody seems to believe it, but when those bitmap construction hammers come out, the game noticably slows down significantly) and generally trim the "fat" off of the game. (No insult intended to the developers, by "fat" I simply mean stuff that isn't integrel to the game play)

It's slow going thus far, and I'm always open to more suggestions on how to best approach this issue. It would be nice to finalize and create a mod (CK Lite) that would allow the game to run somewhat cleanly on older, slower machines. It would of course lose some flavor and the balancing would be an ongoing problem I might imagine, but better that then not being able to play at all. I had some success (limited) doing this to HOI2, but there are of course engine limitations to what can be removed.


If you have any comments or suggestions (this goes for anybody) please post them in the CK Lite thread in the Scenarios and Mod forums before Castellon kills us all for cluttering his turf. :D
 
Have been running Victoria with the tiles.bmp file renamed to tiles.bmp.bak, as well as using the altered colorscales.csv file (as suggested) and i´m really noticing a big difference (especially in loading times). Great stuff! :)

Have done the same to the CK tiles.bmp file (ie. adding the .bak extension, as well as using the altered colorscales.csv file from the Vicky FAQ) and i noticed quite a difference in loading times here too. However, the terrain map is not colour coded, it´s just plain white. I was wondering if there is something like the altered colorscales.csv file for Vicky that would work for CK? Even though i do not use the terrain map much in the game, a simple eu2-like colour coded terrain map would be useful during campaign phases.... :)
 
You could ask in the modding forum if one exists or if someone could make one.
 
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