TLDR version at the bottom of the post
[rant]
Ok, this is the first time I open a thread to actually mostly just vent about something, but I'm also interested in your experiences as well, perhaps I'm just doing something wrong.
Anyway, I got my hands on Civilization V a while ago when it came out. My PC was getting a bit old (was still within the requirements and further so on most stuff) and when the game started to lag, even though I knew of the awful optimization even then (considering it's a TBS), I figured, fine, I really oughtta upgrade my PC.
So here I am. Phenom II Quad Core 3.40 GHz processor, Radeon HD 6850 and 4 GB of 1333 MHz Kingston's RAM. Pretty much a beast of a machine (in the sense of performance as it's more than sufficient, not in the sense of the size of my epeen cause it's super awesome AlienWare stuff).
So I start up a new Civilization V game. It runs super smooth at first, I notice no issues, but I'm playing a Huge Earth map, so with time I explore more and more. And right now, with not even half a world explored, I'm seeing lag and not believing my eyes. Jerky throws from one side of the map to the other when the game autocycles units are not a big deal (although still shouldn't be taxing on this machine), but when the AI plays, the map is nearly frozen for several seconds. Which I wouldn't mind if the game put an auto-lock on screen movement during AI's play, but that's not the case, it's actually lagging to process the few pathetic moves the AI performs behind closed doors (so we're not talking graphic processing at all, just CPU taking care of the AI's moves).
And then of course there's the lovely crashes. The joy and happiness of the game crashing if I try to load a game while one is in process (ie. loading from within the game). I was led to believe (by the official responses from the guys at 2k) this was the result of one of two things:
1. A bug - that's supposedly been fixed with the patch(es) - which unnecessarily inflated/is inflating the savegame file to ridiculous amounts each time you save, you know, that thing called a memory leak you're taught in first year of basic studies to always avoid at all costs, especially in areas that might be repeated throughout the program's execution.
2. Low amount of RAM leading to the game not being able to remember both the map that's loaded and the map it's trying to load. Now, aside the preposterous idea that one wouldn't discard useless data (map that's loaded) before loading a massive amount of new data, I'd say the game's requirement of 2GBs of RAM (once again ridiculously high for a TBS) should be well taken care of with twice the amount.
So yeah I'll just stop here even though I'm neglecting to mention the occasional slight graphic bugs and a pile of other horse manure of an excuse for programming issues.
Is it just me? I know the game was regarded as buggy and badly optimized (hell I shouted both from the rooftops every chance I got when it initially came out), but when I'm at the point of using an overkill of a PC and noticing not nearly enough difference, I'm just wondering what the fucking hell. Aside even the optimization itself, is this game even using the hardware it's presented with? I understand certain games don't use 4 cores yet and shit like that, but why would you design a game that still can't run smooth even when you give it all the hardware it could wish for?
[/rant]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLDR: Civilization V's optimization is so shit it still doesn't run smooth on what's supposed to be an overkill of a PC.
For discussion value, what was your experience with Civilization V technically, what's your take on issues that cause it (assuming it's not just me and I'm not just misunderstanding how something works) and what's your experience with badly optimized games in general.
[rant]
Ok, this is the first time I open a thread to actually mostly just vent about something, but I'm also interested in your experiences as well, perhaps I'm just doing something wrong.
Anyway, I got my hands on Civilization V a while ago when it came out. My PC was getting a bit old (was still within the requirements and further so on most stuff) and when the game started to lag, even though I knew of the awful optimization even then (considering it's a TBS), I figured, fine, I really oughtta upgrade my PC.
So here I am. Phenom II Quad Core 3.40 GHz processor, Radeon HD 6850 and 4 GB of 1333 MHz Kingston's RAM. Pretty much a beast of a machine (in the sense of performance as it's more than sufficient, not in the sense of the size of my epeen cause it's super awesome AlienWare stuff).
So I start up a new Civilization V game. It runs super smooth at first, I notice no issues, but I'm playing a Huge Earth map, so with time I explore more and more. And right now, with not even half a world explored, I'm seeing lag and not believing my eyes. Jerky throws from one side of the map to the other when the game autocycles units are not a big deal (although still shouldn't be taxing on this machine), but when the AI plays, the map is nearly frozen for several seconds. Which I wouldn't mind if the game put an auto-lock on screen movement during AI's play, but that's not the case, it's actually lagging to process the few pathetic moves the AI performs behind closed doors (so we're not talking graphic processing at all, just CPU taking care of the AI's moves).
And then of course there's the lovely crashes. The joy and happiness of the game crashing if I try to load a game while one is in process (ie. loading from within the game). I was led to believe (by the official responses from the guys at 2k) this was the result of one of two things:
1. A bug - that's supposedly been fixed with the patch(es) - which unnecessarily inflated/is inflating the savegame file to ridiculous amounts each time you save, you know, that thing called a memory leak you're taught in first year of basic studies to always avoid at all costs, especially in areas that might be repeated throughout the program's execution.
2. Low amount of RAM leading to the game not being able to remember both the map that's loaded and the map it's trying to load. Now, aside the preposterous idea that one wouldn't discard useless data (map that's loaded) before loading a massive amount of new data, I'd say the game's requirement of 2GBs of RAM (once again ridiculously high for a TBS) should be well taken care of with twice the amount.
So yeah I'll just stop here even though I'm neglecting to mention the occasional slight graphic bugs and a pile of other horse manure of an excuse for programming issues.
Is it just me? I know the game was regarded as buggy and badly optimized (hell I shouted both from the rooftops every chance I got when it initially came out), but when I'm at the point of using an overkill of a PC and noticing not nearly enough difference, I'm just wondering what the fucking hell. Aside even the optimization itself, is this game even using the hardware it's presented with? I understand certain games don't use 4 cores yet and shit like that, but why would you design a game that still can't run smooth even when you give it all the hardware it could wish for?
[/rant]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TLDR: Civilization V's optimization is so shit it still doesn't run smooth on what's supposed to be an overkill of a PC.
For discussion value, what was your experience with Civilization V technically, what's your take on issues that cause it (assuming it's not just me and I'm not just misunderstanding how something works) and what's your experience with badly optimized games in general.