I have always tried to be positive and helpful when I have posted on this forum. Any criticisms I have made have been constructive. Unfortunately, I cannot enjoy this game any longer, even though I love it so much. It has a fatal flaw.
This game slows to a crawl once I am no more than midway through the game. This is happened very badly on a large sized map I was playing, so I thought I'd try a medium (5x5) map. Same result.
There was a point where it was taking in excess of a minute in between turns alone late in the game. Then in the height of my frustration, the game crashed. It was getting to point where I dreaded to end my turn, unless I needed a restroom break or something hehe.
I submitted an exception report from my last crash and a very nice tech rep suggested I change my virtual memory after my prior crash, so I changed it to 2688 minimum and 5376 maximum (doubling both default values). All of my crash reports appear to be memory related. The tech rep mentioned that the game is not handling memory well.
Here is what she said: "It doesn't seem to use all of the system ram before it starts using virtual memory, so we might be fragmenting the memory or something. As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to try optimizing the save game code a little more."
Here is my text message that I sent with the exception report for this crash:
"This game runs horribly on my computer. I have a AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+ @984 mhz, 1 gig RAM, 128k internal video card (ATI Radeon Express 200 series). I changed my virtual memory to 2688 min to 5376 max. I changed to this setting per your tech's emailed suggestion after a prior crash. I was only playing a medium map and it was taking almost a minute to complete the end of a turn. This truly needs to be fixed."
I love this game, but this is ridiculous. PLEASE fix it. I truly do want to enjoy this potentially wonderful game. Thank you.
PS I have the latest patch, though this game was started prior to the latest beta patch.