Late game graphical stutter

from GalCiv2 Forums
I've noticed that the game starts to chug seriously once the galactic tug-o-war gets going in earnest (once the full galaxy is spoken for and the empires start churning out ships. Great game, but I don't see why the graphics should start to get choppy given the limited eye candy. I run a 3.2 Pentium, with 1gig of RAM, and a FX5950Ultra graphics card. Nothing earthshaking but should be plenty for this game, no ? The pace is fine when I zoom out and see only the symbols but bogs down seriously when I zoom in enough to see ships and planets. Is this normal ? I usually play on large-huge maps with 4-5 races. I have the beta patch 1.1, by the way. Could that be the cause ?

thanks and regards,
5,622 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Actually, I've also encountered stuttering sometimes, but with no obvious reason for it. It sometimes happens early, sometimes late, and it appears to affect any screen. I can only summise that Windows thinks the PC is idle and so has begun indexing the disc or generating a system restore point.

After a short time the stuttering stops, which makes me thing is this indeed the case.
Reply #2 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I find that turning off the display of ships on the minimap greatly reduces the inbetween turn sputter/strain I see in late game gigantic maps with large armies going in wars.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I had slowdown on my last game (large map). My system spec are similar to yours. It started when i began to build my first frigates. I had spent about an hour designing the ship, it has nearly 100 "extras" ( jewelry) and looks lush. I built about 30 of them, it really slowed the frame rate when looking at the map zoomed in.
Reply #4 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
ah... glad to hear (in a way) that it's not just me. Just curious, anyone know if the code can be optimized and, if yes, if Stardock is planning to do so in a later patch ? I'm no programmer but I can run X3 Reunion very smoothly on my computer, and that game is waaay more graphics intensive than GCII.

Anyway, great game overall. Just gets a bit annoying when it starts stuttering.