FPS And Overall Performance

simple play the game on cloth map

i have a much stronger pc and he cant handle the game at 300+ turns

I have similar issues, to be honest. My laptop has very similar specs. I'm guessing that your graphics card (like mine) has 1gb of shared and not dedicated memory, and that this is the main issue.

I would also get significantly more enjoyment out of the game with better performance.

It's strange we can't adjust performance much. F.e. make people in cities and animation disappear, make all armies look like a single unit etc.

I have similar performance issues with what I feel is reasonalbe PC:

Core 2 Quad @ 2.7Ghz

4GB Ram

5870 ATI.

Not sure what settings are the best for performance.

I'm going to go ahead and show my computing ignorance here, but I have no problems with FPS running Civ4, which seems like it has similar graphical requirements.

I've never intuitively understood why Elemental is so resource intensive, given what it actually looks like on-screen. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself has some insight...

I understand that there are a lot of things on-screen with a lot of cities, but it seems like I get stutter from the very beginning of the game, even before my first city is founded.

Keep in mind that minimum specs are for the cloth map.  You need a fairly beefy rig to run the 3D view in all of its glory.

That said, I actually prefer the cloth map because it offers a much clearer view of the game world.  For example, in the cloth map it's easy to tell at a glance what buildings in a town are under construction whereas that information is not as visibly accessible in the 3D view.

Come on, the cloths map is not an acceptable option for playing even on low end systems.

Truth is: the game is badly optimiziable atm - thats all to say.

It just runs badly on most systems.

Needs some more patches 'till it will run in a playable fashion.

For now it's just a unplayable mess for all low enders.

My workaround: save&exit&start&load every 30-50 turns and try to end the game before turn 300-400.

Sadly the game tends to "alter" the saves and "forget" some units, enemy chars, etc.

but who cares... it's still totaly addictive and after 1.1 it has stopped crashin' every ten minutes.

What are you talking about?  The cloth map rocks.

What are you talking about?  The cloth map rocks.

End of quote

Yeah - and then i buy a new car i just use the spare wheel...

true i love the cloth map

Agreed, I'm loving the visual style of Elemental, cloth map and all.

That aside - I find that saving, restarting the application, then loading tends to clear up alot of my lag issues late game on large epic maps with a full complimnet of AI players. When things really start to slow down, just launch an offensive and take out a few of your opponents' kingdoms - that should do the trick.

Believe it or not, I actually find the cloth map more attractive and functional than 3D view.  It's easy to tell at a glance what's happening whereas things are more obscure in the 3D mode.

But whether or not you like the cloth map, the fact remains that Stardock specifically designed it so that the game would be playable on low-end systems, so if you can play the game fine on the cloth map but experience slowdown in the 3D view then chances are your computer isn't powerful enough for the latter.

To be fair though my laptop does pretty much meet recommended specs, now i should be able to play on 3d on lowish settings and not experience 8-12 fps. This game needs some serious optimizations in the engine, do Stardock intend to make significant improvements in this area.

Also my concern is that things like lowering the screen resolution should increase the fps rate but it doesnt, nor does changing various graphic options, im no expert but surlt this isnt right.

Plus on my laptop I can run Starcraft 2 on medium settings with good average fps.

I'm in the same boat here. I fired the game up last night for the first time in maybe 3 months to see if 1.1 fixed anything. Turns out it didn't. The game pauses and lags from the moment i start it up to when i eventually rage quit. Sometimes I sit and wait 30 sec to a minute after a turn concludes just to have free range movement without it freezing until I hit the turn button and have to wait all over again. And opening up menus is a different story completely. It's infuriating.

And what gets me the most is that I have Civ IV and it runs practically flawless. 

Maybe my game is worse then your guys but I can't get into this game at all. You guys seem to still think its addictive and such, but I just don't even want to play this at all anymore when I have to wait every turn just to get it to unfreeze... It makes me sad cuz I really really wanted to like this game! And I followed it for years. It just doesn't seem fair 

I feel your pain.  I too have a good top end system and the game plays like crap.  Have to wait for it to unfreeze if it doesn't crash.  It doesn't happen right away, but maybe 100+ turns in when the game starts getting good.  Boo. 

Yeah. I remember that there was a huge FPS boost in GC2 when ToA was released. Hopefully there will be similar optimizations for this game in the future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.