Were all peaved off about CTD, but how about Slow AI?

[ManKinD]

**14APR09 Update - from the response already received I'ts starting to show that slow AI is bigger concern than CTD - I should probably have put that forward as one of my poll questions DOH!**

We all know about the CTD issue but the biggest problem/issue that seems to annoy me is the slow AI between turns - especially after 120 turns. I always hear about the CTD annoying everybody but wondering if this is an issue for the rest of the community, can it, (fingers crossed) will it be fixed - I have heard about memory leak issues and other possible causes - and a lot of people saying it cant be fixed

FYI, I only get a couple of CTD here and there and love the game, the biggest thing putting me off the game at moment is the slow AI

I know theres a few possible work-around threads for it - but I want to wait for the big patch before resorting to that.

This issue seems to be killing my ETW enjoyment - Im getting sick of waiting around

No rants or raves, who am I kidding, All related feeback welcomed!

First and hopefuly last poll that I submit - so please be kind - I hate polls as well

[Lord Nova]

forget slow AI, what about the crisscrossing of units? or the fact dragoons can't be remounted if they suffer a loss? or when units simply refuse to fire their guns in rank fire and constantly kneel and pop back up like they are doing some kinda wierd dance number, my fav is when artillary won't fire all it's cannons if suffering losses from the flank. The honest truth is the more time I spend on this game the more flaws I seem to discover that have nothing to do with CTDs. The most recent one is if you fight 2 different nations on the field and have reinforcements come in, the battle simply won't end at all, turning a 1 hour hard fought battle between a total of 4 full stacks into a huge loss cause I gotta forfiet. The longer the devs take on the patch the more these issues are going to pop up for everyone else, it's only a matter of time. I've even stopped editing the game until these propblems are fixed and am going back to Rome until then.

Back on the subject of Slow AI however, try this:
Alt-tab out of the game
CTRL-Alt-Del to start manager
Select Empire from applications then "go to process" it should direct you to the empire process
Right click on it then select "Priority" and set it to High

This will give you maybe a 10% speed increase during the AI's turn depending on your setup. Ultimately it's a fools dream to expect fast and good AI at the same time until we get AI cards. Nvidia and ATI are both looking into putting AI optimizations in their next cards. It basically means the card can run AI code on an optimized processor instead of the CPU giving huge performance gains in AI (doing to AI what graphics cards do for graphics and sound cards do for sound). This is however 2 years into the future when graphics tech becomes too costly (hardware wise and development cycle wise) and card companies need to add some other features to compete against eachother.

[18Zulukiller]

CTD i can deal with myslef as theres always a work around but slow AI is really getting to me and it always happens once i go into the 1800's. Honestly its really really bad i go from 30 seconds for the AI to take its turn to litterally over 10 minutes for the AI to take its turn late game.

[Lord Leopold]

I only had one CTD and it was do to the memory issue. I applied the fix that was mentioned on this site and I have had no issues at all. Time it takes between turns for me is not all that bad. I watch every move the AI makes. I am around the year 1760 using the four turns per year mod.

[18Zulukiller]

I only had one CTD and it was do to the memory issue. I applied the fix that was mentioned on this site and I have had no issues at all. Time it takes between turns for me is not all that bad. I watch every move the AI makes. I am around the year 1760 using the four turns per year mod.

I've done 4 campaigns now with different factions and its the same every time. The game plays really really well and the turns are of a reasonable time untill i get to the 1800 and then things get really really slow. The memory fix that people are using i already had installed as im an old supreme commander player.

Specs

Intel Q6600
3gb Ram
1 Tb HD
256MB 9500 Gcard
Windows vista home 32 bit.

[ManKinD]

I've done 4 campaigns now with different factions and its the same every time. The game plays really really well and the turns are of a reasonable time untill i get to the 1800 and then things get really really slow. The memory fix that people are using i already had installed as im an old supreme commander player.

Specs

Intel Q6600
3gb Ram
1 Tb HD
256MB 9500 Gcard
Windows vista home 32 bit.

Man thats spot on - I 100% agree with everything you said - exact symptoms - my specs are:

Pentium D 840 3.0Ghz
250 gb HD
3gb DDR2 Ram
Nvidia 9500 512mb VGA
Windows XP (32bit)
Mon Res 1028x748?

Now I see we have similiar VGA and Ram - could it be because of the VGA - I know its a cheap card but it handles games like Far Cry 2 with some ease - My ETW graphics automatic default is High with AA off - I recently changed this to Medium settings to see if that helps with slow AI turn - havent reached over 120 turns yet to test.

I never thought the VGA would be an issue because on High there were no probs with Battles graphics and with the Campaign AI there was no probs only until I was towards the end year/turns of the game

for other people having similiar issues - do you have a similiar VGA? That could be the issue and hopefully NVidia put out a driver update -

I forgot to add - when the AI is having a heart attack I alt+delete to Task manager where it tells me ETW Not Responding - as soon as I click out of it it seems to get the game going again. And the slow AI usually halts on the same faction every turn

Im sure CA would have beta tested the game with these VGA cards but understand all PC setups are unique and hard to replicate every single one. Feedback would be great -anyone from CA reading this are there known VGA cards causing this AI issue?.

[ManKinD]

Back on the subject of Slow AI however, try this:
Alt-tab out of the game
CTRL-Alt-Del to start manager
Select Empire from applications then "go to process" it should direct you to the empire process
Right click on it then select "Priority" and set it to High

This will give you maybe a 10% speed increase during the AI's turn depending on your setup. Ultimately it's a fools dream to expect fast and good AI at the same time until we get AI cards. Nvidia and ATI are both looking into putting AI optimizations in their next cards. It basically means the card can run AI code on an optimized processor instead of the CPU giving huge performance gains in AI (doing to AI what graphics cards do for graphics and sound cards do for sound). This is however 2 years into the future when graphics tech becomes too costly (hardware wise and development cycle wise) and card companies need to add some other features to compete against eachother.

Thank you havent heard that one - rep + - The other stuff you mentioned in your post is correct as well but Im hoping there fixable in the update patch or mod

[cpt_acid]

If by "slow" you mean dumb, then yeah, it bothers me much!
I wouldn't mind it taking twice as much if only it could draw a smart move. It would be like playing chess against a serious opponent: you wait a lot, but in the end they wait longer for you.

. Ultimately it's a fools dream to expect fast and good AI at the same time until we get AI cards. Nvidia and ATI are both looking into putting AI optimizations in their next cards. It basically means the card can run AI code on an optimized processor instead of the CPU giving huge performance gains in AI (doing to AI what graphics cards do for graphics and sound cards do for sound). This is however 2 years into the future when graphics tech becomes too costly (hardware wise and development cycle wise) and card companies need to add some other features to compete against eachother.

Actually, nVidia GF 8x and newer already support taking a load off of CPU if programmers care to use the feature (it's called CUDA and Photoshop for example uses it) but it's not like your GPU stands idle while you're playing ETW so it wouldn't help much.
You also mentioned ETW uses only a single CPU core!
I suspected as much, but wasn't sure if it's just my sys. When they fix that, all will be much better.
Those bastards! I feel like they killed Kenny, not using the other core and all!

[Lord Nova]

You also mentioned ETW uses only a single CPU core!
I suspected as much, but wasn't sure if it's just my sys. When they fix that, all will be much better.
Those bastards! I feel like they killed Kenny, not using the other core and all!

So that's what Cuda is? I just didn't read up into it since almost no games use it. Either way they have said they are making a Multi-core patch.

Read this if you want LOL moments
http://software.intel.com/sites/bill...-total-war.php

Empire: Total War's engine has been redesigned to make the most efficient use of new multi-threaded, multi-core CPUs, such as the Intel® Core™ i7 processor family. Even though Empire's development paid focused attention to path-finding, the battle, and campaign logic - which can be very CPU-intensive, Empire's engine is designed such that the bandwidth between the CPU and the GPU doesn't limit performance; the CPU only sends data to the GPU through dynamic vertex and index buffers, perhaps a few megabytes a frame, which is quite reasonable for current architectures.

then this that proves it's not true also mentions multi-core patch.
http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,6...most/Practice/

Soon afterwards the task manager disclosed that the engine of Empire: Total War only used two CPU cores, the second of which was even underemployed.

We are still checking if the multi-core capability of the Empire engine (AI, rendering and physics are supposed to run in different threads) depends on the operating system or the used processor. However our German colleagues of Gamestar were assured that "mid-year an update will be released that optimizes Empire for multi-core processors”

[YD23]

I agree, the end turn length is a bit long. I can't complain about my 2 to 3 minutes of boredom, but some people in this thread are really suffering with really long turns...

I'm glad that you have made this poll, because I really do think that this issue should be addressed and hopefully fixed at some point. Let's face it, even after all the CTD's are sorted out, and some minor AI bugs, this will be a problem at some point.

[Hot_spur]

It's 1807 in the final Road to Independence chapter and my ai turn is close to fifteen minutes. Great Britain alone takes about seven minutes.

This is wrecking the game for me. There's no question I am going to meet my objectives (I met them five turns ago) but I have to reach 1810 in order to win the game.

[Oliveira8]

Another thing that helps is to turn off the option "Follow AI". At least I notice a difference.

[18Zulukiller]

Another thing that helps is to turn off the option "Follow AI". At least I notice a difference.

Thats the first thing i try and do with every TW game.

[Arctander]

Thats the first thing i try and do with every TW game.

Definitely.

I really wish there were an option to "follow enemy AI" - so I could see the moves of those nations who I'm at war with, but not watch my allies sail their ships around.

France is my culprit... There are still 10 armies standing around Paris, they have no navy and they are not expanding in North America yet it takes a few minutes to do this.

I have that same stall in 2 of my 3 GC's happen in Sweden. It seemed to get noticeable around 1750 and gets worse every year. I suspect it's some kind of pathing confusion. As to the French not having a navy... since they can't figure out how to sail to their armies around, and since no AI ever fights for any trade spots, there really isn't much use for a navy anyway.

[Syntax Error]

Another thing that helps is to turn off the option "Follow AI". At least I notice a difference.

I do that and the turns still take a ridiculously long time with the faction's flag just hanging there for 15-20 minutes depending.

[YD23]

Also, I have no idea if it's just my imagination or it really does speed up, but when you position the view on the say Desert without anything there at all, the factions do their turns a bit faster. Don't hold me to this though.

[TÜRKMEN-Timûr]

slow oğlu slow

[Humble Warrior]

I played until 1890 in one of my tests. By then I was waiting up to 25 minutes for a turn. Eventually I just Ctrl+Alt+Del out of the game and quit!

the thing is, even after taking all that time, the ai DOES NOTHING SMART. It would be worth it if it had some clever Ace strategic trick up its sleeve.

I think once they get the AI figuring how to do Naval Invasions and using up its money a little more it might improve.

[igotballsofsteel]

My campaign ended around turn 160 170 each turn was taking around 5 min wich is ok but was stuck at russia for 10 min ... so 15 min by turn was too much , i already win i was waiting too see the end vid. I droped the campaign and got mad so im taking a break till a good patch fix .

[ManKinD]

I played until 1890 in one of my tests. By then I was waiting up to 25 minutes for a turn. Eventually I just Ctrl+Alt+Del out of the game and quit!

the thing is, even after taking all that time, the ai DOES NOTHING SMART. It would be worth it if it had some clever Ace strategic trick up its sleeve.

I think once they get the AI figuring how to do Naval Invasions and using up its money a little more it might improve.

@ igotballsofsteel as well - Out of interest what graphics card are you using?

and can anybody translate oglu for me? me thinks AI in Turkish?