Game Over

[realm174]

Well, after making significant progress (1/2 mil food, 1200 citizens), I unfortunately have to retire this game as the lag has made it unplayable. Computer specs are fine, drivers are updated, there's just too many little minions running around to be able to keep it going. I can somewhat play it at 1x, but any acceleration is out of the question.  I spent the last couple of hours googling and reading about this problem, and there doesn't seem to be a cure.  That is very unfortunate.

[RedKetchup]

yup unfortunatly. or you get used to play as intended at 1x - 2x or you delete it
the 5x-10x should never have been placed on the toolbars cause people learn to use them by default and cant go back to the normal speed.

[realm174]

I have to agree... When I first started playing the game, I rarely went above 2x, trying to keep an eye on everything.. then as I got more comfortable, I moved up to 5x, then 10x.. now I spend most of the time between 10x or pause.  The thing is, even at 1x or 2x, it lags terribly. Clicking the buttons is very slow to react, so I never know if I clicked it or not, so I click it again, only to have it toggle twice rapidly whenever the game catches up...

That's ok. I'm happy to where I got this one world, and I learned a lot through it. I'll just start a new one and try to use what I've learned and see if I can make it in less than 186 years..  Or, I'll start adding different mods and try those gems out..

[Nilla]

I have noticed a significant difference if you play on a small or a big map. This is the reason that I mostly use a medium map. The lags are still there, but come later. On a big map I start to notice the lags with maybe 1500 people and it is "unplayable" with 2500. On a medium map, I first notice the lags maybe at 2000 and it isn't unplayable" until about 3000. My biggest game on a small map was about 2500 and the lags were no problem.

Normally I switch between 2x and 5x.

[RedKetchup]

also something can play alot on the lag are : mods. some mods arent optimized and can make lag badly. specially mods that add new crops/trees.

[realm174]

I was playing on a large map, so that might be part of the problem.  As for mods, I was using College, Fishing Dock, Sawmill and SpecializedStockpiles mods.  Do you know if any of those have that lack of optimization problem? I'd rather know before I start my next game..

[RedKetchup]

i dont think any of those mods can make extra lag. in mods, the lag would come from the new graphics we add. and if these graphics have alot of triangles... it requires a tons of computing power.

also you can also take the no smokes (from chineys) mod that can help you but definetly, a large will take more resources than a small or medium.

[rkelly17]

When it comes to playing on 10X and large maps, I'm guilty as charged. No matter what the speed, though, populations over 1000 go very slowly. I have an i5 "Ivy Bridge" with 8 megs of RAM, so not the latest but no slouch. My guess is Banished wouldn't use the capabilities of a new i7 anyway since very few games would. I notice that the slow down starts on the river with merchants' boats, which is one reason I started using the specialized TP mod--fewer TPs and thus fewer merchants to get the same amount of needed goods. Eventually, though, the slow down affects the entire settlement.

[A Nonny Moose]

This is a large, detailed simulation.  What it comes down to is that even with multiprocessing you run out of CPU cycles on all cores, or the coordination between tasks is not fast enough.  The simulation is delightful, but like all such it can be easily run out of machine power because no matter how fancy your machine is, it will run out of juice as the universe of discourse (the number of objects being simulated) expands.

Computers are not magic.  Even the big weather simulations running on the biggest main frames don't make it in 24 hours, and the intermediate results are used for forecasts.

[realm174]

Although I agree with you (in terms of being a large detailed sim), I have a quad core. When the game comes to a crawl, I can see one of the core maxed out, but not the other 3.  So I'm not sure it's actually taking advantage of multi cores...

[A Nonny Moose]

Wine gives me these non-fatal errors 8 times:

err:ole:CoInitializeEx Attempt to change threading model of this apartment from multi-threaded to apartment threaded

I suspect the game tries to launch eight separate tasks, but wine doesn't allow the spawn or ignores the attempt.

If you are running Windoze, perhaps you should make sure you have all the libraries needed for proper multitasking.

[realm174]

I dunno.. I'm gonna guess that not the whole game was written to take advantage of multi-core computers then, because I can look at the load on the cores, and they aren't definitely not all used up. As for libraries, this is windows.. we don't do libraries like linux..   (I'm not dissing linux, I use it daily...)

Edit: Just to add to this, I got curious and started googling. Many report having multi-cores CPUs with banished using only/mostly one of the cores, while others report all cores being used mostly evently..  I wonder if it has to do with the type of cpu...

[borreh1973]

Sorry if I say something past. But you tried to use a program to enhance performance? I use Razer Cortex (v. 5.2.22.0) and have found new games that could not get through before.

My PC has a i7 (first generation), a good video card (Radeon HD 7970) and 16GB RAM. It's not a perfect match, but what I have right now.

I noticed improvement in Banished using this program. Other games as well.

Could it help you?

[A Nonny Moose]

I haven't run Windoze in years, but since when did they stop using optional libraries in the operating system?  If you get a specific version of the O/S, you may not have all the possible things they offer.  This is especially true in the lower-priced licence versions and often in OEM versions.  Libraries in Windoze are designated with the extension *.dll and I can't imagine them giving this feature up.  It has too much revenue potential.