SC4 slowdown

[vanquish007 0]

I am thinking that this is probably normal, but I thought that I should check, just to be sure.  I have a large city, of about 600,000.  The framerates, and the game itself seems to be running fairly well, but the date keeps getting stuck for long periods. (3 minutes or more)  And then when the date does change, it only goes forward for about 5 days, on cheetah speed.  Then it stops again. Is this normal?   Any help would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!

Oh, and sorry if this is in the wrong forum.

[S_C_mbody 0]

Yeah this is normal. Your computerhas enough memory to run the game well - but not perfect.

My suggestions? Get used to it. I don't think there is a solution, so I just deal with it.

N_O_body might have a technical solution though...As usual.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

I think if you look at your CPU usage during these periods it will be pinned at 100%.  You may also be paging stuff, but that is doubtful.

I have a city the same size and the same thing happens.  I have 640MB of RAM and 4096MB of swap space.  I don't think more physical resources will help, but maybe some more RAM might unless you have 2MB now.

The system is memory and processor intensive.  A fancy graphics processor does not seem to relieve this.

Maybe a faster CPU would help, but unless it was an order of magnitude faster, probably not.

[Indisguise 0]

1. I have this happen all the time...lots of stops and starts of large population cities, the higher the population (or both the city and the region) adds to the amount of slow down you gets...think it's basicly the city doing all the calculations for the sims...as the shuffle around the city...finding new jobs....finding new traffic routes etc etc...some cities I have the pause will last longer than a minute on one day, even in cheeta speed...:S

if the pause get to be too long try playing the game at rhino speed it atually makes time past faster...sound opposite of what should happen, but it actually speeds the game play up as ...from what happens in my game....the calclations need to keep playing happen to fast for the game to keep up at cheeta speed the game has to pause constantly, where as the game seems to be able to keep up with the calculation at rhino or turtle speed

if you want the city to run faster theres a few things you can do...a: lowwer the amount of plugins using in the city or region...less plugins....the faster the game will go...B: while building and running the city, you can lowwer to the graphic options, this will also speed up game play...you can raise them up later when you want to say take pics for a CJ

[Polarbare 9]

The only way to really "help" this sufficiently is to close all other programs, and have lots of RAm. I have 1.00GB RAM with Processor 1.86GHz. I sometimes leave MSN Messenger running but it doesnt affect the game play, and my cheetah speed works pretty fine. If you have less RAM, then it is completely normal. On my previous computer, my simcity 4 had a city of 1 million and it took forever to load. The Cheetah speed froze for like few seconds to minutes as well. Don't worry about it =) 

[MadMax410 1]

Sushibricks: One Gig? Are you kidding me?

Anyway to fix the problem you should end any antivirus or firewall prorams you have.(Just be sure to reboot before you go back online) Other taks don't seem to be a problem.

[prince_of_sims 0]

antivirus and firewalls, namely those produced by norton and symantec, are resource hogs. disconnect from the internet, and disable those programs. then re-enable them before going online. that should help some.

like sushibricks said, without 1GB of RAM, running antivirus and firewalls along with SC4 and will yield sluggish results. even with 1GB RAM, i sometimes have trouble.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

really shouldn't be too hard on Norton.  They are very clever university graduates who have never had to write a real application program in their lives.  That's why I use McAfee, who are network people, and know what it is to save resources.  I never have to disable my av and aw scanners.

[Pixelrage 34]

I'll 1-up you there. I never use norton or macafee, use AVG Free and you'll thank me a million times over

[prince_of_sims 0]

meh, i got norton for US$19.95 along with a US$50 copy of Windows XP Pro when i was building my computer. granted it's not free, it's still a good deal considering it came bundled with a firewall, antivirus, and spyware blocker

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Seems to be degenerating into a software p'ing contest.

closed.