How Long Can You Run the Game

[PLB82 0]

I've seen people make mention of a memory leak that's slowing the game down for them... but mine becomes very annoying after about 30 minutes and becomes almost unplayable in my larger cities around 45.  Is this worse than most of you?

Also, is there any quick way to fix it, or reduce the problem, other than exiting the game and restarting?

[Cob92 360]

This memory leak has been around since the earliest days of the beta. I'm genuinely surprised that Monte Cristo has yet to fix it.

No, there is no fix other than restarting or buying a more powerful PC.

[pete1061 0]

I've found that the slowdown goes along with the size of my city. The bigger my city the faster it slows down.

The problem started rearing it's ugly head at about 700k-800k pop.

I also noticed that around a million, the game would lock up my system when I exit. At hat point I can't even alt-tab out to the task manager to shut it down, forcing me to hit the reset button on my box and re-booting the system.

I've written MC about this and they say they are working hard to fix this.

From what I can gather, and considering the complexity of game programming, this seems to be a rather pesky bug.

I believe them when they say they are doing everything they can. Just sometimes bugs can be a real PITA to fix.

I figure all we can do is try to provide them with as much info as we can.

Maybe we can leave system info (and anything else relevant to the bug) in this thread to help....

(rather than a complaint session cursing MC for their inadequacies)

(note to any MC folks reading this:... please let us know if there is any other info we can provide to help)

(example): I'm running vista home premium on an intel core 2 duo @ 2.2ghz, 4gig ram, Nvidia 9800GT

and like I said, the problem starts at around 700k-800k population with the problem appearing sooner and sooner as pop increases.

The game locks on exit after playing cities over 1 million, forcing a hard reboot.

[kiwispanker 1]

i think pete1061 is on the right track. i've never sent a ticket to MC regarding this but i am curious to know if they would like us to provide them with info relating to this problem; or maybe they already know what is causing it and just need to tweak things a bit.

my main city, in solo, i got about 1.6 million with lag appearing around 30 minutes (especially in trading with omni). however, my system specs aren't as good as pete's, so i'm not sure what are the main issues causing this leak.

hopefully MC could solve this issue soon. my map is only 30% covered and i'm scared growing it out more.

[Cthuulhu 0]

The memory leak is prety bad for me but then my computer is a dinosaur. The larger the changes or trades im making the faster it goes off. I've gotten accustomed to plopping my city out and building slowly lets me play a city of about 1-1.5 million for maybe an hour before the game becomes unplayable. If I'm makiing drastic changes, ie highways, large amounts of trade or terraforming for example, the game bogs down in a matter of minutes.

right now im running a 5 year old computer with an Athlon 64, 3400+ 2.2 ghz with 2 megs of ram and a Radeon HP3850 video card, overclocked. I keep the settings on medium.

on the one hand im pleasantly shocked I can play this game on my old beast. On the other, this game is playable by people with older systems so anything that helps MC to get a grip on this is good.

Now I've talked about it, I can't WAIT to start putting my new system together lol.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

Are you sure that you are describing a memory leak? pete1061 seems to have the only computer that is acting out of the ordinary.

[pete1061 0]

This problem may not be related to how powerful someones computer is.

I haven't experimented yet to verify this, but it may be connected to the number of changes made.

and the lockup on exit may or may not even be related.

But that one is the real party pooper for me. The lockup is a stability issue, not a performance issue.

I have vista? Is this happening to anyone with XP?

[EAGCE 2]

It also happens to me after about 30 minutes.

When I'm in planet view it seems to get worse when I open the trade window.  In city mode It seem to be the same 30 mins.

I'm on Windows 7, also happened when I was still in Vista.  About the same.

[CZAR ALEKSANDER 0]

I have the problem around 450 to 670 pop and I have a quad core computer with Windows xp Raedon X4350 1 gig  video memory 6 gig of ram and it slows as my  pop goes up.

[Cob92 360]

Slowing as your pop goes up is normal. Naturally, larger cities have more objects for your computer to keep track of. However, slowing from the passage of time alone is a sign of a memory leak or similar problem.

[pete1061 0]

When I first load a large city everything is fine.

Then when it slows, it chokes specifically as I click on tools (zones, types of road)... It'll repeat the tool selection sound effect (click, click, click) and the animation of the various road type icons will momentarily freeze for a few seconds. And then when I make a road, when I click the final time to finalize the new road, it will hang for 5 sec or so with the spinny mouse pointer.

definitely a memory leak or similar problem.

Probably it locks up when I exit because of excess stuff in memory that hasn't been cleaned up properly.

[Baracus250 0]

I'm getting the same. Bought a new PC mainly to play CXL so I doubt it's the age of the machine causing this problem. It's not uber-spec but pretty good:- Intel Quad core 2.82ghz / 4 gig ram / GF 285GTX. Windows XP Pro.

I have problems exiting. Sometimes when I exit to planet, if I leave it for 15 to 20 mins it does actually get back to the planet view and uploads the city, but it's not the uploading making it freeze before that becuase the uploading is done in planet view. Also sometimes it just dumps out the the man menu screen but the quit game or planet mode buttons do nothing so still requires a CTRL-ALT-DEL to get out, and other times it properly crashes to desktop. The main city I have probelms with is rather large @ 6.5million pop but it runs smooth at first, so the machine is capable - just bad memory handling is my guess too. If I exit out of the city before the slow down occurs then it gets to planet view nicely and takes maybe 3 mins to upload the city - all clean. So it is "the passage of time" that brings out this issue.

[gyzzzmo 0]

i got a 2 year old computer and theres no slowdown due to memoryleak.

My only length-limit for this game is boredom, wich sadly terminates Cities XL quite quickly.

[PLB82 0]

Originally posted by: pete1061

I have vista? Is this happening to anyone with XP?quote>

Happened to me on Vista, still happening on Windows 7.  There's definitely pop-related slowdown... I can play my farm town for quite some time before the slow kicks in... but in my bigger cities, it slows down very quickly, but when I exit and re-enter, it's back to normal.

It also seems to really get worse for me when I do a lot of trading.  After several trades, I'll click on the highway tool and hear *click* *click* *click* *click* instead of the one *click* like normal as the various types of roads try to line up along the screen.

[site400 12]

I just upgraded my system to a new i7 core with 8 gb of memory and an SSD drive and the computer just eats up this game, even with cities well over a million people.