Distant Worlds forum thread at GalCiv2.com

[Journier]

ORIGINAL: BigJ62

Your machine appears to be balancing the load across all four cores and in particular not greater than 25% of total according to your screenshot.

Oh it is?

[Ranbir]

Yes, that is the point of multiple cores, they'll split and share the load.

[taltamir]

hi there... I am taltamir whom the OP of this thread quoted. you can find the original thread here: http://forums.elementalgame.com/377079/page/1
I have made some further posts in the thread where I originally posted what he posted so let me mention them here:

Original: taltamir
I did discover another issue... a large part of rebelling planets is taxation... they will have something like

"+1 something"

"+2 we have some development"

"-6 <race> are upset we are at war with their race"

"-18 to 60 due to taxes being too high"

turns out the taxation AI will randomly set planets to max tax levels of 50% (or just below it at 48 or 49... although sometimes even 30 or 40 can be too high, especially on a planet with 0 development)... its not like those planets actually can make any money since they have no development, at all! Worse, it lets it go into the "rebellion" status where they pay 0 taxes

Original: taltamir
Well, My last save was 10pm... the game crashed at 2:30am... so i lost 4.5 hours of play there... I will migrate the install from my 2 platter 640GB WD Caviar blue to my intel SSD G2 80GB with trim... hopefully that will improve load and save times.

i actually looked up the planet amounts of the other empires and my own...

mine was 208... went all the way up to 350 before game crashed.

AI was: ~60, ~30, 5, 4, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. went down some before the game crashed... i destroyed a bunch of pirated but every time a new pirate faction spawned immediately...

I agree, this is an AAR and suggestion post in one. I like the way your game went, but I can see it was frustrating. I have a similar problem now in which many races start to get jealous on me. However, my power difference is not as big as yours with the other empires. Indeed a good suggestion to improve relations early on in the game. I also have some performance issues. But playing on a "smaller" map (not 500 stars and 5000 planets/moons) helps . I've read somewhere that this game plays better on lower end pcs than on new pcs. But it is quite processor intensive. So make sure you have suffiencent mhz.

I am certain playing on a smaller map would help... but then the game wouldn't be as epic as i want it to be the reason I like this game over others is how epic i can make it.

As for how my game went, i found a solution:

1. get lucky and find way of ancients or path of darkness (helps a lot!)

2. kill a bunch of pirates (destroy their base, easy as pie later on) and you will go from evil to a saint... now your citizens are gaining moral instead of losing it, and the hate due to jelously is mitigated by you being good... so the other empires will form trade agreements with you.

It is rather ridiculous that 1 planet empires are declaring war on 200+ planet empires because they are jealous of their overwhelming power. they should be licking my boots and asking for hand outs and protection... I tried offering protectorates to a few of them who were at war with the other 2 big bads... and they refused because they hate me too much.

EDIT: I recalled the last bit of info from the "lost" post... it was that I noticed that if the game inches to the 3 to 3.5GB used (I only have 4GB remember), and then i load a game, it will crash with an out of memory error. I need to first exit to main menu then load the game... i assume that to save loading time it keeps assets that it already needs to load... but that could cause it to run out of memory, better do a purge and full reload OR check how much free ram there and then decide whether to do concurrent load or purge and load.

As for the claim by them that something is wrong with my machine... nope, everything is spiffy.. i am playing on max sized map but the game says the requirements for that are 2GB of ram, and 1GB for smaller...

Also, of course it has multithreading, the fact that i peg 30% on my quad core means it has to have it... what I meant is have BETTER multi threading... pegging one core at 100% (25% of my quad core) and then a tiny smidgen spread across the three remaining cores is very weak multi threading, especially for a super CPU intensive game such as this...

On a quad core it manages to get 120% the utilization of a single core... Full utilization is possible, but understandably difficult... but this game practically requires it for its higher end gameplay options.

Let me right out say that I love the game... it has many distinct flaws but it is a very awesome game that I love. it just has some issues.

[taltamir]

loading the same save game took 1 minute 15 seconds from spindle drive and 1 minute 1.13 seconds from the SSD... well actually in BOTH cases the save file was on the SSD, but the actual game installation directory was on either the SSD or HDD.
loading it where the game is on the SSD and the save file on the HDD added 10 seconds to load time.
i was really hoping the SSD will help.

[taltamir]

taltamir-

I believe that the rebellion issue you see due to taxes is actually enemy covert ops causing rebellion and not the taxAI randomly screwing with the rate, however, I am not 100% certain of this, it is something I have gleened from reading around about the issue.

Well, I have some massive anti spy things in place, as well as highly trained maxed out spies.

the rebellion occurs due to "approval" being below 15%.and I am given a point by point breakdown...

if enemy spies caused that then there are two options:

1. enemy spies set tax rate up to max on those planets and my tax AI didn't notice and did not care.

2. enemy spies cause the planet to rebel and the readout that specifies happiness modifiers for the colony is instructed to lie when spies successfully perform a covert op against me.

This remind me, the game should pause and give you a huge blinking message when enemy spies manage to OVERTHROW YOUR GOVERNMENT... i went a while as feudalism without even noticing...

Currently I think the game needs two changes ASAP:
1. Have a "never show me this message again" checkmark for the box that tells you that a ship design has been upgraded and the old design marked obsolete whenever you click on the upgrade button (ouch my carpal tunnel).
2. Have a "upgrade all designs" button in ship design.

[licker]

Eh?

If the spies 'bribed' your AI to not notice...

Otherwise what would the point of that operation be?

Again, assuming that spies are the cause of drastically inflated tax rates.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: licker

Eh?

If the spies 'bribed' your AI to not notice...

Otherwise what would the point of that operation be?

Again, assuming that spies are the cause of drastically inflated tax rates.

that is kinda what i said in option 1. the thing is the "ai" isn't really the AI so much as the rest of my empire and advisors.
so who did they bribe? they bribe local officials to raise taxes, and somehow nobody in the entire empire notices?
again, still assuming spies did that...

it makes more sense if the planet just had "-XX to morale due to enemy propaganda" or some such, which lasts a certain duration and then starts shrinking to nothing. or just literally lock the planet into rebellion without any morale penalties or bonuses.

[freeboy]

ok, so with an advanced in game system, terrible word choice will my computer suystem bog down .. a really big universe??? with my quad core running 2.6/ 6 gig ram, good video card?
This would be destressing as I thought my sys was prety good for this sort of thing???

[taltamir]

best i could get on my quad is 30% which is equivalent to 100% use on one core and 20% use on another and 0% on last two.
and yes... a really big universe will bog it down, play on smaller ones.

[freeboy]

or, simply wait for patches to optimise it or pass! [:(]

[ilovestrategy]

What does multithreading mean?

[taltamir]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multithreading