Of micro stuttering to stop-and-go

[AlphaRay]

Hello,

i've this problems with the Alpha X (my first contact with this superb game):

The bug occurs only after a few minutes to half an hour to game time: the game will not run smooth. Scrolling and animations are stopped and started again in intervals. Either two or three stops in a second (the whole time since it begins), or sometimes two seconds of playing time and a half-second "break" which decreses to about one second playing and half second break. Sometimes the whole game becomes faster! All units are moving/collection two/three times faster.

After restarting the game, it starts up again after a certain time. The game begins here to be unplayable :/

CPU usage drops significantly from these breaks. In Task Manager, you can see a clear zig-zag of about 5 to 50% of one of the cores.

My PC:

AMD A6-3670K (4x2,8 Ghz) with 8 GB RAM. Windows Vista 64 Bit.

[dvangennip]

Hi, the lag is a known problem with the game. Basically the bots take up too much time to make their decisions, plus the pathfinding is not yet optimal. I think a new bot to be included with Alpha 11 might help a little towards the lag. One other problem is that the game is single-threaded, so only one core is used. With a quad core processor it means there is a lot of processing power which could be thrown at the aforementioned problems, but the game is not yet ready to do that

Edited August 28, 2012 by dvangennip

[AlphaRay]

Hi,

but a lag don't speed up the game (faster moving/collecting of units). Or is this the same origin of bug? I've read about lagging, but not that the game was running faster.

The second, i know that the game is single threaded What i tried to say is, that the game uses only maximum half of the core - so i don't understand why it is lagging. A core consumption of 99 - 100 % can explain a slow down or lag in game.

So let us wait for Alpha 11...

[zoot]

Yes, it's the same issue. After a period of lag, the engine attempts to compensate by speeding up the simulation. That the game only uses half of the power of a core can be due to bottlenecks (e.g. waiting for disk or memory access).

[ralphierocks]

I read up on this and understand everything that is happening. My experience is redundant each time I play;

Roughly 30-45 minutes into game (non-scenario game, small map, no oceans, 1 computer AI opponent) the game starts to stutter to the point that it is nearly non-playable. It takes 4-5 times more to do tasks than before and every second of gameplay is followed by at least 1-2 seconds of pausing. When I manage to grin and bear it, I create an army and march towards the enemy. In every single game I have played the computer AI has created an army of villagers that just stand around a mill or food supply drop. There are 40+ of these villagers not doing anything, once I unleash my archers and cavalry to reduce the number of (idle or broken) villagers the game resumes to normal speed with no issues what so ever. Unfortunately it appears as if the AI has surrendered because they will not create any more troops at this point so it's basically a slaughter. These experiences are when playing against the qBot. I am going to fraps record the whole gameplay from start to finish so I can pinpoint exactly when the AI "gives up".

So I survive the first 3-4 waves of troops from the enemy, they create a mass army of nothing but villagers and randomly collect resources without rhyme or reason.

I tried the new bot with the Alpha 11 update by I find it to be OP'ed, able to send a large army within the first 10 minutes of gameplay. I don't find it challenging, I just find it rather extreme and it creates a situation where I cannot fully enjoy the game as I am forced to destroy them within 30 minutes of playing and without reaching any upgrades for my civ's. So for me it's like there is this whole other half of a game that your not able to experience because your forced into combat at such an early stage and once you destroy a few of their villagers they simply quit as well.