MAKE YOUR GAME RUN FASTER: Fix is quick and dirty and real ugly.

[Sombrus]

Workers, by and large have been proven to cause the massive delays in turn times. The damned ModBuddy won't work for me, so here's how I did it. If you make a mod based on this premise, give me some love. Lord knows that there could be any number of additions made to this quick fix (making workers work faster based on number of production buildings you have comes to mind, or even simply running faster than normal so that epic and marathon games don't become war of the slavers)... but for now, we'll keep it simple.


Do this at your own risk, and remember to backup/save the file.


Goto: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\sid meier's civilization v\Assets\Gameplay\XML\Units


In that directory there will be a file: Civ5UnitClasses.XML

Open that with any basic text reading program (notepad for example).

near the top you'll see this:



<Row>
<Type>UNITCLASS_WORKER</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_WORKER</Description>
<DefaultUnit>UNIT_WORKER</DefaultUnit>
</Row>


change it to this:

<Row>
<Type>UNITCLASS_WORKER</Type>
<Description>TXT_KEY_UNIT_WORKER</Description>
<DefaultUnit>UNIT_WORKER</DefaultUnit>
<MaxGlobalInstances>60</MaxGlobalInstances>
<MaxPlayerInstances>1</MaxPlayerInstances>
</Row>


by adding this:
<MaxGlobalInstances>60</MaxGlobalInstances>
<MaxPlayerInstances>1</MaxPlayerInstances>




remember that having the correct tabbing/spacing is extremely important.


EFFECT: This will make it so that your civ, and all the other civs can ONLY produce 1 Worker, and the maximum number of workers that can be produced is sixty total. This will make "slaving" very important, though there are work arounds to even the 60 cap (such as enslaving a settler).

Your game will run MUCH faster. Even on HUGE maps with 22 civs and 28 city states you'll likely measure turns in seconds, rather than minutes.


This change has only been through the most basic of beta testing though so far I've discovered no ill effects.

Further, the above adjustment WILL CHANGE THE ACTUAL GAME... this is NOT a mod... hence why i strongly urge someone who can get the goddamn modbuddy working to produce a mod doing this as well as BACKING UP the original file.


Either way, hope this helps. I know it's changed the entire play experience for me for the better. Good luck.. and get working on this mod!!!

[inseeisyou]

Hopefully 2K cuts you a check for this although... as you said it is a pretty messy fix :P

[Easy Money]

I'd like to see something like one worker per city... Can that be modded?

[Sombrus]

Is it 60 workers per Civ or 60 workers for all the Civ's?

Sixty workers for the WORLD. This is because if you lose a worker, you can rebuild it (someone slaves yours). Given enough time you'd end up with a ton of workers and thereby defeating the purpose. the above cap ensures that you have a little leeway even if you have 22 civs and 28 city states (everyone still gets at least one and you can still lose a few).

Either way, this will WILDLY increase the speed of your game. It's almost night and day.

[Easy Money]

Sounds good, I'll have to try it. Also, there was a trick that was available in Civ II that if you held the left-Shift down that it would speed up the AI turns. I've tried it a couple of times in V when the turns are going on and on and it seems to work (AI turn ends within a second of my holding down the left-shift key). Have no idea why this works, but I remember it from back in the day...

[Varus2319]

I remember reading a claim from 2k Greg that the devs weren't sure that workers were causing the lag issues.

Apart from being an awesome fix in its own right, the very least this does is drive home the point to 2k.

YES, the workers are the problem. Probably a patchable issue.

[Beliathon]

There's only one problem with this:

How do you actually play a game with ONE worker ?

Even on a small map, within the first 100 turns you're generally going to have at least 3 - 5 cities. One worker to improve 5 cities ?

No thanks. This is not a fix unless this 1 worker can complete any task within 1 turn. Even then, you're still going to have serious financial and happiness difficulties while playing this way. 3 workers per player would be much more reasonable. I'm going to try that.

[Lomi]

If you change this line <MaxPlayerInstances>1</MaxPlayerInstances>
to
<MaxPlayerInstances>3</MaxPlayerInstances>

woukld that limit it to 3 workers per civ?

[Sombrus]

Indeed it would. But keep in mind this means that the other civs will also all have three workers AND you'd have to increase the max number globally.

it starts to compound and quickly.

As to the complaint that 1 worker for five cities... slaving helps alot. The other civs will be doing it, you should too.


I never said it was a perfect Fix...but it really does increase the game incredibly and the whole thing runs much much smoother.

[Sombrus]

I remember reading a claim from 2k Greg that the devs weren't sure that workers were causing the lag issues.

Apart from being an awesome fix in its own right, the very least this does is drive home the point to 2k.

YES, the workers are the problem. Probably a patchable issue.

I have the game running in the background, huge map, max number of civs and city states. It's essentially running auto now as a form of beta test. I can alt tab like nothing.

[Kruelgor]

What lag issue? Oh well.

If there is a lag issue I have a hunch it might be related to the intro movie video. Here's a clue. When I'm playing the actual game and I press Alt+Tab and I can see a listing of all the running applications it shows an image of the video for Civ5, not an image of the game I'm playing.

So, I'm thinking there might be some portions of the video applet still running during the duration of the game.

[Sombrus]

What lag issue? Oh well.

If there is a lag issue I have a hunch it might be related to the intro movie video. Here's a clue. When I'm playing the actual game and I press Alt+Tab and I can see a listing of all the running applications it shows an image of the video for Civ5, not an image of the game I'm playing.

So, I'm thinking there might be some portions of the video applet still running during the duration of the game.

Perhaps you've got the latest Crey in your backpocket... but for the rest of us luddites on abbaci the game runs like ☺☺☺☺ on huge maps.


Interestingly enough my little fix reduced the memory usage from 2.4 gigs to 2.07 on my machine.

[Luger]

If you actually do this in a mod and it would be easy to do. It would be worth speeding up improvement construction speed too. That would balance things out somewhat.

[Sombrus]

If you actually do this in a mod and it would be easy to do. It would be worth speeding up improvement construction speed too. That would balance things out somewhat.

I'd do it but modbuddy hates my guts... so someone else will have to. Just be sure to mention me. =)

[Ruben Thomas]

Thanks for this fix, I just "installed" it. Hoping it will work, I usually play on marathon and the AI can really go crazy with worker spam and just move them back and forth. Really annoying, so here goes nothing!

Thanks again! I'll report back if it works.

[psikoticsilver]

Perhaps you've got the latest Crey in your backpocket... but for the rest of us luddites on abbaci the game runs like ☺☺☺☺ on huge maps.

Don't mind Kruelgor at any rate, he was just as bad in World in Conflict as he is here.

Hey Kruelgor

[vonfidde]

Hmmm gotta try this out, i guess i will have 3 workers atleast per player. So perhaps i dont get that huge speedbuff but i guess its alot better then with normal settings. Anyway thanks for the info!

[oolon]

There's really no reason to ever alter the core files. Just create a mod that does the same thing, and load it each time you play.

[usi DirTyDeeDs]

thanks for your effort. Now, if 2K/Nvidia can fix SLI, I will be golden!

[Sombrus]

There's really no reason to ever alter the core files. Just create a mod that does the same thing, and load it each time you play.

If you can make a modfile, post it. I'll even put a link to it in the OP if you can.

You'll likely want to boost the rate workers work, probably to around 120 or so (because if you boost it any faster getting the worker policy buff and pyramids means on quick you wave your hand and a farm appears). This will also help differentiate them from the roman legions who, under this "adjustment" become incredibly powerful. In fact, you may actually want to SLOW the legions down and give them a secondary ability (such as building forts) to offset it.

[AlexFury]

Hell, outside of the VERY start, I rarely have even 1 worker/city. Usually it's 1:3 or less. As I tend to minimize how quickly my cities grow, I don't need much in the way of workers. if you've got 3 citizens, and the next isn't due for 12 turns.. what's the point of having 4 workers improving every single tile? As soon as I get the main production/food tiles set-up. i'll often sell off a worker for the 20-gold.

[Ruben Thomas]

Alright, I've tested it successfully

As for whether or not it works in itself, it definitely does, as far as if it limits you to one worker per civ or not. It doesn't even let you start production of any new workers after your first in any city. The worker unit doesn't even show up on the build tab.

The AI civs can't build more than one either, never saw a civ with more than one after my game finished.

As for whether or not it made turns faster/improved the speed of the gameplay... to be honest it was hard to tell, it didn't seem alot faster than when I normally play; but then again I only got to turn 347 (I got conquered lol, wasn't paying enough attention since I was busy scouting around for enemy workers).

So in conclusion, looks like it works, I'll have to get a 1000 turn marathon on huge going before I can say with 100% certainty, but so far so good

Thanks man!

[Sombrus]

Alright, I've tested it successfully

As for whether or not it works in itself, it definitely does, as far as if it limits you to one worker per civ or not. It doesn't even let you start production of any new workers after your first in any city. The worker unit doesn't even show up on the build tab.

Yuppers, though you CAN acquire more units (as it's clear you're aware of from below)

The AI civs can't build more than one either, never saw a civ with more than one after my game finished.

As for whether or not it made turns faster/improved the speed of the gameplay... to be honest it was hard to tell, it didn't seem alot faster than when I normally play; but then again I only got to turn 347 (I got conquered lol, wasn't paying enough attention since I was busy scouting around for enemy workers).

See, and that's what you'll have to see. The worker issue is an "expontial" one (hope I'm using the word right). You start off with two civs, each with one worker. We'll say for the sake of brevity the map is 100 tiles total. This means that you have to scan 200 tiles. Well, you bring in two more civs, but now you let each civ have two workers... so four civs, 2 workers each... 800 tile counts.. now we have 22 civs, and 28 city states, with an average of around 10 workers a piece.. on a huge map, which we'll say is 1000 tiles. Now we're doing five hundred thousand tile counts per turn.

I noticed on my task manager that I went from using up 2.4 gigs on Civ running a huge map to 2.07 gigs.

So in conclusion, looks like it works, I'll have to get a 1000 turn marathon on huge going before I can say with 100% certainty, but so far so good

Thanks man!

no problem! Thanks for testing!

[Casta]

I am not sure about the specifics here but I am 100% sure that sometimes, and I do not know when, a captured worker will have an upkeep in gold.

I found out about this because I couldn't make sense of my unit upkeep being too high, then I disbanded a worker and got 7!!!! more gold per turn. After that I disbanded all my workers as I couldn't distinguish which ones I build myself and got a significant larger gold per turn. The number 7 is not definitive, sometimes it is more sometimes less.

I am positive that workers you build yourself (no matter how many) will never have a gpt cost, but everytime you capture a worker some of them will have an upkeep. This seems very random and broken and I have been unable to find any information about it in the civpedia or anywhere else, but from now on I always delete any captured workers to be sure I am not paying insane upkeep costs.

If I had to capture a workerforce using this workaround I would quickly be very poor :/

[vonfidde]

Gotta ask, if i have a totallimit of 50, for 22 cities and 28 citystates. If a worker or settler is captured what happens then?

Bah nvm :O, cant remove post dammit.

[Sombrus]

If I had to capture a workerforce using this workaround I would quickly be very poor :/

Then don't do it? I'm not really seeing the problem here. It's a matter of cost-benefits. If you engage in the practice of slaving you gain an advantage but that advantage may be outweighed by the costs. I find that rather balancing.

[Perkus]

Interesting workaround, Sombrus. So nobody has tried to mod this up yet? I think the best way to do this without drastically changing gameplay would be to compensate the loss of additional workers by speeding up the time required to complete worker actions significantly. I.e. Roads/Railroads in 1 turn, and nothing longer than 2 or 3 turns. So that your 1 worker can get much more done. It might also be a good plan to raise their movement speed from 2 to 3 or even 4, so they can get around between cities as needed faster. Otherwise you'll see major balance shifts in being able to improve enough tiles to maintain economy, gain the railroad production bonuses, etc.

I think I'll try to take a swing at this myself. But I'm having trouble so far finding the database table that controls the # turns required for improvements / landscaping. I don't suppose anyone knows where that is? I'm pretty sure it should be moddable...

EDIT: Never mind, I found it: the table is "Builds", field "Time".

[Perkus]

Ok, I've thrown together an actual mod to test this stuff out with, particularly with my idea of trying to rebalance it by speeding up the workers significantly. From my readme.txt:

--
It's been discovered that large amounts of workers are what slows down the enemy turns the most. See http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94139 and http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=94687 for evidence and discussion. This mod is a "speed hack" to allow playing large maps without turns taking several minutes later in the game.

1) Limits all civs to ONE worker. Can't build more if you have at least one. Note that you can still capture workers as before to gain more.

2) As compensation, gives workers 4 moves, not 2. Also, all work is done much faster. Most things take a base of 2 turns now. Roads, pillage repair, road removal, and clearing forests take just 1 turn. Oil wells take 3.

Yes, we're aware that this distorts balance significantly at the beginning, and if you happen to capture a lot of enemy workers! Until we get a proper patch, consider this an experimental alternative. You can report feedback in the above threads.
--

You can grab this at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=C49OY79K. It's a WinRAR file, extract into your Mods directory (probably in your Documents/My Games). I don't want to make this public through the game's mod browser yet, until I get some feedback or test with it more myself. I haven't tried this beyond a few turns at this time... As such, it's marked Experimental. But it should all work, unless the city AI gets confused when it can't make more workers.

NOTE: I didn't put any global limit in yet. I'm not sure it's the right thing to do. A civ could conceivably get stuck with NO workers at all if the limit has been reached and it gets its only worker stolen. That would suck... Also the limit should really based on # civs in the game, and I'm not sure how to code that. Without any cap, if some civ(s) keep making workers that get captured, the game could still start to bog down. I'm hoping this scenario is fairly unlikely. The player is the most likely to capture many workers, but with how fast they now are, it's now fiscally prudent to delete most of them anyway.

If anyone tries this and plays a real game with it, let me know how it went, so I can tweak it if necessary...

[TokyoZeplin]

I remember reading a claim from 2k Greg that the devs weren't sure that workers were causing the lag issues.

Apart from being an awesome fix in its own right, the very least this does is drive home the point to 2k.

YES, the workers are the problem. Probably a patchable issue.

Indeed. There's already another thread on this, with extensive testing done, that shows that while Workers aren't the ONLY problem, they ARE a BIG part of it.

[hodjibran]

I reinstalled the game on a new computer...I will try the fix and see how goes it...Ive also noticed the movie thingie running in the background....hmmmmm

[QuantumTarantino]

I reinstalled the game on a new computer...I will try the fix and see how goes it...Ive also noticed the movie thingie running in the background....hmmmmm

Don't - This thread is 18 months old, and dangerously out of date.