Optimization - request for improving game performance

[David]

If your game is slowing down beyond reasons that could be explained by the below paragraphs, you may provide us with your save game file and I will request the programmer to check it for you and see if there is any room for game performance improvement.

You could email the save game file me us at info@enlight.com.

If your save game file is too large for attachment, you may check out this post about how to send me large files: https://www.enlight.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2473

Reasons that could lead to game slowdown
In Capitalism Lab, whenever a new firm is set up and in operation, it requires additional CPU processing time. At the late stage of the game, where there are thousands of firms, the game will inevitably run more slowly.

We would like to draw a parallel to other strategy games like Civilization. When you play in a late game of Civilization, the AI also takes a long time to think and execute orders in a single game turn. In fact, it is inevitable that the more complex the game has become, the more CPU resources are required to process it. Please understand that this is not really a bug or a problem with the game, but merely a fact that more data require more CPU time to process.

Therefore, we would recommend that you start a game with fewer AI competitors (15 or fewer competitors) and fewer cities (4 or fewer cities) and see if your computer can handle it well.

Tips for improving game running speed
1) When you are viewing the firm detail window or the Information Center, the game will not have to update the city view underneath the information window every frame. (You will notice that the cars are not moving.) So always open an information window if possible. This could save a lot of graphic processing time especially when the city is packed with buildings.

Among the various types of screens on the Information Center, some will require more computer processing power to display than the others. The Farmer's Guide is the one that requires the least amount of processing power. So if you want the game time to pass without needing to have any interaction with the UI, you could just open Farmer's Guide and the game time will advance much faster.

2) You may also try using the DirectDraw mode which may improve the frame rate on some computer configurations, please see https://www.capitalismlab.com/directdraw/ for the details.

3) It is possible that when there are a larger number of AI companies, firms or cities in your game, the game speed will slow down because there are numerous things for the CPU to process. As the AI builds more firms, it inevitably takes longer to process them.

Reducing the number of cities and the number of AI companies will allow the game to run faster.

4) MODs with a large number of product types will slow down the game. We recommend that you play the game without MODs if you experience slow performance.

[james88]

David, is it at all possible we could remove the rest of the moving vehicles in game?
I noticed they had been lowered and performance improved greatly.

[ALICE]

No car needed.
I want to turn it off with an optional function.

[David]

David, is it at all possible we could remove the rest of the moving vehicles in game?
I noticed they had been lowered and performance improved greatly.

I will forward your suggestion to the dev team.

[David]

No car needed.
I want to turn it off with an optional function.

I will forward your suggestion to the dev team.

[buells]

If the number of firms is the problem, perhaps we should focus on reducing the number of firms required to achieve the same gameplay / strategic depth?

[Njeroe]

If the number of firms is the problem, perhaps we should focus on reducing the number of firms required to achieve the same gameplay / strategic depth?

I would like this as well being allowed to upgrade a store to sell more goods, allowing you to grow tall instead of wide. If you can for example sell the same amount of goods using 1 instead of 10 firms after upgrades would significantly reduce performance issues, AI needs to use the feature too ofcourse.

[David]

I would like this as well being allowed to upgrade a store to sell more goods, allowing you to grow tall instead of wide. If you can for example sell the same amount of goods using 1 instead of 10 firms after upgrades would significantly reduce performance issues, AI needs to use the feature too ofcourse.

I would recommend that you create a poll for your suggestion. You could see some examples in the Suggestions forum.

[kg79]

Is it technicaly possible to move Cap Lab one day to 64bit and make it also using several CPU threads? It would be a huge leap in performance. On my system (Ryzen 1700X, 32 GB RAM) the game is really playable, although I see some lags when the days move on. It does not make the game bad, as I don't concentrate on this, but maybe some more smoothness would help in future, especially when some game mechanics improvments would need more computing power. An improvement in performance would also give more headroom for pushing existing limts up, like maximum cities, max population, max AI and so on.

[paulwoman]

This would indeed be an excellent idea.

At present, 32-bit operating systems are less and less present and this would allow more than the 4 gb of RAM to be used as is currently the case.

Having said that, it is a game that requires few basic resources. It would have to add real value to make it "interesting" for the team to work on it.