Huge + Terra + 18 Civs = awesome game

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by LaRusso
by the time you get to your 10th post, you will see all sorts of amazing things.

I suspect that even after he gets past, say, his 300th post, he'll still be amazed to find someone using the "Oh you're just a silly Settler, your opinion is worthless to me" attitude to summarily dismiss a legitimate point of view.

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by LordShiva


I suspect that even after he gets past, say, his 300th post, he'll still be amazed to find someone using the "Oh you're just a silly Settler, your opinion is worthless to me" attitude to summarily dismiss a legitimate point of view.

Ah the ad hominem falacy...

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

[Fidel]

Originally posted by LordShiva
I suspect that even after he gets past, say, his 300th post, he'll still be amazed to find someone using the "Oh you're just a silly Settler, your opinion is worthless to me" attitude to summarily dismiss a legitimate point of view.

not at all. now that you are both figting for the same cause, mortals will tremble.

[sophist]

Originally posted by MrTolls
Does the alt-tab trick indicate memory leaks or something? Any tech-gurus around?

Short answer: no. The game is still running, so Windows doesn't try to reclaim its memory. You'd have to exit completely for that to happen, or even reboot (in case of certain types of leaks).

[Solver]

Originally posted by meel
I am, time and again, amazed there are people who think "should I build a grocer or a bank this turn" is NOT boring. Without a decent combat system, this game is gonna be a snoozer for most people.

Get a good book and one of those little bird-things that can peck at the Enter key before playing an Epic game, or you'll go nuts or fall asleep or just shelve it.

And I am quite amazed by people who think that always going for conquest is not boring.

Really, though, there is quite a good number of builders who prefer to play their games with very few wars. So what they want is a good game as far as the actual building parts go.

[Apocalypse Cow]

I'm currently playing a large Terra map, and I'm at about 1800 AD, and there are no slowdown issues whatsoever. My specs:

P4 2.4 GHz
1 GB OCZ RAM
I forget what video card I have, but its a 256 MB RAM one.
Windows 2000 SP4

The thing that helped me(I got 2 CTDs on this map starting up) was to change my virtual memory upper limit to the 4095 max and to tell it to use the VRAM optimized for applications, not background services. Oh, and I always shut down all my extraneous processes while playing any game.

[ElConejo]

Originally posted by Apocalypse Cow
I'm currently playing a large Terra map, and I'm at about 1800 AD, and there are no slowdown issues whatsoever. My specs:

P4 2.4 GHz
1 GB OCZ RAM
I forget what video card I have, but its a 256 MB RAM one.
Windows 2000 SP4

The thing that helped me(I got 2 CTDs on this map starting up) was to change my virtual memory upper limit to the 4095 max and to tell it to use the VRAM optimized for applications, not background services. Oh, and I always shut down all my extraneous processes while playing any game.

Call me stupid but, where do you do that from?

[ChaotikVisions]

I played a huge/terra/epic/13 ai civs game into the later 1700s and was getting 2min turns or so, some lag moving around between old and new world but mostly alright. All the graphical fluff was disabled along with viewing enemy/friend moves and quick combat on as well. My system is:

P4 1.6ghz
512mb PC2100 DDR Ram
64mb GF2MX200
Sound Blaster Live!

Other settings: 256mb AGP Aperature size, all video card options tweaked towards performance with anti-aliasing/ansitropic forced off. I also have my swapfile set to 1536mb.

I do plan the finish the game sometime as it would be interesting to pull off a win from where I started. But in the meanwhile i've been playing epic/pangea/standard/11 civ maps, lots of fun and lots of wars.

[meel]

Always going for anything will be boring after a while, of course, but it'd be nice to have options.

They need a build and combat system that are both entertaining, and many people seem to be less than thrilled with the combat system in this version. And I'm not really sure how the building part is any different than previous versions, other than a queue. Is it more fun to build in this game than previously? I guess there's more options to build things now that they have more than a generic temple, you can build 7 temples! More = more fun!

Originally posted by Solver


And I am quite amazed by people who think that always going for conquest is not boring.

Really, though, there is quite a good number of builders who prefer to play their games with very few wars. So what they want is a good game as far as the actual building parts go.

[Master-Mike]

I have a P4 3.4, 128mb Radeon X8500, 2 gig ram. Game runs fine on the biggest maps, with all civs. Maybe a tiny bit of delay like 1-2 seconds, no complaints here.

P.S get more ram, its cheap enough.

[padillah]

Originally posted by sophist


Short answer: no. The game is still running, so Windows doesn't try to reclaim its memory. You'd have to exit completely for that to happen, or even reboot (in case of certain types of leaks).

Kind of. An Alt-Tab will place a program into the background. Background tasks are handled, memory-wise, differently than foreground tasks. They can get swapped out to disk if they are dormant for an amount of time. They can get shifted in memory in preparation for swapping to disk (personaly I think this is what does it).

Windows doesn't reclaim it's memory but it does do various things with the program in dealing with it as a "background task".

Tom P.

[padillah]

Originally posted by ElConejo

Originally posted by Apocalypse Cow
The thing that helped me(I got 2 CTDs on this map starting up) was to change my virtual memory upper limit to the 4095 max and to tell it to use the VRAM optimized for applications, not background services. Oh, and I always shut down all my extraneous processes while playing any game.

Call me stupid but, where do you do that from?

Which?

Setting the virtual memory options is done in the Control Panel->System->Advanced Tab->Performance.

Shutting down everything else is done in the various icons in the system tray, clock tray, and Task Manager.

Tom P.

[Shogun Gunner]

My second cIV game is an epic, huge, arch game with 11 civs. I love playing civ on this scale. Next time, I'm doing 18 civs.

Watching all enemy moves does whip the camera around, sometimes I make the mistake of leaving the screen zoomed all the way in.

I've noticed no slowdowns at all. I'm in mid 20th century right now. I have an Athlon 3400, 1.5 gig RAM, 256 nVidia.

It *IS* hard to be a warmonger in this game. The distance with the arch map makes it even more difficult than a continent map.

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Sirian
Huge Terra is not for the weak of machine. Seriously.

Any suggestions for the best way to improve our chances of playing huge games?

i.e. is RAM the critical issue, CPU/GPU speed, GPU RAM, etc

[akamal]

Any suggestions for the best way to improve our chances of playing huge games?

Now, I may be just a settler so feel free to ignore me, but comparing what I've been reading to my experience I would say RAM is the most important thing for a smooth game on huge worlds.

For reference my system spec is:
P4 3GHz
ATI 9800 Pro (hardly high end!)
2Gb RAM
I play at 1280*1024, high detail everything but not Anti-Aliasing

I've just completed an 18 opponent game on the huge Earth map and it was perfectly playable. The only issues that I found, I consider to be very minor. They were:

- Long pauses when trading maps (20-30secs), but only when the amount of the map being revealed changed significantly. Once the majority of the map is visible things returned to normal.

- Globe view generally very slow. I would estimate sub 15fps. This is the same for me even on standard maps though, and suspect my be related to the overly for the clouds.

- Loading times of about 1min 30secs - 2 mins from about 1400AD onward, and about the same length for the first End Turn after loading. Normal End Turns generally seem to take less than 30secs in the late game.

I also have show friendly/enemy moves turned off, as otherwise the LOS from religon pushes turn times well over 2mins, due to the number of units moving about.

I haven't experienced any slowdown from the game itself, no CTD's, and the wonder movies are smooth.

The only unusual thing I've noticed is my system temps seem about 5 degrees higher (CPU and GPU) when playing CIV than compared to anything else. I can't really work why this would be, the load can't really be that much higher than other games can it?
Never the less this could well be the cause of some of the more random glitches/crashes, if peoples cooling is marginal.