Hardware requirements

[Mathemagician]

I'm planning to host a MP game and wonder what hardware I should upgrade, since I'm already experiencing slower SP games (largest map) when they go longer.

Is RAM or processor or graphic card more important ? I would guess graphic card is my weak link, as actions like talking to AI leaders, zooming in and out of cities and moving city workers start to slow down easily. If I trade maps with an AI, the leader often freezes for several seconds.

I've got a notebook with 1.73 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM and a GeForce Go 6600 graphic card. I'm not really familiar with that technical stuff, but I would guess my RAM is sufficient and my graphic card is not.
Hard disc space is plentiful too, though badly split up into 3 partitions. Still, 20 GB free on my main drive.

I guess I should also reinstall my operating system (Win XP) and see what that does. Can Windows create a new boot disc itself and what data do I need to backup ?

Thanks for any answers.

[Blake]

I don't think graphic card is that big a deal, it's mostly a matter of how high you can push the detail settings.

Now the MOST important thing is to have enough RAM, I think that 1.25GB should be enough, but you can check task manager to see if your system has spare memory while running CIV. If the system starts thrashing (accessing the harddrive) then performance goes to hell, 2GB ram is always good - but basically you either have enough or you don't.

The faster the CPU, the better. It's as simple as that, if your CPU is twice as fast, then the in between turns takes half as long. CIV benefits surprisingly from a dual core processor, it's not designed to but it does. A modern CPU would be 10x faster than your current one but I suspect the notebook would have poor upgradeability in the CPU department (ie you'd need a new system to realize significant benefits).

[Mathemagician]

Thanks so far, Blake.

Do you know if the other players, being just clients, will need anything above the game's minimum requirements for the game to work out ?

Btw, last time I hosted a MP game, I had the problem that my units would only become active and let me give them orders once the other players had already had several seconds to play their turns, so my early turns basically just started when theirs were already done.
Can you help me with that ? Just a bad ping ?

[Mathemagician]

I'm a bit confused. It shows a constant 976-977 MB for the swapfile, but I don't hear my harddrive. It says something like "guaranteed memory" (freely translated from german) of exactly that amount. Does that mean the memory, and therefore the harddrive, is not actually used ?

[Blake]

What you care about is physical ram (% used), or swap file usage (% used). It's hard to get a straight answer out of windows as to how much ram is actually being used - in short it tends to use all of it (for various caching purposes), but if you can't hear the harddrive (thrashing) then you're probably good.

[Mathemagician]

Thanks again.

Now I wonder what to do about the graphics problems. Jungle at low resolution looks almost like grasslands IIRC.
And may I ask again about the delayed unit activation problem ?

[Blake]

Um that Graphics Card should be good enough to run CIV well with mediumish settings.

I dunno about delayed unit activation... hosting or not, it shouldn't particularly matter. All the computers do all the calculations anyway. You could ask in the MP Forum, someone may know more.