A SMAC team for the Civ IV about-to-be-set-up Democracy Team game?

[GeoModder]

I want my forges now!

And to Hades with those mortals "health" problems!

[Jamski]

You know what I mean

[Mart]

Having some experience from play, I would recommend 2 things:

- playing on tiny size world. My hardware specs are minimal and normal size is too slow even in reviewing turns. I would guess many more people will be in similar situation.
Tiny is still large enough, and having 4 civs there total I can have over 10 cities with no problem, the same as other AI ones. I would not be afraid to go for up to 8 civs, but that would need to be tested.

- Definitely "Quick" game. It still has 295 turns, as someone counted. And playing a game like that I have yet a lot of "nothing to do" turns. I would seriously consider making even a special mod for 150-200 turns. More similar to SMAC number of turns in typical game. With numerous teams this will significantly help to have an enjoyable game. I played C3CDG. With 500 turns the game went to crazy 12 hours per team. Finally there was no team play and deadlines were often not met. Not enough time for discussing things etc.

[binTravkin]

You know what I mean

I guess yes..
I will contact my sages and a new deity will soon be born in Alpha Centauri team..

Definitely "Quick" game. It still has 295 turn

I fully agree with you there. In SMAC one can win in 70 turns on a Large map (Buster as Miriam if you ask), thus the natural interest of our team (and actually all teams) would be to lessen the turn count so we do not wait endlessly before interesting things start happening..
Don't argue here that SMAC is a faster game - I understand it, but 295 vs ~100 ?
I hope you're not trying to say it's 3times faster..

- playing on tiny size world. My hardware specs are minimal and normal size is too slow even in reviewing turns. I would guess many more people will be in similar situation.
Tiny is still large enough, and having 4 civs there total I can have over 10 cities with no problem, the same as other AI ones. I would not be afraid to go for up to 8 civs, but that would need to be tested.

I will probably be purchasing a new PC - I've considered it for some time now and this could be the right time to, therefore it's no problem with me.
I would suggest a medium sized map, so we have some room to play.

[Mart]

Last time I checked:

Duel 24x48 (Igues 48, if it is 2x as usual)
Tiny 32x64
Small 40x80

The one 32x64 (Tiny) is actually quite large one. Like small in SMAC.

About a game being fast:
It is a balance of how fast can you research technologies. Demo game would be more interesting if you do not end it by conquest with warriors befor swordsman for example, but have chance to build a nuke or two. And spaceship...
In SMAC you can win by technology pretty fast. In civ3 it was not so, that's what I mean here. In SMAC you might reach quite high science due to investing in energy. In civ4 you have cottages for example, that with growth to cities give you more and more gold. However, money hurrying stuff requires Democracy - late in tech tree. And... does Pyramids allow you to get it faster? All civics in government? You can also have slavery... sacrificing population for production...

Just adding. The thing with Pyramids might be unbalancing.
And still, not everyone will buy new hardware next week.

[Mart]

Estimating more or less:
3 tiles spacing between cities give you 9 tiles per city. Then assuming 50 % oceans on:

Duel map - 64 cities
Tiny map - 113 cities
Small map - 177 cities

Assuming 8 teams, AI or human:

Duel map - 8 cities/player
Tiny map - 14 cities/player
Small map - 22 cities/player

[binTravkin]

K, if you really say that Tiny is 14 cities per player, we could go with it or small (does it still load k for you?).

[Mart]

It's not only about if it is ok for me.
Many people have low specs, and there will be people like that in other teams too. Just considering possible format of the game. I have exactly minimum at RAM and videoRAM. Although processor is 2.8 GHz P4. I think I have a feel of performance for the minimum specs.

It is 14 for Tiny if you pack cities possibly densly and have 50 % ocean. Some players will more spread cities.

Anyway it is only consideration here. Something to think about. The best way to find out settings is to play singleplayer with such settings and see.

[binTravkin]

P4 2.8 and 256 RAM, 64 vRAM?!?

You must be kidding. That's the stupidest combo I've ever seen (even better than C 2.2 + 128 RAM).
Next time you buy PC, make sure you actually buy PC, not CPU.

AMD 2GHz, 512 RAM and 128 vRAM (around what Im planning to purchase), plus a good motherboard (not the one for which this CPU is the biggest possible, rather the other way) would run the game 2 times smoother than that!

[Mart]

it's mobile, BinTravkin. I chose it intentionally to have fast CPU. Gaming was not my priority. It is a success I have 64 vRAM, that was max I could get 2 years ago in a laptop for the money I had. I saved on RAM also intentionally. it's the lowest I could get. coz now, if I do stupid thing spending money on game-enhancing hardware, it is the easiest thing to do - unscrew - open - insert - screw back.
Speaking of, I'll better check what is the price of 512 chip.

[Mart]

As far as I know, AMD have more troubles with heat dissipation. And one of the biggest laptop problems is that they do get overheated. Unless something changed there re AMD.

[binTravkin]

Speaking of, I'll better check what is the price of 512 chip.

Yeah, and install some sort of speedmeter before you change em, run the meter, change and run again.
Suprise awaits you.

The thing is a big CPU with sh^t peryphery is practically the same as sh^t CPU with the same peryphery - it runs faster minor apps that take <1/2 of your RAM, but once you start using swapfile for that app, it falls to unacceptable level.
I bet cIV uses some 200Mb RAM or more if allowed, thus your speed is most likely problem of swapfile speed (= HDD speed which tends to not be good for laptops), what hints at it the most is the fact you have problems with bigger mapsizes.

As far as I know, AMD have more troubles with heat dissipation. And one of the biggest laptop problems is that they do get overheated. Unless something changed there re AMD.

They do have troubles but HP9010 with AMD 2.4 and more runs just fine apart from being noisy sometimes.

[binTravkin]

Update on our glorious deity list

[Mart]

well, if I write something that uses little memory I still have fast CPU. There were times when software was optimized. Not like today that most of memory usage might be reduced by better programming. Sure I have problems with software that eats memory.
I saved only on RAM, that I can always upgrade. Anything more than 64 vRAM dedicated memory was just beyond what I could pay.
bus speed is 533 MHz, still what is standard I believe
maybe 4200 RPM hard drive is slow compared to 7200, but still an option today as the slowest one

so 512 Mb costs $179

nope, not today. I choose Tiny world... some years ago I experimented into laptop memories not from original manufacturers, so I would not go to some generic brands.

On the other hand, I might find the same chip cheaper. might work.

[binTravkin]

maybe 4200 RPM hard drive is slow compared to 7200, but still an option today as the slowest one

Get rid of it ASAP.
This is your biggest speed problem.
I bet you've never seen the difference between 5.4 and 7.2 if you talk about 4.2 vs 7.2 so unemotionally.