Civ5 to bring my PC to its knees, do not want

[Seggybop]

Uh oh, this new game requires a CPU that's been widely available for over 3 years in order to run at optimal settings! I can't imagine what the developers were thinking, trying to actually usefully exploit modern commodity computer hardware. What a terrible idea.

I mean, the cheapest quad-core CPU on newegg is over $75. Who could possibly afford that kind of extreme high-end part simply to play a current game on maximum detail? Quite absurd ~_~

[Stofsk]

I'm really struggling to understand the controversy in this thread. The minimum requirements say 'dual core'. Who cares what they recommend? The minimum is the only thing you need to look at to determine whether you can play a game or not.

[Stark]

Uh oh, this new game requires a CPU that's been widely available for over 3 years in order to run at optimal settings! I can't imagine what the developers were thinking, trying to actually usefully exploit modern commodity computer hardware. What a terrible idea.

I mean, the cheapest quad-core CPU on newegg is over $75. Who could possibly afford that kind of extreme high-end part simply to play a current game on maximum detail? Quite absurd ~_~

A largely static turn-based game being a performance pusher? Sounds normal to me! After all if a box can push millions of polys a second in Gangbusters The Nosehairening, why wouldn't they be happy to pay more money to play a series of postcards overlaid on a spreadsheet?

[Stofsk]

Yeah, exactly. I'm with Seaskimmer on this, I bet it's bullshit.

Even if it really does require a quad core for Super Optimised Hyper Fast Gameplay... um, just turn the settings down for fuck's sake. Civ games are easily moddable. Ironically, the mods are even better than the original game.

[Vympel]

'Minimum requirements' are almost always a lie - i.e. they are way too low for the game to be playable. Your requirements should really be closer to the recommended specs - the closer you get to minimum, the more rubbish the game runs, as a general rule.

I hope they're realistic, but I don't have a lot of hope. Oh well, I'll probably be upgraded by the time I play Civ5 anyway.

[Stark]

It's likely the CPU load will be AI, and you'd think a dimple option would let you scale it.

But this is Firaxis.

[Seggybop]

A largely static turn-based game being a performance pusher? Sounds normal to me! After all if a box can push millions of polys a second in Gangbusters The Nosehairening, why wouldn't they be happy to pay more money to play a series of postcards overlaid on a spreadsheet?

Real-time vs. turn-based is irrelevant; with turn-based, higher processing requirements translate into greater time between turns rather than lag but substantial computation is still necessary anyway

Brute-force AI like they're probably using should be easily parallelizable so you could theoretically split it among an arbitrary number of cores and get near-linear performance improvement. I don't understand why you think this is a bad thing (do you want people with modern computers to be capped at performance levels from 4 years ago?) or even why you find quad-core to be such an impressive piece of gear (maybe you guys in Australia are stuck with prices from 3 years ago or something). Regardless, fewer cores simply means it'll either take longer to process a turn, or you'll need to make the AI dumber if you want the same period. Nothing especially unreasonable.

[Stofsk]

'Minimum requirements' are almost always a lie - i.e. they are way too low for the game to be playable. Your requirements should really be closer to the recommended specs - the closer you get to minimum, the more rubbish the game runs, as a general rule.

That sounds like nonsense to me. Why even have minimum vs recommended requirements anyway?

I hope they're realistic, but I don't have a lot of hope. Oh well, I'll probably be upgraded by the time I play Civ5 anyway.

lol

I've considered upgrading, but certainly not to play a Civ game.

[Vympel]

That sounds like nonsense to me. Why even have minimum vs recommended requirements anyway?

I dunno, to fool people who can't hope to run the game to buy it anyway. Its quite common. You've never heard of this? I thought everyone knew this stuff.

I've considered upgrading, but certainly not to play a Civ game.

Its not to play a civ game. I was always going to upgrade at the end of this year, my PC's 4 years old in October. I want a Windows 7 machine with a DX11 graphics card. I want to play Just Cause 2 and shit (i.e. every other game that runs DX10 and 11 with fancy schmancy features).

[adam_grif]

I've considered upgrading, but certainly not to play a Civ game.

This and Deus Ex 3 (unless the PC version is gimped) are making me lean towards an upgrade in the near future.

[Stark]

Real-time vs. turn-based is irrelevant; with turn-based, higher processing requirements translate into greater time between turns rather than lag but substantial computation is still necessary anyway

When talking about performance expectations, the fact a game does essentially nothing 99% or 99.9% of the time is irrelevant. You heard it here first.

Maybe with other improvements they've resolved some of the lategame turn-time blowout issues ... but I'm not optimistic.

Brute-force AI like they're probably using should be easily parallelizable so you could theoretically split it among an arbitrary number of cores and get near-linear performance improvement. I don't understand why you think this is a bad thing (do you want people with modern computers to be capped at performance levels from 4 years ago?) or even why you find quad-core to be such an impressive piece of gear (maybe you guys in Australia are stuck with prices from 3 years ago or something). Regardless, fewer cores simply means it'll either take longer to process a turn, or you'll need to make the AI dumber if you want the same period. Nothing especially unreasonable.

Did you just repeat what people have been saying since post 2 or ... what? The adults have even talked about other games having options for such. Can you read?

And yeah sorry, I'll probably never upgrade my computer again because there's nothing worth playing on the platform I can't already play. A strategy game that should be resource-light isn't going to change that, especially if it's laughably requiring hardware that far more visually impressive games don't, and particularly since its AI is frankly likely to be rubbish anyway.

[Slacker]

I was planning on getting this before the computer upgrade, looks like it's going to be after. Sadly I haven't had a major upgrade in a good five or so years, was hoping to push it off another few months.

[Starglider]

It's probably technically possible to rewrite the AI to run mostly on the GPU, although that's very difficult programming that the developer likely doesn't have anyone competent to do. That would let you run at several times the speed on a dual-core, but then you'd just be bitching and whining about needing a DirectX 11 graphics card instead. Obviously the developer isn't going to do this as a lot more people have quad core CPUs than Radeon 5xxx or Nvidia 4xx series GPUs.

What would be hilarious is if the developer said 'Due to cheapskate whiners bitching about how our last game was unplayable on ancient PCs, our next game will use cloud-based AI. Fast turn times at max difficultly on a netbook! Sure it needs a constant connection to our servers, but everyone has a perfectly reliable 24/7 internet connection now and you can trust us not to underprovision the servers or turn them off in a few years time!'

[Norade]

If they did that I'd just sit and laugh at all the Aussies that still couldn't play it.

[aieeegrunt]

Well the upgrade requirement plus the steam thing in order to play a turn based strategy game means this will be the first Civ game that doesn't devour 6 months of my life after release.

[Stark]

If they did that I'd just sit and laugh at all the Aussies that still couldn't play it.

Nobody cares about latency in a turn based game.

[Norade]

If they did that I'd just sit and laugh at all the Aussies that still couldn't play it.

Nobody cares about latency in a turn based game.

True, and for all your net based trouble you do get to rent PC games for nothing and I surer as shit can't do that where I am. I can still laugh at you for having such harsh data transfer caps though.

[adam_grif]

Just thought I'd leave this here to gauge some reactions. I do not approve.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

This thread is hilarious. The said peopel grumbling about spending a few hundred dollars to get their PCs up and running on this game, of which the recommended specs are practically for PCs 3 years old and over, spend hundreds on consoles and typically more expensive console games.

Oh cry me a fucking river.

[General Zod]

This thread is hilarious. The said peopel grumbling about spending a few hundred dollars to get their PCs up and running on this game, of which the recommended specs are practically for PCs 3 years old and over, spend hundreds on consoles and typically more expensive console games.

Oh cry me a fucking river.

You're a retard. If I'm going to spend $200 to play games, I want to be able to play more than one. What kind of idiot spends $200 on their cpu just to play one game when most games will work on lower specced hardware? Likewise, I'm not going to buy a console just to play one game. But obviously you don't understand the concept of getting your money's worth.

[Samuel]

Just thought I'd leave this here to gauge some reactions. I do not approve.

You think that is bad?

http://www.civilization5.com/#/communit ... _resources

When you construct an improvement on a strategic resource hex, it provides you with a limited number of those resources, and these are consumed when you construct the associated units or buildings.

Also buildings require gold to maintain again. That is one way to encourage specialization.

[RogueIce]

I like the Giant Death Robot. It's pretty funny. And more interesting than spamming Modern Armor in Civ3 was.

The strategic resources concept sounds interesting. My biggest beef with it in Civ3 (never played Civ4, though hoping to buy Complete Edition soon) was that I would never seem to have any. There would be a whole three deposits of iron on even Huge maps it seemed, and naturally none of them were near me.

I hope Civ5 is a lot better about resource placement.

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

You think that is bad?

http://www.civilization5.com/#/communit ... _resources

When you construct an improvement on a strategic resource hex, it provides you with a limited number of those resources, and these are consumed when you construct the associated units or buildings.

You left out a very important detail, though.

The resource becomes available to you once more if the unit or building is destroyed.

So it's not "you can only build X swordsman ever from that square," it's "you can only build X swordsman from that square at a time". I like the idea, as it means even if everyone who likes you has a square of iron, it helps to have more than one, yourself. Horses being the same kind of resource as iron is still silly, but nothing big.

[MKSheppard]

Actually; I think the reason they raised the requirments for CPUs was to ensure that the game is playable in a reasonable amount of time.

With time passing at a "Standard" difficulty; you can have more than 400+ turns in a single game.

Going from squares to hexes increases the amount of processing time it takes for a single unit to consider "should I move to this part?" for the AI by a noticeable amount when averaged over several AI players and turns.

What I think is the real killer AI-processing wise; is the addition of ranged attacks. Now the AI has to look at an increasingly larger number of hexes for each move cycle.

Ranged Attack ranges:

0: 6 Hexes the AI has to consider.
1: 18 hexes the AI has to consider.
2: 36 hexes the AI has to consider.

This kind of thing killed Space Empires V.

For that game, they made sensors much more complex; in that you wouldn't be able to see enemy ships outside your sensor range, etc. Sound all good and dandy?

It turns out that calculating the sight ranges for ships/taskforces/planets each turn significantly bloats up the turn processing time; and given that the Space Empires series is very methodical -- it significantly increased teh amount of time spent each turn and basically made the game unplayable.

Of course, there was an option for turning off that sensor calculation, but then it was Space Empires IV with a worse UI.

[Simon_Jester]

I like the Giant Death Robot. It's pretty funny. And more interesting than spamming Modern Armor in Civ3 was.

The strategic resources concept sounds interesting. My biggest beef with it in Civ3 (never played Civ4, though hoping to buy Complete Edition soon) was that I would never seem to have any. There would be a whole three deposits of iron on even Huge maps it seemed, and naturally none of them were near me.

I hope Civ5 is a lot better about resource placement.

In Civ4, strategic resources are widely available enough that unless you are truly unlucky you will have all you need. By and large, cutting an enemy off from strategic resources requires a systematic offensive against the relevant extraction industry; other people may be better at doing that than I am, but I've never found it worth the effort.