Why is the 18 civ cap limit not raised!?

Mrdie · Jul 25, 2006

Edit: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=179317

There, up to 32 civs with that method.

I'm slightly dissapointed. I assumed Warlords would raise the civ cap limit.

YES, having about 40 civs on a single map would slow it down to new lows not seen by science, and even cause most computers to crash.

YES, it can get hard to keep track of what civs are doing.

But still, at least raise the civ cap limit to 24.

Red Door · Jul 25, 2006

Who says the limits at 18?

bioelectricclam · Jul 25, 2006

My lap top can barely support 10, and my outdated desktop crashes in the modern era with 8 civs if I haven't managed to finish a few off and pillage all of their improvements (seems that all the extra pixels from tile improvements tend to crash things).

T.A JONES · Jul 25, 2006

No way you mean to say they never raised the the cap like the did with the Play the World? What the point of adding the new Civs if they can't all join in the fun with the old crew?

More importantly, this tells me they never found a way to speed things up. Why else would they stop at 18?

Mrdie · Jul 25, 2006

AlCosta said:
Who says the limits at 18?

The game. You cannot have more than 18 civs at once on a single map. (Yes, I tried it with Warlords, didn't work)

zx1111 · Jul 25, 2006

This poll is meaningless unless you take into account of additional resource and secrifice in game speed.
Any one will perfer more Civ than 18 Civs if they can play more Civs without slowdown.
You shoud ask like this : "Will you prefer 24 Civs in 70% of current game speed OR keep 18 Civs in current speed?"
I will prefer 12 Civs cap with 150% of current speed if possible.

I think that extending or removing max Civ number cap does not worth additional resource and slowdown of this game.
18 Civ cap is more than enough for 90% of players. Changing 18 to 24 will make 90% of player unhappy with the overhead and slowdown.
Peek into Civ4 SDK source code. Lot of data arrays size and loop conter are hard-coded to MAX_PLAYER_NUM. (Maximum number of player = 18) This means that lots of memory are wasted even when you play just 2 Civs game.
Changing the 18 to 24 will waste even more memory and CPU and slow the game further down in later game.
Changing them to variabe dynamic array will remove the cap but it will take more CPU times and slow whole game even further.
I will prefer limit the Civ to 18 and play fast geme than playing 24 Civs game in slower speed than current game speed.

Red Door · Jul 25, 2006

Mrdie said:
The game. You cannot have more than 18 civs at once on a single map. (Yes, I tried it with Warlords, didn't work)

WTH? (not at you mrdie, but at Firaxis) Honest to god, what the hell are you guys smoking. You don't allow us to play 24 civs at one time. Honest to god, what were you thinking? :mad:

Tyranausaurus · Jul 25, 2006

Wait, wait, wait... Is it confirmed yet??? wouldn't it be possible to do with the use of the SDK? they said it was possible but there was a bug, now that the bug has *supposedly* been removed, the SDK should be enough to enable more civs.

Red Door · Jul 25, 2006

I don't know, but I got my rosary out already.

Gilder · Jul 25, 2006

AlCosta said:
WTH? (not at you mrdie, but at Firaxis) Honest to god, what the hell are you guys smoking. You don't allow us to play 24 civs at one time. Honest to god, what were you thinking?

What are you smoking? My computer can barely run standard at times. Why raise the limit if it's going to make everything slower?

suspendinlight · Jul 25, 2006

Supposedly there was a variable in one of the INI files that was like "MAX CIVS" or something and changing it from 18 to something else didn't have any effect. Maybe with Warlords they enabled this variable to actually do something. Anyone able to check that out?

DarkSchneider · Jul 25, 2006

I don't think I've tried it with more than 8 myself. It does sound like a fun idea to play with all the Civs in their original starting positions. I suppose if your comp can handle it there is no reason the AI in the game couldn't, but I don't imagine many people would be clamoring for this option.

T.A JONES · Jul 25, 2006

zx1111 said:
I will prefer limit the Civ to 18 and play fast geme than playing 24 Civs game in slower speed than current game speed.

Why does it have to slow down? Civ3 never slowed down when PtW came out in fact it was faster even with more civs in the game.. When Conquest came out you could play with all 31 Civs faster then you could using only 16 with the original vannila Game.

Its because by then they had worked out the kinks that had made awfully slow waits for time beetween turns. Civ4 has its problem with actual game time lags and slowdowns ( turn waits arn't so bad) but theres no reason they couldn't have fixed this so 24 Civs ran faster then the the original 18 did before it. Its called progress

zx1111 · Jul 25, 2006

T.A JONES said:
Why does it have to slow down? Civ3 never slowed down when PtW came out in fact it was faster even with more civs in the game.. When Conquest came out you could play with all 31 Civs faster then you could using only 16 with the original vannila Game.

Its because by then they had worked out the kinks that had made awfully slow waits for time beetween turns. Civ4 has its problem with actual game time lags and slowdowns ( turn waits arn't so bad) but theres no reason they couldn't have fixed this so 24 Civs ran faster then the the original 18 did before it. Its called progress

Because Civ3 is CPU bound but Civ4 is memory bound in speed-wise.
Civ3 is not considered to be memory hog( programe that take much memory) in its age.
So changing 16 to 32 will not strike the memory barrier for most PC of that time.
Likewise adding more memory will not enhance speed of Civ3 much. Only faster CPU can.

Civ4 is diffrent. Civ4 has lots of data to handle than Civ3. It takes lots of memory for this kind of game.
Large memory footprint translated into much more memory trashing or cache miss and finally game slowdown.
This is why we experience slow down in later game. Civ3 does not experience much slow down in later game.
So adding additional 512K or 1G RAM will enhance CIv4 game speed drastically for 512-1G machine.
If most of game player had 1-2G byte of RAM installed in their computer, then Firaxis would have set the number to
number larger than 18 (say 24). But for current time, most player has 512-1G of RAM.
It is simple thing for Firaxis to change the MAX_PLAYER_NUM constant from 18 to 24.
But this will take roughly 50% more memory than current game and slow all thing down further
to unacceptable degree for large part of players with less than 1G of RAM

Prestidigitator · Jul 25, 2006

...Once again, has it been confirmed yet? by some experienced modder?

This is no excuse for the game, it should be that people can mod it to suit their needs.

Red Door · Jul 25, 2006

Gilder said:
What are you smoking? My computer can barely run standard at times. Why raise the limit if it's going to make everything slower?

My computer can run any amount of civs at any map size.

And, I'd like to be able to take advantage of that.

dh_epic · Jul 25, 2006

I think this needs to be verified. I'm actually a little shocked -- it probably just takes a bit more work to turn off the limit than you think.

lordqarlyn · Jul 25, 2006

I also have a very high-end computer and can easily run humongous maps with all 18 civilizations. They can certainly make it an option for those of us with fast systems to raise the cap to 24. If your system can't handle it, then don't do it!

Mrdie · Jul 25, 2006

lordqarlyn said:
If your system can't handle it, then don't do it!

WINNAR!

*Gives Medal of W00tness to "lordqarlyn"*

But yeah, I wish someone from Firaxis would clear this up...

Ball Lightning · Jul 25, 2006

AlCosta said:
My computer can run any amount of civs at any map size. And, I'd like to be able to take advantage of that.

Same, my comp is okay (parents bouhgt end last year). at least have 30 civs, you could in civ 3.

Why is the 18 civ cap limit not raised!?

What should be done with the 18 civ cap limit?

Remove the civ cap limit

Increase the civ cap limit to 24

Make it moddable, keep the cap limit on normal game

Keep the 18 civ cap limit

Other

Founder of eRegime

Man of Mayhem

Warlord

Deity

Founder of eRegime

Warlord

Man of Mayhem

Warlord

Man of Mayhem

Deity

Prince

King

Deity

Warlord

Prince

Man of Mayhem

Cold War Veteran

Warlord

Founder of eRegime

www.sporedum.net

Similar threads