Default Ai city spacing, 64 bit maps and other ramblings.

[Thormodr]

I would like to have much larger maps for Civ VI. I too would like to dedicate a weekend or at least a decent chunk of one playing on a huge map with lots of Civs on epic speed. Just like good old times.

I remember how evasive they were with Civilization 5 when asked the question of how large the maps were going to be. As it turns out, the map sizes were a major disappointment.

At the very least, I hope they make it easy to mod much bigger maps.

 

[toft]

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[stealth_nsk]

When buying a car, that is run optimally at 50 mph... you rarely complain about the fact that it CAN run 200 mph?

All Im asking for is the option... modded or whatever... I want gigantic maps.

If 200 mph car costs twice as 100 mph car you usually complain

Supporting gigantic maps is a problem. It's a problem for exponentially increasing AI calculations. It's a problem of video memory as the map is generally one huge mesh you barely could optimize with LOD, etc.

The easiest way is to allow larger maps for mods only, so the performance hit will be responsibility of modders and players, not devs.

 

[Ryika]

That's exactly what he's asking for though, is it not? To have the game be able to run bigger-than-big maps. Civ 5 simply can't do that because of internal limitations, no matter how good your hardware is. The game WILL crash at a certain size.

With a 64bit framework it should be possible to - theoretically - increase the map size by a LOT without running into any memory issues as far as I understand it, as long as it's coded with that in mind; even if the current hardware cannot realistically run those map sizes well.

 

[Larsenex]

That's exactly what he's asking for though, is it not? To have the game be able to run bigger-than-big maps. Civ 5 simply can't do that because of internal limitations, no matter how good your hardware is. The game WILL crash at a certain size.

With a 64bit framework it should be possible to - theoretically - increase the map size by a LOT without running into any memory issues as far as I understand it, as long as it's coded with that in mind; even if the current hardware cannot realistically run those map sizes well.

^^^ This. It is not a problem calculation-wise its a problem of memory. In Gal Civ III, which is 64 bit if you have 8 gigs of ram you 'can' play on Insane maps which by the way are almost million tiles but you will slow and stutter. If you upgrade to 12 or 16 gigs the maps are smooth and no 'painting'

Such should be the case for Civ VI.

Now if they are not going to make titanic maps at launch that is fine. What I want is the option for it to be modded in or to be able to by our community. I do not necessarily want resources allocated to it in lieu of game play fun/stability. I just want it to be able to be done later.

As Thormodr said, I like the idea of a weekend on a n amazing size map with lots of civs. and it take 50+ turns before you bump into anyone.

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. The map itself don't require a lot of memory. Generally you could easily store each tile in 4 bytes (2 bytes if you focus on optimization and use bits), each unit requires something like 8 bytes (unless you allow player to enter custom string). You could calculate how big map you could fit into 1Gb.

2. The 32-bit limitations are easy to overcome. You could spawn child processes and each of them will work with its portion of memory (although this technique don't fit well here). Or you could simply store the map in file, projected to RAM. If the game data is small, it will be stored in memory directly. If the map data is huge and the amount of free memory is large, the OS will use page cache to cache the file content and thus the app will actually overcome 32-bit limitation. Finally, if the RAM is not enough, the same system will allow smooth work with disk. Slower, but not crush.

 

[Larsenex]

Stealth, that does not jive with what developers over at stardock have said about map sizes in their game. It hits the 2 gig wall. You have a map and objects and scripts running those objects. You are limited by how large the map is.

Here is a thread discussing map size vrs memory and performance over on that forum.

http://forums.galciv3.com/476228/page/1/#3626354

Again you are limited on map size due to memory constraints in 32 bit.

You say it is not, but the test would be for you to make a map TWICE as large as the (largest) one in Civ 5 and fire up the game and see how far you get.

I am not a coder by any means. However I am basing my opinion on the fact that for years another 4x game has not had huge maps as stated by their devs because of the 32 bit limitation.

In any event, I am glad that Civ VI is 64 bit and hopefully we can get our mod community to make some awesome 'Perfect World' maps that are truly titanic....

Happy Friday!

 

[stealth_nsk]

Stealth, that does not jive with what developers over at stardock have said about map sizes in their game. It hits the 2 gig wall. You have a map and objects and scripts running those objects. You are limited by how large the map is.

Overcoming 32-bit restriction has some performance cost (as any of those techniques work through context switch, not direct memory access), plus cost in development work as it requires additional measures and optimization. Managers need to compare this to potential loss of audience. I have a feeling what the numbers for stardock and firaxis are very different here.

Also, don't forget about programmer fun. For most game programmers these things aren't fan. They have only theoretical knowledge of them (well, me too) and don't want to try. That's really a big factor.

And of course developers have to protect their decisions. Most of the fans can't understand these details and just call it lazyness.

 

[toft]

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[historix69]

When I start Civ5 (menu), it uses 800 MB of memory. When I load a game on Giant Earth Map from a 6 MB savefile (modern Era), the memory usages reaches 2,2 - 2,4 GB and the game crashes after a few movements into fog of war - territory ... 64-bit would help a lot

The info about map and all the cities and units is saved in the 6 MB savefile, but the assets accumulate up to ca. 1,5 GB extra memory usage ...

 

[stealth_nsk]

You are talking about maps in general - with no connection to previous Civilization games at all.

Previous games were limited by memory - no matter what is magically "possible" within 32bit. It's a fact, no point trying to say otherwise.

Civ6 has 64-bit, so memory is not a problem.

Civ4 crashed with gigantic map sizes and finally civ5 crashed with gigantic map sizes. The map alone is not the reason - assets etc count for a lot. Civ5 had a bit smaller maps than civ4 for that reason I think.

It's just stupid to say 32-bit can do it all... why arent we still on 16-bit if it's no problem?!?

I'm talking about how the game could be done if developers focus on memory optimization. That wasn't the case in previous civ games as development resources were limited and developers focused on other things.

It's a business question. For example:
- How much money developers loose to ignore 32-bit audience?
- What is the cost of developing with all memory optimizations?
- How much money they'll loose due to players rage if they don't allow too big maps? (hint: not much)

Generally that's it. Maybe Firaxis managers decided what the loss of 32-bit audience is minimal at the time of release and it's time to make players happy with huge maps. Or maybe developers just pushed the technical decision on managers as it was fun to make 64-bit game for them. We don't know.