Future SGOTMs

[CommandoBob]

So the odds are stacking in favour of a C3C-only competition in future (sorry CB - what's the problem with your PC?).

C3C-only is the obvious choice; I can always lurk-and-learn.

My PC is old enough to go to elementary school. It is a PII 500MHz hand-me down I acquired after my PII 300MHz died.

I played PTW on the 300MHz machine, even though the specs called for 400MHz. After about an hour or so the game would crash the system with a Blue Screen of Death. I suspect the same thing would happen if I tried C3C on the current machine, so I have not even looked at getting a copy of C3C.

Even though this is an old game/machine combo, it beats playing CivI on a Tandy 1000 with 5 and 1/4 inch floppies!.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

C3C-only is the obvious choice; I can always lurk-and-learn.

My PC is old enough to go to elementary school. It is a PII 500MHz hand-me down I acquired after my PII 300MHz died.

I played PTW on the 300MHz machine, even though the specs called for 400MHz. After about an hour or so the game would crash the system with a Blue Screen of Death. I suspect the same thing would happen if I tried C3C on the current machine, so I have not even looked at getting a copy of C3C.

Even though this is an old game/machine combo, it beats playing CivI on a Tandy 1000 with 5 and 1/4 inch floppies!.

Or spend 100$ on a second hand PC that is 2-3 times faster than yours
(Of course, you can also spend 400 on a new one and even play civ4)

 

[leif erikson]

My PC is old enough to go to elementary school. It is a PII 500MHz hand-me down I acquired after my PII 300MHz died.

I play Civ3, all versions, on my 500 Mhz machine with no problems at all. Even run CivAssist and a few other things in the background. Perhaps some memory may be needed?

Had to build a new one for Civ4 though. So now I have Civ3 running on my old system and Civ4 on my new, side-by-side! No wonder I get confused between them!!


Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread...

 

[Crakie]

I would like to see only one version being played, to maximize the competition. I like C3C best, so that's what I voted.

 

[Marc Aurel]

I voted for C3C only. Personally I prefer PTW, but I think having a competition with all the other teams is much more interesting and of more value than playing one's preferred version of civ.

 

[AlanH]

I play Civ3, all versions, on my 500 Mhz machine with no problems at all. Even run CivAssist and a few other things in the background. Perhaps some memory may be needed?

Sorry, didn't mean to hijack the thread...

Not a hijack at all since we are talking about whether players can actually run C3C. I was thinking a 500 MHz CPU should be plenty to play C3C. as long as you have enough memory. And memory is pretty cheap these days.

Heck, I can even load Conquests up on my old Pentium 100, rescued from a dumpster and boosted to 96 MBytes RAM and a GeForce 2MX card. I'm not sure I'd want to play it there, but it runs. I doubt if it actually needs much more computer than vanilla or PtW until you want to play networked games. After all, it's only displaying the same pictures and manipulating the same units, give or take.

 

[Niklas]

Heh, I have problems running PtW + CivAssist on my 2000+ Athlon. The problem is as noted, the memory. Running or not running clearly has much more to do with that than CPU speed.

 

[AlanH]

The problem is as noted, the memory. Running or not running clearly has much more to do with that than CPU speed.

.... that and the OS you run. XP has a massive memory footprint compared with 98, for example. And it depends heavily on which options you let it run with. Then there's all that anti-malware you Windows guys have to keep in memory all the time ..... CivAssist uses the .Net framework, which is another example of programmers assuming the world has infinite memory resources.

If I had to use a 2GHz Athlon and XP, I wouldn't consider running it with less than 512 MByes, and 1 GByte would be preferable.

 

[leif erikson]

If I had to use a 2GHz Athlon and XP, I wouldn't consider running it with less than 512 MByes, and 1 GByte would be preferable.

My 500 MHz machine has 512 MB of memory with Win XP. Even with all that junk running in the background, it runs without a hitch.

The Athlon XP machine runs Win XP as well, but I did put 1 GB of memory in it. And a 128 MB GeForce video card. With everything in Civ4 on in the very late game, it sometimes has a hickup when one of the background apps decides to update itself of something.

Before that, I was running a Pentium 2 400 MHz with Win 98 and 128 MB. All versions of Civ3 ran fine. The problem was with .net and CivAssist. As with most MS stuff, Win98 and .net never really got along very well.
Win 98 never used more than 128 MB of main memory very efficiently, imho.

 

[WackenOpenAir]

Really the difference for winXP is huge.

If you don't have 512, don't think about running XP.

If you have 512, only run XP if you really have to, but use win98 if you don't have an extremely urgent reason to use XP.

 

[DJMGator13]

I think C3C is enough for the future, especially when the cIV version of SGOTM kick off. I enjoy playing Van but I do see the need to limit the the choices in the future.

As for the next SGOTM, we may want to continue with the current setup (as long as there are enough Van/PTW teams) until the Mac version of C3C has time to go global.

 

[DBear]

I have a 600Mhz machine with 128 MB running Win98 SE. I can run all versions of Civ3, and I can run CivAssist2, but not at the same time. I WILL NOT play Vanilla, absolutely hate it. I can tolerate PTW, but much prefer Conquests.

 

[Abegweit]

I voted C3C but. as several other people have said, the most important thing is to have everyone playing the same game. In the end, I really don't care which version this might be. Perhaps it could change from one game to the next?

 

[Niklas]

If you don't have 512, don't think about running XP.

I have 256M in the mentioned computer, and XP runs just fine for what I normally do. CivIII runs fine as well, as does CivAssist II, though not together. I much prefer XP over 98 (or 2000 which I used to run) for lots of reasons, so I certainly don't agree with the above statement.

 

[Randy]

I vote for PtW, but maybe every other game could be PtW and C3C.

 

[Abegweit]

My PC is old enough to go to elementary school. It is a PII 500MHz hand-me down I acquired after my PII 300MHz died.

My backup machine is an Athlon 500 with 512 MBytes running Windows XP. I forget what the video card is (something crappy) but CivIII works just fine. I really doubt that C3C makes more demands on system resources than PTW.

 

[AlanH]

As for the next SGOTM, we may want to continue with the current setup (as long as there are enough Van/PTW teams) until the Mac version of C3C has time to go global.

Well, the first suicide curragh that attempted to cross the Atlantic with my copy may have sunk, but I suspect they'll even find a way to get it to this far-flung outpost of the civilized world before we get the next SGOTM off the ground.

 

[AlanH]

I vote for PtW, but maybe every other game could be PtW and C3C.

I don't think we can tell C3C players (the big majority) to go away for two or three months while we play a PtW game, and expect them ever to come back. If there's a C-IV game on the go as well they'll certainly defect permanently.

 

[Abegweit]

The poll should have had a "mix-'em up" option. I would have voted for it but I was forced to make a choice. Perhaps the sentiment in favour of C3C is less overwhelming than this appears to indicate.

 

[AlanH]

Hmmm It's a multiple choice poll. You can make more than one selection! I did make that clear in the first post, and I used the plural "versions" in the question.