Hardware advice.

[slowcar]

why should europe be a generation behind, let alone two? sometimes the newest stuff is not available - but that's the same everywhere.

buying the newest generation is always suboptimal from a price per power point of view, early adopters pay fife times the price for stuff that is cheap a few months later, especially when GPUs are concerned.

regarding two monitor setup: if you had one you never want to be without it again.
i usually run civ/ffh on my main monitor while the second features IRC, IM, winamp/songbird and browser. ffh has a very good included pedia, other games greatly benefit from your ability to look up stuff on the web without having to switch tasks all the time.
in a working environment it is also great to have 2 monitors - there is just no reason not to have two if you don't have serious money issues.

 

[Hanny]

I can only answer from my experience with my old and current rig, but a turn for me takes under a second to 3 seconds usually (late game is when it can take a second or two more) while with my old 2ghz CPU it could vary between 8 and even over 30, while late game at times it could take a minute or two. Huge map generation is also 30 seconds to under a minute for me typically while previously it took me three to four minutes at the very least.
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Thats very usfull info, quite an improvement. Btw what do you think is more resource hungry more civs 24+, or less civs but with more units in play?.

 

[RogueThunder]

Thats very usfull info, quite an improvement. Btw what do you think is more resource hungry more civs 24+, or less civs but with more units in play?.

Units effect it more in my experiance.
However, it also depends on the unit. Anything with shiny flames or such tends to add alot of resource use when visible. ALOT. Even my 8800GT has been brought to the ground crying by one huge game when I suddenly could see half the map. And it was covered with flames, flaming troops, and other shinies.
Additonaly, each unit causes the between-turns time to be longer. Or begining of turn delays, depending on if you have simultanous turns on or not. By count of units, this adds up.

As long as you have enough VRAM you usually will run into the turns taking a while first. 512MB being enough for large/huge to not be an issue on FFH mid-late game. Generally atleast. CPU however. Yeah. The aforementioned comparison of a 2ghz and 3ghz system is about right... the latter system also being a little more efficient with it cycles. (Aka, its 3ghz is worth more than even if the 2ghz cpu could be clocked at 2ghz.) How much, I don't recall. Probably 10-20%.

Ultimately, more civs will become more resource hungry, as it will result in more units. And more civs will ALWAYS mean a longer map-gen time.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

quick question: does lowering the quality of the graphics result in shorter waits between turns, or is that entirely CPU+RAM based?

 

[Methuselah]

quick question: does lowering the quality of the graphics result in shorter waits between turns, or is that entirely CPU+RAM based?

It shortens it. The same applies to most games in existence in fact.

Lower graphics - less workload for the pc.

 

[RogueThunder]

It shortens it. The same applies to most games in existence in fact.

Lower graphics - less workload for the pc.

Given a little trial and error. It shortens it---moreso if you can actually see alot of the map.

If its turn 600, and you STILL cant see bubkis... Other than being sqrewed, it really seemed to have no signifcant effect.


CPU/RAM effect end of turn more, in my expieriance. Especially if your video isnt lagging.

(I tested this a bit when I first got 2 copies of FFH/FF up simutanously on my system. Which. Is a very... interesting thing to do.)

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I tried setting the graphics as crappy as possible and the end of turn wait didn't get any shorter

 

[EmptyWolf]

You'll find that the graphics have no effect on turn time if you can run civ without framerates being an issue.
So overall, if your video card is struggling to support civ, then your cpu and ram will be utlized to help which then causes the turns to be slower. But a mid-range card can fully handle civ maxed out all the way, so as long as you have a decent card, graphics won't affect your turn speed whether your settings are low or high.

Main things in order that affect civ/FFH turn time are:
Processor (this is what does the calculations each end of turn.)
RAM (mostly the amount of ram makes the difference as it temporarily holds the data. More RAM means better performance on larger maps, more civs, and you'll have less MAFs, etc.)
Video -as said above (all it takes is a midrange card and you can max out civ - so video isn't going to bottleneck civ at all if you can run civ at max graphics without trouble)

For almost all other games such as (insert random FPS) the order is:
Video all the way
CPU next
RAM last but not least

Civ is a big exception since it's turn based (a rare breed these days.)

Thats very usfull info, quite an improvement. Btw what do you think is more resource hungry more civs 24+, or less civs but with more units in play?.

It's more resource hungry having the +24 civs. Since there are numerous calculations made by each of those 24 civs and it's those civs that control the units(making calcuations for those too). Less civs but a lot more units that in that 24 civ game will result in less calculations so therefore more civs inevitably results in being more demanding. But I'd say map size is the most worrying factor.