How could I speed up the game with my configuration?

I have a Sony Vaio laptop with a 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 processor, 448 MB RAM. The graphics chip is a 64-bit ATI Radeon IGP 340M with 64MB memory.

The game is running OK with low graphics settings but if there are many cities and/or units on the map then sometimes it gets really tedious.

Can I speed up the game by changing some settings? What should I improve first in terms of hardware to make it run faster (e.g. should I buy more RAM first)?

 

My advice to you is to get rid of your laptop and get a desktop. Laptops are horrid.

 

yes, civ needs 1GB of RAM to run smoothly, and you should buy a better VGA too. To be honest I would buy a new laptop/desktop too...

 

Current state of things dictates that systems should probably have 1.5GB RAM now to run anything effectively. You can shut down all other processes to try and get more out of what you've got but RAM is factor - when you're in game, pop out and go into your task manager and look at the profile of how much RAM is in use - if you're over your physical RAM then you're paging to disk which is VERY SLOW.

Baseline for video cards now is probably 256MB so that's gonna be a huge factor too. I'm still running a GeForce 6600GT 128MB and it mostly runs ok but slows down in the late game (especially when all cities start putting planes on intercept).

Any talk of laptop versus desktop is almost irrelevant. You can get a laptop that will run the game in aces if you want - it will cost you of course.