How many Civ's is too many??

[Mango1968]

Apologies if this question has been beaten to death but I am not able to perform a search in the forum for this question for some reason. Actually I can't search for anything. It says search has been disabled to increase forum speed.

There are something like 29 civilizations available in Conquests now but a map can only have 512 total cities. On large or huge maps does anyone have some thoughts on the optimal number of civilizations to start the game with so that the turns do not become cumbersome?

I am going to be using Marla's Earth map for a game and all civilizations are available but I do think using all of them is adviseable. Thanks for any advice.

 

[The Last Conformist]

How many civs you can realistically have depends mostly on how quick your computer is. On my 2GHz laptop with 512 MB RAM, I can have up to about 16 civs before things get too slow.

It got awfully slow before I killed off a dozen rivals, but I did play thru one game with 30 civs on the Large Mediterranean map, which is 140x140, and the city limit was no problem.

Some people will disagree violently with this, but in my experience, the number of civs currently in play is the important factor in how long turn wait times get.

 

[Bucephalus]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
How many civs you can realistically have depends mostly on how quick your computer is. On my 2GHz laptop with 512 MB RAM, I can have up to about 16 civs before things get too slow.

That seems about right. My steam powered PC can cope OK with 10 or so civs on a huge map but any more makes it soooo slow.
Adding extra RAM made no difference so I guess it's down to processor speed.

 

[cgannon64]

I'd reccomend playing max civs on a Large map. That seems to be the best balance between gameplay and speed. (I never really have slowdown on an 800Mhz PIII.)

 

[Yeti]

I find the limit to be the interface.

With more than 8 opponents the Deplomacy screen becomes a MAJOR pain in the butt because you can only swap leader-heads around one at a time.

Sure you need to be able to get any possible combination to view wars, MPPs, etc..., but that doesn't mean that there shouldn't be a simple way to toggle between entire sets of opponents for when you just want to quickly run through a map trade with everyone or see if anyone has a new tech this turn.

 

[Commander Bello]

Originally posted by Mango1968
Apologies if this question has been beaten to death but I am not able to perform a search in the forum for this question for some reason. Actually I can't search for anything. It says search has been disabled to increase forum speed.

There are something like 29 civilizations available in Conquests now but a map can only have 512 total cities. On large or huge maps does anyone have some thoughts on the optimal number of civilizations to start the game with so that the turns do not become cumbersome?

I am going to be using Marla's Earth map for a game and all civilizations are available but I do think using all of them is adviseable. Thanks for any advice.

As far as I have experienced it, it is not the number of civs to make the game slow, but the number of trades (internally and externally).
I just finished a game on a huge map with just 10 opponents (so, 11 civs in total). When I conquered a city which just sat in the middle of the only 5 dyes on the whole map, it took my 2.6 GHz, 512 Mb computer almost three minutes, before I could move the next unit. Turns lastet around 2 minutes, each.

About the problem with the 512 city limitation: This can really be annoying on huge maps. Especially, if you modded the map to sizes of more than 200*200 tiles. Due to that limitation, you will face large areas which are not settled, because no new cities can be found. This is really annoying.
The more civs you have on such a map, the less they are in size(counted by city numbers), obviously. So, if you manage to survive the 'early turns' you as human player are automatically in advance.

 

[Dark Sheer]

As far as I know the number of Civ has little impact on Speed. At the beginning when all is dark it is always fast. When the world is at war that is the time it get slow. That is because the AI has to calculate the possible move, attack and defense for every single units. If you don’t believe this, try kill off as many Civ as possible in a major world war and notice the improvement in speed.

I have played with 20 Civs on a Huge Map (200x200) with no speed issue (1.8G 512Meg). The game does slow down a little when there are major world war.

 

[Adam7Eight]

I normally play 256x256 21-civ maps and usually have zero slowdown until around the year 1600 or so. It starts to creep a little, but not too much, regardless of war(s).

Dark Sheer, haven't seen your name around in a while, unless I'm just looking at the wrong threads. Anyways, I have the same specs and I have to agree with you. Just today I was playing as the Arabs on a Pangea map and was surrounded and involved in a huge war with about 7 different civs. As soon as all the wars were declared I noticed a substantial loss in game speed. When it all ended the game was again playable.

 

[Mango1968]

I appreciate all of the feedback to my question. I think I will try 16 to 20 civilizations and see how that goes. The slow down due to large-scale war did not suprise me but the statement that trade can slow down the game was new to me. Thank you again for all of your input.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by low
Dark Sheer, haven't seen your name around in a while, unless I'm just looking at the wrong threads. ....

You are right, haven't touch Civ3 for a while until recently when C3C came out. First, I moved to the Capital city due to a transfer and had to look for new place to stay. Then my RAID card in my PC got toasted which in turn toast my 80 Gig HD which has almost all my info on it Luckily my system has 3 HD so not all is lost

Still, it took me a fair bit of time to reinstall back all the necessary software (since its the boot HD that was toasted ) and starts to play Civ3 again.

 

[Adam7Eight]

Originally posted by Dark Sheer


You are right, haven't touch Civ3 for a while until recently when C3C came out. First, I moved to the Capital city due to a transfer and had to look for new place to stay. Then my RAID card in my PC got toasted which in turn toast my 80 Gig HD which has almost all my info on it Luckily my system has 3 HD so not all is lost

Still, it took me a fair bit of time to reinstall back all the necessary software (since its the boot HD that was toasted ) and starts to play Civ3 again.

Ahh, I hear ya. I took about a 6 month break from Civ3 myself until Conquests came out. I just replaced some toasted hardware too since my CD-ROM decided to crap out on me. Good that you're back in business.