Map size and your systems memory...

[Larsenex]

With the confirmation that Civ 6 is indeed 64bit, now you can start to plan on making sure your computer can handle the stress.

Experience from Gal Civ III which has shown that the largest maps in that game (HUGE and INSANE) both require at a MINIMUM of 8 gigs of ram and I have found smooth performance once I got to 16 gigs. Also In GCIII turn times were faster the more threads you have. This was due to the game optimized to give each AI its own thread for turn processing. My current I5 has 4 cores and only 4 threads. With 50 AI (including Minors which are akin to city states) my late game turns lengthen to about 16 to 20 seconds. I do know better processors with more cores will shorten the turn times dramatically.

We have seen videos which were intentionally set with 3 civs on a small/tight map. I intend on playing on the largest available and at a minimum of all the bases civs and then some if modders can get them out fast enough!

I will be building using the Broadwells due out this year. I6900K which is 8 cores and 16 threads, and DDR4.

I expect a lot of forum rage when the regular un upgraded player with 4 or 8 gigs of ram start trying to play with the largest of maps.

Thoughts?

 

[dexters]

I actually think they will keep all the civ5 map sizes and add extra huge setting plus uncap map sizes for modders to work with. Current huge is 128 X 80 ; I can see then adding one more tier on top of that.

My hunch here is that they will keep current map sizes because its proven to work with a lot of the systems they are carrying over from BNW. Makes it easier for balancing

 

[Larsenex]

I like those sizes, and I would be happy if that was the case. I do like playing marathon, HUGE maps and taking a good weekend to get rolling in a game.

In this case having enough memory will be a good thing!

 

[SammyKhalifa]

I think I'm set with the processor and memory, wonder about the video card though . . .

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

Was planning to build a new computer soon just before the news hit that Civ VI was in the pipeline...now I must patiently wait for the system specs so I can make sure my new rig meets and exceeds them handily.

 

[Battlehelm043]

I personally think they will add another tier mainly due to cities actually needing the full amount of surrounding tiles to work during specialized runs. With more un-stacked cities about land will be at a premium. Especially without the mechanism to give you strategic luxuries if you place a district on top of them. I have an i7 4820K with 16GB of ram that I built through Falcon NW and they have been most helpful in me upgrading my whole rig. Especially once the GTX 1080 pops out I can sawp my 780ti and get more GPU power with less power drain on my rig as a whole. This game will run amazing!!

 

[Zyntax]

I hope they increase the map size greatly. I really hate the one city nations in EU on a world map.

 

[historix69]

I hope they increase the map size greatly. I really hate the one city nations in EU on a world map.

I agree.

With the new concept of city districts, cities probably need a lot more space and should be placed wider apart from each other. (On Giant Earth Map in EU many new founded cities were only 4 tiles apart.)

Also the small 1-Tile-Islands in Giant Earth Map will no longer work since they limit the development of the new cities too much. I suppose that 4-Tiles-Islands are better. Therefore a scaling of Giant Earth Map by a factor of 2 - 3 would be nice. (Scaling by 2 means 2x2=4 times the original map size.)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I hope they increase the map size greatly. I really hate the one city nations in EU on a world map.

This is one area where if you get too big, 1UPT (or mostly) is going to cause problems because of the sheer volumes of units to micro to be competitive. It's not so bad controlling 50-400 units if you can stack them, but even 50 per turn prompting orders constantly would be game-ending levels of extra micro for some of us, can't imagine giving 100 basic orders per turn for 100 turns. 10000 inputs is a heck of a lot unless ever between turn is like 5 seconds or less.

64 bit will help immensely but I doubt that much.

 

[Zaarin]

I'd love to see larger maps with more civs; it's so frustrating trying to dominate your neighbors religiously when there's a 1:3 chance they start their own religion. Once I started in North America (I usually play on the Earth map) and happened to be the only one in the New World to found a religion, but on the other hand my last game I started next to a religiously aggressive Poland that I ultimately had to resort to garrisoning my cities with inquisitors just to stop them from converting all my cities--and I gave up on competing for converting city-states. tl;dr: I'd like more civs so I have a better chance of being the only civ in my area with a religion.

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

This is one area where if you get too big, 1UPT (or mostly) is going to cause problems because of the sheer volumes of units to micro to be competitive. It's not so bad controlling 50-400 units if you can stack them, but even 50 per turn prompting orders constantly would be game-ending levels of extra micro for some of us, can't imagine giving 100 basic orders per turn for 100 turns. 10000 inputs is a heck of a lot unless ever between turn is like 5 seconds or less.

64 bit will help immensely but I doubt that much.

Now there are corps and armies which if used also reduces the amount of ordering units.

I agree.

With the new concept of city districts, cities probably need a lot more space and should be placed wider apart from each other. (On Giant Earth Map in EU many new founded cities were only 4 tiles apart.)

Also the small 1-Tile-Islands in Giant Earth Map will no longer work since they limit the development of the new cities too much. I suppose that 4-Tiles-Islands are better. Therefore a scaling of Giant Earth Map by a factor of 2 - 3 would be nice. (Scaling by 2 means 2x2=4 times the original map size.)

Maybe it is better that if mapsize is large enough (larger than standard) that 1-tile islands should not occur or very rarely.

 

[Larsenex]

This is one area where if you get too big, 1UPT (or mostly) is going to cause problems because of the sheer volumes of units to micro to be competitive. It's not so bad controlling 50-400 units if you can stack them, but even 50 per turn prompting orders constantly would be game-ending levels of extra micro for some of us, can't imagine giving 100 basic orders per turn for 100 turns. 10000 inputs is a heck of a lot unless ever between turn is like 5 seconds or less.

64 bit will help immensely but I doubt that much.

^^^ This is a problem in Gal Civ III, only now we are getting tools to manage large fleets of ships or the dozens/hundreds of star bases you can build and manage.

I do not expect any tools on release but it would be nice to have unit management tools to help on large maps.

In this case being able to designate 'groups of corps' as Armies or divisions nad being able to tell Army Group 1 move to Hong Kong, said groups of units will then move from the current positions and arrive within say 3 tiles of the requested target. I doubt this type of control for large armies would ever get in but at least with a 64 bit engine <there is room> to build it in if the mod community got motivated enough to code it in {assuming we could code it in}.

 

[historix69]

Maybe it is better that if mapsize is large enough (larger than standard) that 1-tile islands should not occur or very rarely.

Actually the 1-tile-islands were a way to add some real islands to the Giant Earth Map for accuracy. For example if you look at the Pacific Theatre of WW2, there are so many groups of islands (like the Solomons, Marianas, Carolines, Palau, Marshal islands). It would be a shame to not be able to include even some of them in a world map ...

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Hakan-i Cihan]

Actually the 1-tile-islands were a way to add some real islands to the Giant Earth Map for accuracy. For example if you look at the Pacific Theatre of WW2, there are so many groups of islands (like the Solomons, Marianas, Carolines, Palau, Marshal islands). It would be a shame to not be able to include even some of them in a world map ...

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

My suggestion was more towards map scripts, not maps of real locations. I should have clarified myself a bit more, lonely 1-tile islands which once a city is placed on it will not have any other landtile to place districts on. So a group of 1-tile islands will still work.

 

[stealth_nsk]

If the engine is done right, the map size don't affect the required memory that much. The map data itself is really small and you generally need to have only 1 copy of each object/texture in memory if the graphical engine is done right, see:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometry_instancing
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch02.html

The biggest hit is processor power then AI will try to move everything.