New PC

[Rui_TNV]

Hello.

My PC broke down for good, after more than 10 years which included several replacement parts for also getting shot like power suply and graphic cards now it was the motherboard that got shot so it's time to invest... my question is can I play civ 2 Test of time with TOT patch with windows 10? And from your experience is it best to play in a laptop or desktop?

 

[Dadais]

Civ2 ToT 1.1 with latestToTPP seems to work well on both Win10 64bit and old Win32bit (with Win2000 compatibility)

Howether, it played slower in my 64bit environement (with 8Gb of ram) than on the 32bit one (with 1Gb of ram allocated) ?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

And from your experience is it best to play in a laptop or desktop?

If you intend to play Civ II on your laptop, make sure you buy one with a 10 key number pad as part of the keyboard. It is much more convenient than using a USB 10 key pad.

Laptop vs desktop shouldn't really matter for this. The power of your pc will probably matter less than getting compatibility settings correct (I can't really help you there, unless you decide to use Linux instead of Windows). However, there is one caveat to this: if you want to use a virtual machine (such as @Dadais suggests, and which is my "I know this will work if all else fails" solution), you will need a moderately powerful laptop or desktop. In particular, you'll need a CPU that has virtualization enabled. I believe that Intel i3,i5,i7 have it enabled, but their more budget offerings don't. AMD processors are probably similar. The computer doesn't have to be that powerful as long as the processor has virtualization; I ran windows 7 with xp mode on a 2nd gen i3 mobile processor with 6 GB of ram.

 

[Rui_TNV]

This are my 4 options at the moment:


HP 15s-fq1034np (15.6'' - Intel Core i3-1005G1 - RAM: 8 GB - 256 GB SSD PCIe - Intel UHD Graphics)

ACER Aspire 3 A315-23-R1RD (15.6'' - AMD Ryzen 3 3250U - RAM: 4 GB - 128 GB SSD PCIe - AMD Radeon Vega 3)

ASUS VivoBook F512DA-R5AV8SB2 (15.6'' - AMD Ryzen 5 3500U - RAM: 6 GB - 256 GB SSD PCIe - AMD Radeon Vega 8)

Asus Laptop 15.6" X509MA N5000 4GB 128GB W10

 

[Prof. Garfield]

This advice only pertains to the capability of the cpu to run a virtual pc. If you're not planning to get a copy of windows xp 32 bit and virtualize, then this won't apply to you. If you plan to install directly on Windows 10 (and I think at least a few regulars here do), just about anything with a dedicated number pad would work (unless the pc is so underpowerd that windows 10 won't run well). Use this advice at your own risk, I'm not responsible for what you buy!

HP 15s-fq1034np (15.6'' - Intel Core i3-1005G1 - RAM: 8 GB - 256 GB SSD PCIe - Intel UHD Graphics)

Based on this,

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...1005g1-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html

the CPU supports virtualization, and there should be adequate ram to run both a host OS and a copy of Windows XP.

ACER Aspire 3 A315-23-R1RD (15.6'' - AMD Ryzen 3 3250U - RAM: 4 GB - 128 GB SSD PCIe - AMD Radeon Vega 3)

https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/ryzen-3-3250u.c2287

This says that virtualization is enabled (no word either way here https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-3-3250u). Wouldn't recommend for virtualization; 4 GB is a small amount of ram to run both Windows 10 and a virtual machine (especially if you want to have a web browser or something else running). 128 GB is a bit small to dedicate ~20 GB for an XP virtual drive.

ASUS VivoBook F512DA-R5AV8SB2 (15.6'' - AMD Ryzen 5 3500U - RAM: 6 GB - 256 GB SSD PCIe - AMD Radeon Vega 8)

https://versus.com/en/amd-ryzen-5-3500u

This says that hardware virtualization is enabled. 6 GB of ram is probably enough for Windows 10 and Windows XP together.

Asus Laptop 15.6" X509MA N5000 4GB 128GB W10

I think this is the processor, but I'm not positive.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-n5000-processor-4m-cache-up-to-2-70-ghz.html

This does have hardware virtualization, (evidently, competition from AMD has stopped them disabling this feature on Pentiums, but I haven't looked into that sort of thing in years). However, 4 GB Ram and 128 GB SSD is pushing it a bit when it comes to virtualization, as I mention earlier.

 

[Rui_TNV]

This advice only pertains to the capability of the cpu to run a virtual pc. If you're not planning to get a copy of windows xp 32 bit and virtualize, then this won't apply to you. If you plan to install directly on Windows 10 (and I think at least a few regulars here do), just about anything with a dedicated number pad would work (unless the pc is so underpowerd that windows 10 won't run well). Use this advice at your own risk, I'm not responsible for what you buy!



Based on this,

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...1005g1-processor-4m-cache-up-to-3-40-ghz.html

the CPU supports virtualization, and there should be adequate ram to run both a host OS and a copy of Windows XP.



https://www.techpowerup.com/cpu-specs/ryzen-3-3250u.c2287

This says that virtualization is enabled (no word either way here https://www.amd.com/en/products/apu/amd-ryzen-3-3250u). Wouldn't recommend for virtualization; 4 GB is a small amount of ram to run both Windows 10 and a virtual machine (especially if you want to have a web browser or something else running). 128 GB is a bit small to dedicate ~20 GB for an XP virtual drive.



https://versus.com/en/amd-ryzen-5-3500u

This says that hardware virtualization is enabled. 6 GB of ram is probably enough for Windows 10 and Windows XP together.




I think this is the processor, but I'm not positive.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...-n5000-processor-4m-cache-up-to-2-70-ghz.html

This does have hardware virtualization, (evidently, competition from AMD has stopped them disabling this feature on Pentiums, but I haven't looked into that sort of thing in years). However, 4 GB Ram and 128 GB SSD is pushing it a bit when it comes to virtualization, as I mention earlier.

Thank you very much for your advice, just one thing, so test of time with TOT will work on win10 right?

Than what is the advantage of running test of time on a virtual pc/windows xp?

 

[Prof. Garfield]

Thank you very much for your advice, just one thing, so test of time with TOT will work on win10 right?

Here's the modern install guide. Read through it to get an idea of what you are in for.

http://users.tpg.com.au/jpwbeest/cc_tot_install.htm

When I tried using a virtualization of windows 10, I got it to work, but not well enough to want to do a video tutorial for it (my main reason for trying). Maybe I just needed to fiddle with compatibility settings. However, I didn't try very hard, since I have Test of Time with TOTPP working almost flawlessly in Linux, which is my daily OS.

Than what is the advantage of running test of time on a virtual pc/windows xp?

You can use the game in the operating system 'environment' that it was designed for (or, at least much closer than windows 10), so installation generally "just works." (You may still want to move the install directory.) Thus, if you have problems, they're probably to do with the virtualization itself, for which there will be far more resources on the internet than for Civ II.

You might have other old games that are also a pain to install on modern Windows, but are easy to install in 32 bit windows XP.

If a Windows update breaks something, it will be the virtualization program and not Civ II, so you won't be responsible for figuring out the fix.

I think @JPetroski runs TOT directly on Windows 10, maybe he can comment on how well it runs, since @Dadais seems to think virtualization is better.

 

[JPetroski]

I do run it on Windows 10. The game itself runs without crashing, but it "stalls" on the computer's moves, on occasion. The computer keeps playing, and you'll hear the sounds of battle, but you won't see anything happen. It eventually snaps out of things.

 

[Dadais]

Why I favor virtualization is because :
1/ It's safer to rely on many people working on virtualization programms to keep it usable on present and futur machine x operating systems rather than relying on few passionate and wonderfull people to spend energy to maintain a game usable.
2/ Virtualization programms exists for casual easy use for free.

On performance questions, I guess it doesn't really matter anyway.
From perspective of one who played on an old win3.1 PC at around 7yo, event playing "parallel game" on such a PC few years later when his brother was upstairs on a Win95 PC with way more ram, thus playing modern age when the Old one just entered iron age