***Official "I'm at/below Minimum Specs" Club ***

[Jass]

Alright, for those who have awfully anachronistic LOW specs like me:
Intel P4 Hyperthread 3Ghz
2GB ram
Radeon 3850 512MB AGP

The demo runs fine! I can't believe it! I just finished my first 100 turns game, it was great! I hope it will handle it in later game stages, but so far everything was very fluid, all settings on medium except some (like terrain) on freakin high! Loading times are slightly long, but still bearable. I guess that with the old AGP bus this is totally unavoidable. So good news everyone!

e: playing demo in DirectX 9 mode (win XP)

e2: resolution 1920 x 1080

 

[borealisbeast]

My Specs:
Win Vista 32, 2.5 GB RAM, AMD 64 X2 Dual Core - ~1.8 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 7150M

It's an old laptop but I was curious to see if the game worked. It ran the Intro and I check that it set to minimal video automatically. Started a game and it ran somewhat slow, but I kept playing for the full 100 turns (only got the demo) and there wasn't to much difference in performance from turn 1 to 100. Def playable, never would have thought it...

 

[Vlade Divac]

Alright, for those who have awfully anachronistic LOW specs like me:
Intel P4 Hyperthread 3Ghz
2GB ram
Radeon 3850 512MB AGP

The demo runs fine! I can't believe it! I just finished my first 100 turns game, it was great! I hope it will handle it in later game stages, but so far everything was very fluid, all settings on medium except some (like terrain) on freakin high! Loading times are slightly long, but still bearable. I guess that with the old AGP bus this is totally unavoidable. So good news everyone!

Sweet! That's a fairly decent card though isn't it? Old, but still pretty good right? Keep in mind that I really don't know what I'm talking about, but it rates high in this GPU list I keep referencing. http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu_list.php

My Specs:
Win Vista 32, 2.5 GB RAM, AMD 64 X2 Dual Core - ~1.8 GHz, NVIDIA GeForce 7150M

It's an old laptop but I was curious to see if the game worked. It ran the Intro and I check that it set to minimal video automatically. Started a game and it ran somewhat slow, but I kept playing for the full 100 turns (only got the demo) and there wasn't to much difference in performance from turn 1 to 100. Def playable, never would have thought it...

Now this card on the other hand....wow, its awesome you could play. That's good news.

 

[moksheebs]

hi i'm albert "hi albert"

 

[Kingdom Brunel]

Running at low with fog of war at medium.

Runs fine really. You don't notice the slight lag as the game goes by. Of course I don't dare play maps over standard size, as that would be just silly. Luckily I have no interest in such large maps.

 

[Jass]

AFAIK the 3850 is the fastest card available for the AGP bus (AGP was the slot type that existed before pci-express was invented). Because of the slow agp bus, it takes a while for the textures to be loaded into the graphic card ram, but it seems once they're there, it works well enough. I'm still a little worried that the AI turns might turn out to be too slow to bear later on, I can't test that with the demo (now it's still very fast) and the AI along with all the mechanics will probably stress my old P4 CPU. Stupid 100 turn limit!

e: the pc was bought in 2004 with 512mb ram and a radeon 9800 pro 128mb, I really took advantage of the upgrade path (and there's no more path now, I'll have to get another comp if I want better performance)

 

[Mahatmajon]

Apparently my girlfriend was running it fine on an:
Athalon something ~4GHz
2GB RAM (that I will upgrade if needed)
nVidia GeForce 7800GTX (that I will buy another one of and SLI if needed)
Windows XP

Obviously this is likely to be my last 'new game' for this computer. It plays Left 4 Dead 2 fine and Borderlands, but I can't imagine that I can get away with this for any other shooter games.

She was playing and alt-tabbing at will to give me updates. No crashes or complaints, but then again she and I are both less likely to care about the graphics than we are to enjoy the game, overall visuals, & gameplay.

I get off work in 1 minute to go play!!!

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and it's being played on a 46" Samsung 3D TV. I'll letcha know if turning on the 2D->3D algorithm makes it look good or not.

 

[Reddawg151]

Running Mac Book Pro with 2.53 C2D, 4MB Ram and nVidia GeForce 9400m 256mb. The game runs fine. Graphics aren't great, and leaders are static (much better). Very happy that the game runs fine.

GREAT to hear! I'm on a slightly upgraded (2.66 C2D, still 4GB RAM, and the 9600 GeForce) Macbook Pro. I'll confirm later that it works for me too.

 

[Biffa001]

still not running on my dual AMD 2.1, 4Gb ram, ATI 4550 PC....updated vga drivers, DX9 etc andn no joy :-(

Didnt run on my laptop either with a Celeron M 1.7 and 2gb......not a happy bunny....

 

[Lancor]

Need some answer.

How big differrent between Dx9, 10, and, 11

I prefer to play on DX9 for performance-wise but I don't know if the graphic would be degraded so much.

With my above recomm system and 8800 GTS the comparison between the two was like this in the demo: (all settings on highest)

Dx 10/11 mode > better reflections + water+ shadows, AnitAliasing possible, terrain needs some loading time after start or conversation with another leader (stuttering for a few seconds)
Dx 9 mode > could not activate AA, shadows and water seem "flat" but fps was crazy, faster than civ IV :x

Don't know if Dx9 mode is faster for everyone, for me it is. But as the Dx10/11 was smooth enough, I'll stick to it and put some settings to medium. It's just a bit more beautiful.

 

[Vlade Divac]

EDITED TO ADD: Oh, and it's being played on a 46" Samsung 3D TV. I'll letcha know if turning on the 2D->3D algorithm makes it look good or not.

Good Lord that sounds awesome.

still not running on my dual AMD 2.1, 4Gb ram, ATI 4550 PC....updated vga drivers, DX9 etc andn no joy :-(

Didnt run on my laptop either with a Celeron M 1.7 and 2gb......not a happy bunny....

That sucks. I'm surprised your first machine isn't working...does anything load up?

 

[bigeeze]

My GPU is way under minimum. It's a Nvidia 6150se integrated. I thought I had no shot. I preordered thinking I'd upgrade later. Well it works ok. It's a little slow and I don't have the nice puffy white clouds but who cares, I'm playing. Beat's spending $200 on a PSU and new GPU.

 

[DarkMaster]

Sorry not to post here earlier, I was kind of... uhhhh... busy.

Just to chime in with another MacBook Pro benchmark: my 9400M is running at medium very well, I have a full continent explored so far and all is good. So there's very much hope for those well below the minimum specs.

 

[Biffa001]

Good Lord that sounds awesome.



That sucks. I'm surprised your first machine isn't working...does anything load up?

until I disabled the video at the start that ran (a bit choppy) but the game just shows a clack square then nothing. Rebooted the PC after DX and driver updates but nothing. Going to try SP2 for Vista...

 

[dart27]

Dell D620 with Core2 Duo 2.2 ghz, 2gig RAM with Win7 32b. Only thing holding me down is the Intel IGP 945... Crashes with error report trying in DX9. Trying in DX10/11 just craps out without loading. Anyone know some "test" drivers?

Running great at highest settings on my workstation tho. It has Quad core Phenom, 4 gb RAM, and Quadro video. Now if I couls just get it going on my lappy.

 

[dart27]

OOps...

 

[spicytimothy]

My name is spicytimothy and my comp is way below specs. :-D

I was able to put most settings at high and the shadows at medium and the game is pretty smooth. At least smoother than Tropico 3. The lil circles for happiness and what not are a lil messed up but maybe that's coz I have the anti-alias thingy off. It gets slower during diplomacy :-(

My specs are (I think...)
Core 2 Duo something
nVidia GeForce 7xxx??
2 GB ram
xp sp3

 

[StargazingDog]

Alright, for those who have awfully anachronistic LOW specs like me:
Intel P4 Hyperthread 3Ghz
2GB ram
Radeon 3850 512MB AGP

The demo runs fine! I can't believe it! I just finished my first 100 turns game, it was great! I hope it will handle it in later game stages, but so far everything was very fluid, all settings on medium except some (like terrain) on freakin high! Loading times are slightly long, but still bearable. I guess that with the old AGP bus this is totally unavoidable. So good news everyone!

Now this is what I was waiting for.

I have a P4 3.4Ghz (currently have hyperthreading disabled, but could enable)
2GB RAM
Nvidia 7800GS

Your video card has a higher fillrate than mine, but I assume I could run at medium.

 

[StargazingDog]

I also meant to ask, does anyone know at what level the "clouds" fog of war stops working? As in, when the game decides that instead of white clouds, you just get grey/black hexagons?

 

[jtwood]

I also meant to ask, does anyone know at what level the "clouds" fog of war stops working? As in, when the game decides that instead of white clouds, you just get grey/black hexagons?

I only got the texture-less hexes on the lowest setting.

Who else in this thread has their settings down so low that it feels like they're playing the greatest game made last decade?