Only 18 Civs allowed in the game? Civ 3 could do better!

[Fox Mccloud]

I should say that unless you have some mega-powerful computer, Civ4 as it stands would be unplayable with 18 Civs. For most people even with very powerful computers the game gets quite slow with 9 Civs on a large map.

In that case, Civ4 is gay. Everyone go back to playing Civ3. Thank you.

 

[Polietileno]

Bingo. So we wait until the SDK cames.

 

[WildWeazel]

I still don't think the concept of "a game loosely based on Civ" has sunk in yet.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Mistake, see post further down.

 

[Pulse]

I was disappointed with the 18 at first but once you play the game for me 18is more than enough

 

[HourlyDaily]

Was going to re-iterate my points but sgrig did the job nicely

Just wanted to add:

18 civs may be enough for some people, but others including me prefer the challenge of 30+ opponents. Its not really the fault of Firaxis - becuase I gather there would be lag and processing problems even with Gamebryo. Even with those problems I'm stubborn enough to play a buggy, laggy game with more civs rather than less. Its just about customising the game to your own personal taste.

I hope with further increased processing speeds in the future, the limit will be upped. I'm running a 3.8ghz, twin 512 at the minute, but I don't mind upgrading even further in the future, such is the Civ addiction.

 

[King Jason]

It seems even 18 is a stretch... now I'm not complaining, because so far I do absolutely love this game. By I just custom bought a brand new computer about a monther a go with a top notch gfx card, a gig of ram, 64 bit AMD athlon processor, the works. Completely designed for the "gaming" stuff, I don't play very many flashy games that require super computers, but I figure, if I have a computer than can run those, I should be able to run just about everything else.

But on Rhy's map with 18 civs, by the late game, just as I'm starting to discover riflemen and such (nearing the end of the industrial era) with 2 of the 18 civs dead and gone I've got the world lagging TERRIBLY. I can't smooth scroll across my map anymore... I try my best not to even look at the other civs or I'll be frozen for a bit of load time, if I zoom out, an even bigger freeze.

and just once, for the first time last night (but too soon for the first time) the game actually randomly quit on my when I was moving a stack of 8 units.

the game is beautiful, and it has the greatest atmosphere of all the civs combined. But I'd honestly give all that up for the same functionality as the other civ. Some games just aren't supposed to be 3D I guess.

They really went nuts with the "less is more" idea.

 

[Polietileno]

I have issues with the 18 civ on map limit, because i´m designing the Medieval Ages Mod and I´m planning on putting 40 Civs in a map. That´s my issue.

 

[thedaian]

It seems even 18 is a stretch... now I'm not complaining, because so far I do absolutely love this game. By I just custom bought a brand new computer about a monther a go with a top notch gfx card, a gig of ram, 64 bit AMD athlon processor, the works. Completely designed for the "gaming" stuff, I don't play very many flashy games that require super computers, but I figure, if I have a computer than can run those, I should be able to run just about everything else.

But on Rhy's map with 18 civs, by the late game, just as I'm starting to discover riflemen and such (nearing the end of the industrial era) with 2 of the 18 civs dead and gone I've got the world lagging TERRIBLY. I can't smooth scroll across my map anymore... I try my best not to even look at the other civs or I'll be frozen for a bit of load time, if I zoom out, an even bigger freeze.

and just once, for the first time last night (but too soon for the first time) the game actually randomly quit on my when I was moving a stack of 8 units.

the game is beautiful, and it has the greatest atmosphere of all the civs combined. But I'd honestly give all that up for the same functionality as the other civ. Some games just aren't supposed to be 3D I guess.

They really went nuts with the "less is more" idea.

This brings up a good point. Today's computers, even the ones designed for gaming, simply can NOT handle more than 18 civs on a map. It's a combination of reasons, namely, proccessor power and RAM. There's a lot to handle.

Really, if you want a TON of civs on the map, play civ3. If you want a 3d landscape, and the many changes to gameplay and other things, play Cvi4. If you haven't played civ4 yet, then please, don't knock it until you've tried it. It's a new game, not an expansion.

With modding, you can make hundereds of new civs. It's likely a whole lot easier to do, too, since it's all xml based. I'm sure tools'll come out (user made, and firaxis made) that'll make adding units, civs, changing specific game options, ect a lot easier.

 

[WildWeazel]

thedaian has a good point. Civ4 is a completely different game. As much as I like it, I know I'll go back to Civ3 soon for some more modding and playing. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. Civ3 can handle much larger and more complex worlds, and is faster. Civ4 is more realistic in many ways, and more immersive. I'll play them both and enjoy them both.

 

[tbear2520]

If 18 is the limit of Civ's that can be played in a single game, I'm fine with that. The problem for me doesn't lye with the number of civ's that can be played. So you make 100 civ's, ok now what. In order to play them you have to play a random map because the only way to play them is through the py code. The non-random map, like Earth would require XML modifications each time you would like to put in other civ's and who knows how to get the desired x\y location. I guess you could guess them and then try and then guess them and then try and guess them and try, but who wants to spend all day Saturday setting up a single instance of your desired game.

 

[clinton]

I don't understand all this talk about the processing power required to handle extra civs? Processing power I think would be mainly dictated by map size. If have twice as many civs, they would be each half as big on average, and hence take roughly half the time to process each, so the processing power is about the same. Admittedly, there may be some actions that require constant time, maybe diplomacy, but most time consuming actions, like moving all units and setting cities production, would require time proportional to civ size. I played plenty of games of civ3 with 32 civs, and they were not noticably slower in the end game than games with 8 civs. They were slower in the early game, but turns progressed so quick then it didn't matter. But once the map filled out, 8 civs or 32 civs was irrelavent. So I really don't see the reason why the developers hard coded the maximum number of active civs to such a low level. I would imagine increasing the limit would require little effort and have little performance penalty if the code it well structured, but I may be wrong.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I remember having to make a scenario in Civ2 with only 7 civilizations and 1 barbarian civ. I say, if you can't do it with 18 civilizations, it's time to readjust the scope of your scenario.

And in the epic game, I find it hard to pay attention to 10 civilizations let alone 30... most of them are small and completely irrelevant to me except as cities that have been set up ready for me to take... and the barbarians already do a fairly good job of that for me.

 

[clinton]

I remember having to make a scenario in Civ2 with only 7 civilizations and 1 barbarian civ. I say, if you can't do it with 18 civilizations, it's time to readjust the scope of your scenario.

Do you remember the time where you had to deal with having 640 kilobytes of memory. If you can't adjust your operating system and programs to fit in two megabytes, its time to readjust the scope of your operating system and programs.

Seriously, times have moved on. Civ 3 handled 32 civs at a time without any problems. You might say Civ 4 has better graphics and what not, but adding extra civs requires little extra graphics resources, as the graphics required is determined by map size, not number of civs. I don't see any reason for the step backwards.

 

[WildWeazel]

Once again, if you compare it to vanilla Civ3 it's not a step backwards. Civ4 will undoubtedly have an expansion pack or 2 eventually, and a lot of new things will be added. It took 3 more years of development after Civ3's release to produce PTW and then Conquests. You can't expect Firaxis to spend that much time developing a new game to make it perfect before its release. Everyone would lose interest.

 

[Crayton]

Patches and expansions will come. I think the main slow-down with multiple civs is that during each AI's turn they must weigh 'where to move' each unit based on current diplomacy and relations with 17 other civs. The AI also trades and must sort through 17 other civs with which to do so. What to research based on 17 other civs current advantages/disadvantages must be calculated.

Jump to 31 civs and you've more than tripled the amount of calculations needed. Civ4 may be slower because there ARE so many new features that need to be accounted for by the AI.

 

[MeteorPunch]

King Jason: What's your CPU, Ram, Video Card?

 

[sanjoggopal]

Am I crazy.

On my CIV III even with all expansions, I could only have 16 or 17 civs playing on one map. I could never have all 31 playing.

If it is possible to have all 31 playing, please let me know how to do it. I would love to utilize this option.

 

[WildWeazel]

Scenario Properties, change number of players.

 

[sanjoggopal]

Thanks Weasel.

Is that something I need to be a "mod" to do, or is that just in the game.

If it is just in the game, I really feel like an idiot.

Thanks again for the heads up.