question about system specs and huge maps

[dfn]

Hi.
I am just curious about what system specs are needed to run huge maps well, even late game?
I've done some searching, and the answer varies, but the results I found are quite old (2005-2006).
So...could a few of you that run the game well (huge map, late game) post your system specs? I am mostly concerned about RAM, and want to know how much is needed, before I buy any.
Thank you.

 

[oranges]

2GB Ram and E6750 runs huge maps like a charm.

 

[Gumbolt]

I run intel core 2 duo at 2.4ghz with 4gb ram and a 8600GTS 256mb graphics.

The game runs great for me. If its slow on the end its because of lots of units to move not because of the pc. That cant be helped. )

i would say 2gb is more than enough. 1gb should probably be fine. i think onboard graphics can be a problem for larger maps. Well laptops were never really designed for memory intensive games.

 

[peacenik]

I'm running huge maps on an old Athlon 3700 with 1GB of RAM and a 256MB Radeon 1300 graphics card. With care, feeding, patience, low graphics settings, and the latest drivers I can stumble through a game without more than a couple of crashes. I autosave after every turn to prevent damage from the very occasional crash. All of the crashes are accompanied with the 'failed to allocate graphics memory' explanation. My guess is these specs are just about the rockbottom to play a huge map.

 

[Bob-san]

I have an E2140 (1.6GHz stock) overclocked to 3.2GHz and 2GB of RAM. Graphics is a Radeon HD3850 256MB. I can run huge maps smoothly up until the start of the 21th century most of the time. After that, nothing really helps since the AI goes over so many units and gives them tasks, as well as unit building and negotiations and everything else that we do over a few minutes time. I'm going to drop another 2GB of RAM in just because I'm running Vista HP 64.

 

[Jerrymander]

I'm running huge maps on an old Athlon 3700 with 1GB of RAM and a 256MB Radeon 1300 graphics card. With care, feeding, patience, low graphics settings, and the latest drivers I can stumble through a game without more than a couple of crashes. I autosave after every turn to prevent damage from the very occasional crash. All of the crashes are accompanied with the 'failed to allocate graphics memory' explanation. My guess is these specs are just about the rockbottom to play a huge map.

I have worse specs and never crash. You're doing something wrong.

 

[peacenik]

The only thing I'm certain I have done wrong is bother to read your response.

 

[Gumbolt]

Forgot to say i was running vista. I think XP should need less ram. For vista i would want 2gb.

 

[Kesshi]

I have worse specs and never crash. You're doing something wrong.

Jerrymander,

It may not be peacenik doing something wrong. I've had issues with Civ crashing, and not just the application crashing, but the entire computer. Worse yet, it wasn't even a blue screen of death, but a total system crash! (It messed up my raid more than once, luckily I'm using raid 1 so it was easy to rebuild.) After a lot of investigating I determined the crashes were because of two reasons, well a combination of two reasons, because if only one problem existed, it wouldn't have crashed or at least not nearly as bad. The first reasons was the video card I had (Raedon 9800 All In wonder) has a known bug that Raedon never fixed or were unable to fix via a software update. I had tried all sorts of versions of drivers, including drivers for Raedon cards that weren't 9800s, and a few 3rd party drivers, too. The second reason was because I was (an still am) running Windows 2000 Pro. Windows 2000, unlike XP, doesn't handle graphical errors as well. I forget the specifics but I remember hearing that the way 2k handles graphics is on the same level as the OS. That means if there's an error, the whole OS dumps you out, not just the graphics. Where as in XP the way the graphics are handled is very different than 2k, and if there was a problem, the application may crash, but the SO probably wouldn't.

Even if peacenik could solve the problem that doesn't necessarily mean he or she is doing anything wrong. As someone who has been building computers since the early 90s, I can tell you I've seen some crazy things that were in no way user faults that caused some odd behaviours. Everything from modems that wouldn't eve ATM0 (perma ATM1/ATM2 FTL!) sound cards and video cards that both permanently work on one IRQ and they're both on the SAME IRQ! Or how about Optical Drive A that won't work on one cable spot 1, but will work on cable spot 2, where as Optical Drive B that will work on either spot leaving me to conclude it's not the cable...nor is it the cdrom, but both of them at the same time. And my home router (Cisco Pix501 firewall) seems to randomly shut down after a few weeks. I only have two computers hooked up and it's not like I'm running a large amount of data through it (3 computers if you include the OLPC laptop + the 2 computers on the LAN max at once.) This little box should easily be able to handle 10 times the information I throw at it, but sometimes just decides to stop working. If you know how to configure this thing I'll gladly send you my show config and you can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Computers do weird things. Right now one of my home computer that I paid $3000 for when it was new (6 years ago) is having graphical card issues. When I play Portal the screen has a yellow hue and NO, it's not the cord. It's ONLY for Portal. I've run Portal in windowed mode and only Portal is yellow, everything else is just fine. Also some games won't even display polygons correctly and I can't even watch Starcraft 1 movies! I've been tinkering with computers for nearly 20 years now, and this thing has me at a loss at how to fix it short of a complete reinstall...and I can't even do that right now because I'm using a raid driver and windows is asking me to install 3rd party raid drivers via floppy disk, which stopped working on my machine for some mysterious reason, I'm going to have to rip a floppy drive out of one of my older machines

Jerrymander, please don't be so quick to judge. Computers do strange things sometimes for no apparent reason and it's often times not the user's fault. And while there could be a solution, said solution isn't always obvious, even those of us who are technically inclined don't always find the solution to every problem, let alone people who don't understand the difference between an inside IP address and an ourside IP address, or the difference between a Class A IP or a Class C IP, or the difference between an intranet and an internet, or the difference between PCI and 8xAGP, or the difference between 2 cpus and a dual core, or the difference between Random Access Memory and physical memory...

 

[Bob-san]

Well said, Kessi.

Just because you have issues don't mean they're always your fault. I've done plenty of things myself that have royally screwed up the system--and I'm a hardware enthusiast. For the average person, you really cannot hold them accountable for doing something that you might see as stupid. Simply put--nobody knows all about everything. CivIV isn't some semi-exclusive abandoned open-source game that has been out for 8 years and has a niche following. CivIV is a mainstream game played by average people--not people who are expected to have an abundance of technical know-how.

My usual fix-it routine is format the system partition and reinstall. I don't like dabbing into software problems--I don't particularly like software in and of itself.

I deal with a lot of people who don't understand computers. To put it simply, you have to change what you're talking about with who you're talking to. Some people will never build a computer. Some people used to build computers but find it too much of a chore. Some people love building computers, or want to get into it. I help with all types of people with computer questions, since I've spent several years of my life dealing with computers.

So please, don't blame someone because they are not experts in computers. It's not even a fault. If you want to tell them they're doing something wrong--don't be insulting about it. If this is coming over as insulting, I'm sorry.

 

[dfn]

Thank you very much.
Your responses have helped - time to go shopping!

 

[Genv [FP]]

Get beyond the sword too!

 

[Jerrymander]

Jerrymander, please don't be so quick to judge.

I can judge as quickly as I want to, thank you very much.

 

[one2tieyourshoe]

I can judge as quickly as I want to, thank you very much.

You're a T like me. It's our gift. It's our curse.

 

[Merkill]

I have 4 gig ram and an old amd x2-4200+ 7800gt 256mb XP64bit
I get lag when changing turns in the 1200s or so and a slide show in the 1900s when turn start and som serous lad when playing the turn in the 1900s.

This leads me to believe that a faster processor is more important than ram.

ofc no pc should have less than 2 gig ram anyways due to that pc beein bullied by other pcs (even macs) but not amigas they play nice

 

[niels251]

i got an amd 3200+ with 2 gigs of ram and 256 mb videocard and running winXP. The game runs like a charm. THe problem i think now a days is that people with newest system like an quadcore cpu system expect this game to run supersmooth. That is not the case ofcource because the game is desgined with a single core in mind.

The bugs that you get on very large maps is due to a couple of thing:

-programming
- memory faults(every memory module makes mistakes, look in the taskmanager in vista)
- processors makes mistakes to. The more data it processes the more faults.

 

[tiu]

3.0 Gig P4, 3gb ram and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb card and it runs great, except when scrolling the screen quickly...it tends to really drop the framerate. Then again I am playing with most settings maxed and 4x AA and whatnot, so its to be expected.

 

[Gumbolt]

is there a map size larger than huge?? How do i get this on BTS?

 

[whiplash_CDC]

3.0 Gig P4, 3gb ram and a Nvidia 8600GT 512mb card and it runs great, except when scrolling the screen quickly...it tends to really drop the framerate. Then again I am playing with most settings maxed and 4x AA and whatnot, so its to be expected.

I have basically the same system and the game runs great even with max graphic settings. The only occasional problem is late game on a huge map a fast scroll will overtax even the 512mb card and the game will crash to desktop.

I frequently play the earth18player mod and the turn rollover is only about 3 seconds. 18 civ's with multiple cities and units on high graphics is quite a load, but, except for the fast scroll annoyance, this system handles it quite easily.

If you want to upgrade for better performance my guess is that the best investment will be a 512mb graphics card.

 

[lordnor]

... and this thing has me at a loss at how to fix it short of a complete reinstall...and I can't even do that right now because I'm using a raid driver and windows is asking me to install 3rd party raid drivers via floppy disk, which stopped working on my machine for some mysterious reason...

OT

Have you heard of slipstreaming in regards to windows install disks? Basically it allows you to include additional drivers on a custom-burned install disk. According to what I've heard from M$ (second hand, but from a CISSP I trust) As long as you own a real copy, you are free to burn slipstreamed disks and use your own product key to unlock it. Obviously you can only use your product key to unlok a single install, etc, etc. Same rules as retail disks. I have used this to install XP with raid drivers on a PC without a floppy drive, as well as download service pack 2 as a seperate install, add it to a xp sp1 disk and install with all the updates already on the computer instead of downloading them one at a time. Very useful if you have to install on multiple computers and don't want to bother updating each one individually (provided your lisence allows of course ).

I'm not sure of the rules on posting off-site links to software that could *potentially* be used in an illicit manner, so I'll let you use your google-fu.