Will wait till Civ3 hits the bargain bin ---->

[sevensterre]

whether or not Civ 3 hits the bargain bin will depend on how well the game sells. Whenever I've seen a game hit the bargain bins soon after release there were problems with the game. Look to see Pool of radiance to be in the bargain Bin too. I think it will be a year before that happens with Civ 3.

[Solver]

No, SMAC only had 800x600 available, without any choice in options, be it lower or higher. Civ 3 has the preferences menu where it can be customized. So hacking is easier, I suppose.

[LDiCesare]

t's just hard to imagine a system capable of playing Civ3 where the only limitation was the monitor. 800x600 monitors were the standard in the days of the 80386, and 1024x768 monitors have been common for ten years.

Well, my laptop has such a limitation. I won't ever buy a monitor because it is BULKY (and when you spend your time between homes, you cannot afford to buy 2 computers instead of 1 laptop). Even if I plugged a monitor, I doubt the graphics card could support it, and I won't change my laptop before at least one year.
As for games not having 800x600 as a minimum resolution now, look at MOO3 system reqs. I could give other examples. I'll buy MOO3 because I can play it, I won't buy civ3 because I cannot. Simple.

[LaRusso]

Originally posted by Solver
No, SMAC only had 800x600 available, without any choice in options, be it lower or higher. Civ 3 has the preferences menu where it can be customized. So hacking is easier, I suppose.

solver, i guess you can adjust screen resolution and i guess i could make it 800x600 on my laptop. business travel will be so much fun!

[Dimension]

Originally posted by drake
Most major sites still log 8x6 users as their highest percentage of users, with 10X7 usually in second.

I know that. It seems like resolution is directly proportional to your geek factor. My roommate uses 1024x768, and I have dual monitors in 1600x1200

But the average person uses 800x600 unless they've got a big monitor. My parents and my girlfriend both leave their computers in 800x600. That certainly doesn't mean that their monitors are not capable of 1024x768. I built my girlfriend a cheap computer 3 or 4 years ago, and the cheapest 15" monitor I could find still did 1024x768.

Obviously, it's always nice to have more options, but I'm glad Civ3 was designed for fairly modern systems. It wouldn't be worth buying if it wasn't. The box lists the minimum requirements as a P2-300 with 32MB RAM and 400MB hard drive space, but that probably wouldn't be a very optimal system... I'm sure the late-game would drive you nuts if you didn't turn off the computer-controlled player animations on such a system.

Firaxis would certainly support 800x600 if they thought they were significantly limiting their customers.

It's still a little annoying for everybody that Civ3 is stuck in 1024x768. I would like to be able to play it in 1280x1024 or even 1600x1200. Tropico has a similar interface to SMAC / Civ3, and they support all resolutions from 640x480 to 1600x1200. In a strategy game, it's certainly much better to be able to change the resolution AND the zoom level.