System requirements, low-res feat. low-whatever -mode...

[mwaf]

Would it be completely impossible that there could be a low-requirments mode in PtW?

I do have a computer that meets system requirements (for Civ III, at least), but I also have a computer doesn't. My point is that due to the System requirements, I can't play CivIII with my friends at home. That would be more fun than playing over the net (being able to talk in RL[TM]). And trust me, playing Hot Seat in CivNet and Civ2-UCCC (/me wonders if anyone knows that abbreviation) was(/is) a pain in the * due to the fact that one could see the other's moves, weak points etc.


So, it would be great if Civ III: PtW could be launched without movies, animations and high-res terrain. Something along the lines of Civ-1 for Mac or CivNet for PC (Civ-1 for Mac has significantly better graphics than Civ-1 for PC) regarding graphics would be perfect. Civilization has never been about good looks and eye-candy so gameplay would certainly not suffer.

Naturally, a mod could solve this. But is anyone willing to make a low-end mod? I did check the Files forum and found Simple Terrain mod by mengo76, which is nice, but I doubt that will be enough since it only affects terrain.

Any thoughts?

[Bleyn]

I seriously doubt such a thing will ever happen. If they could have made the minimum reqs. any lower than they are now, they probably would have. In fact, IIRC, someone at Firaxis said last year that most of the minimums are established as part of the game testing process. Meaning they tried playing the game on older/smaller systems and it either didn't work, or performance was too slow or otherwise unacceptable.

As for the things you suggest...
1. What movies? The only movies in the game are during startup and upon winning the space race. Neither of which is at a point where it would really matter to game performance.

2. Animations? You can already turn them off. At least 95% of them. Can't turn off the "We love the Leader" fireworks that I know of.

3. High-res. terrain? Uhm. Do you really think that is the only reason for the 1024x768 minimum on graphics resolution? If it was, I suspect they would have gone with a lower minimum there. This is one minimum where its important to getting the whole game to look right, not just the terrains. And I don't think replacing the terrains is enough to change that.

My suggestions...
1. Accept the fact that these are the minimum reqs. They aren't going to get any lower. Be happy some of them aren't any higher, considering those minimums effectively put the low-end at a system about 4-5 years old now. Thats pretty darned old.

2. If the only minimum you are actually running below on your older system is CPU, try installing if you haven't already. It might actually install, and depending on the speed of the CPU, it might not be too unsufferable. I've found this to be the case on a few games in the past. Video res./harddrive space/RAM/OS minimums aren't negotiable. CPU can be.

[Informer]

I have to admit Civilization 3 demands quite a large amount of CPU power and memory. Although I do concur with you, Bleyn, Civ uses the type of game engine that requires a lot of power, it happened in CTP, CTP2 and now Civ 3. I don't know how this was managed in Civ 2, but even though it's not likely, I wouldn't yet give up hope on the requirements for the expansion pack.

[mwaf]

Originally posted by Bleyn

I seriously doubt such a thing will ever happen. If they could have made the minimum reqs. any lower than they are now, they probably would have. In fact, IIRC, someone at Firaxis said last year that most of the minimums are established as part of the game testing process. Meaning they tried playing the game on older/smaller systems and it either didn't work, or performance was too slow or otherwise unacceptable.

...

As for the things you suggest...
1. What movies? The only movies in the game are during startup and upon winning the space race. Neither of which is at a point where it would really matter to game performance.

True.
On a side note, my Civ III has got a grand total of 67,4Mb of movies.

2. Animations? You can already turn them off. At least 95% of them. Can't turn off the "We love the Leader" fireworks that I know of.

* mwaf feels like an idiot not having checked trough the preferences *

3. High-res. terrain? Uhm. Do you really think that is the only reason for the 1024x768 minimum on graphics resolution? If it was, I suspect they would have gone with a lower minimum there. This is one minimum where its important to getting the whole game to look right, not just the terrains. And I don't think replacing the terrains is enough to change that.

...

My suggestions...
1. Accept the fact that these are the minimum reqs. They aren't going to get any lower. Be happy some of them aren't any higher, considering those minimums effectively put the low-end at a system about 4-5 years old now. Thats pretty darned old.

Old is old, that's true.

2. If the only minimum you are actually running below on your older system is CPU, try installing if you haven't already. It might actually install, and depending on the speed of the CPU, it might not be too unsufferable. I've found this to be the case on a few games in the past. Video res./harddrive space/RAM/OS minimums aren't negotiable. CPU can be.

As a matter of fact, I haven't installed civ on the older comp, since I really don't need to do it now (with no PtW around).

[DarkCloud]

mwaf-
Iàve found that you can usually run games about 20mhz slower than the lowest system reqs... it may crash a lot but Itàll work.

It has worked for me.

good luck

[Solver]

I have found out that Civ 3 doesn't ask for too much. Processor - two year old systems are in range of 450-500 MHz, and you can play Civ 3, though not too good, even on a 3 year old one.

RAM? It's very cheap now, and noone has less than 64 MB of RAM anyway. I play with 128.

HDD? Again, 40 GB now costs just a bit more than 20 GB, and I think most have at least 10 GB drives. Unless you need much to store, you probably will have the space. True, it's 600+ megs, and true, Firaxis could include a Play from CD mode with about 70-100 MB required on drive, but this doesn't cause problems to many.

Screen? While many laptop users can't play on 1024x768, most others can. There are some people with 7 or so years old monitors, but for those, and laptop users, I've released a solution letting play Civ 3 under 800x600.

[Jethro83]

I play on a 5 year old 350Mhz Pentium II with 320MB of RAM (upgraded from 64MB), and an 8 GB hard drive. It works just fine for me. I wouldn't say its too slow at all, and it never crashes on me. Even when my system was only on 64MB, it still worked fine.

When compared with a lot of games released about the same time, Civ III isn't really so demanding. Even some games released before it can't run on my machine properly, if at all.

[Solver]

Where did you get 350 MHz 5 years ago? In 1997, I was running on a P 166 machine.

Oh yeah, I haven't seen a single crash either.

[DarkCloud]

QUOTE
RAM? It's very cheap now, and noone has less than 64 MB of RAM anyway.
END QUOTE

ahem.... I have 32... for a long time I only had 16 until i upgraded last year.

Although I ahve been considering building a new computer which could blow all your away

Current is PEntium I 220.

[Thrawn05]

I agree... I believe all computer game programmers should do their best to allow their product to be backwards compatible to most system that were built within the last 5 to 8 years.

Most of the games out right now deal more with heavy graphics that are not really needed, and in fact are not standard on most video cards (you hear me Raven!).

I do think Firaxis did do a good job with the system requirements to a degree... but I'm sure that could have gone down a 100MHz on the CPU speed.

So long Firaxis spends 99% of their time rewriting the code to make it do what it needs to faster and with less RAM and CPU usage... they'd be ok.

Remember... the more we ask from them... the bigger and uglier the code... perhaps to the point of the dreaded spaghetti code effect. At that point they'll move on to Civ4.


I have a P3 550MHz with 256MB of SDRAM running WinXP Pro. I'm waiting for the 10GHz CPUs before I buy another PC.

[Solver]

DarkCloud, how can you manage to do anything this way? Yeah, I used to run Windows 98 with 16 MB RAM, and it was a pain in the butt.

[Civfan]

Hi.
I have problems running Civ III on both my computers and I'm sure I know why. My video card on both computers has only 8 mb and their both internal with the motherboard. I have problems with the map editor as I move the screen it follows very slowly.

One computer is an AMD K6-2 450 Mhz 56 MB RAm (8 MB for Internal 3D Accelerator VIDEO CARD) and it works ok with 3 Civilizations on a small map but anything above that sucks.

Second computer is a Celeron 466 Mhz with 98 MB RAM with a internal Video Card. Doesn't take away from the memory like the AMD.

Both computers have 20 Gig hard drives on them. Any suggestions on improving the games?

Ps. If I add more memory to the AMD computer does anyone think it will improve performance. Whats Ram really for anyway.

If I open the Civ3.exe file and its drivers does that take up 64 MBs of RAM?


Thanks

Civfan......

[Coracle]

Originally posted by Informer
I have to admit Civilization 3 demands quite a large amount of CPU power and memory. . .

Yea. A lot more than what Firaxis admitted on the box. Liars.