simple play the game on cloth map

i have a much stronger pc and he cant handle the game at 300+ turns

It's strange we can't adjust performance much. F.e. make people in cities and animation disappear, make all armies look like a single unit etc.

I'm going to go ahead and show my computing ignorance here, but I have no problems with FPS running Civ4, which seems like it has similar graphical requirements.

I've never intuitively understood why Elemental is so resource intensive, given what it actually looks like on-screen. Maybe someone more knowledgeable than myself has some insight...

I understand that there are a lot of things on-screen with a lot of cities, but it seems like I get stutter from the very beginning of the game, even before my first city is founded.

Come on, the cloths map is not an acceptable option for playing even on low end systems.

Truth is: the game is badly optimiziable atm - thats all to say.

It just runs badly on most systems.

Needs some more patches 'till it will run in a playable fashion.

For now it's just a unplayable mess for all low enders.

My workaround: save&exit&start&load every 30-50 turns and try to end the game before turn 300-400.

Sadly the game tends to "alter" the saves and "forget" some units, enemy chars, etc.

but who cares... it's still totaly addictive and after 1.1 it has stopped crashin' every ten minutes.

What are you talking about?  The cloth map rocks.

Yeah - and then i buy a new car i just use the spare wheel...

Agreed, I'm loving the visual style of Elemental, cloth map and all.

That aside - I find that saving, restarting the application, then loading tends to clear up alot of my lag issues late game on large epic maps with a full complimnet of AI players. When things really start to slow down, just launch an offensive and take out a few of your opponents' kingdoms - that should do the trick.

To be fair though my laptop does pretty much meet recommended specs, now i should be able to play on 3d on lowish settings and not experience 8-12 fps. This game needs some serious optimizations in the engine, do Stardock intend to make significant improvements in this area.

Also my concern is that things like lowering the screen resolution should increase the fps rate but it doesnt, nor does changing various graphic options, im no expert but surlt this isnt right.

Plus on my laptop I can run Starcraft 2 on medium settings with good average fps.

I feel your pain.  I too have a good top end system and the game plays like crap.  Have to wait for it to unfreeze if it doesn't crash.  It doesn't happen right away, but maybe 100+ turns in when the game starts getting good.  Boo.