Turn Length

Hopefully the 64 bit was only a loss in having our Gigantic maps with fast turn times. We can still have GIgantic maps, but with the normal slow turns, if I get the jist of it.

On that note, can the 32 bit version RUN on a 64 bit OS?

32bit version can run on 64bit OS.

The turns are set to be simultaneous, which helps a lot with that sort of thing. As long as your not just hammering the next turn button, a slow AI can be covered up pretty easily under that system. And of course, i would expect SD to wow us with the AI in all respects regardless.

I think you are wrong here, the potential for Gigantic maps in the 64-bit version was due to the increased memory (> 4GB) that can be used on a 64-bit OS. Without the 64-bit version, the game is limited in the amount of memory it can use (even on a 64 bit OS), and thus limited on the size of maps...

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong please...

Naw, your right. Only limit on map sizes is how much memory you got to load them.

Okay, so the only "limit" is on map sizes. But doest it also mean that for high-end maps a 64-bit version of the game would run faster?

Or is that just graphic cards, and has nothing to do with memory ... ... sigh

Civ4 and its set of major mods was based mostly on RAM, with a decent processor being a distant second requirement. Doesn't mean elemental will be the same way.

GC2 was lightning quick compared to basic Civ4 let alone ambitious mods like FfH so I never really researched what hardware makes stardock's games tick. Didn't matter to me.

Actually, i was under the impression that some maps you would require more memory, just to load. If you have a map that is 1000000x10000000 tiles, you might need 6 gigs of ram just to load the map. The idea was that as the amount of memory possible increases, the map size could also increase. Of course, i imagine that the majority of maps will be playable on older computers with less ram, but at the same time, if you built a monster machine with 18 gigs of ram, why not be able to use it?

There's two considerations here.

1. RAM - Needed to load the map and all the units on it. Obviously, more is better, but once you have enough, adding more doesn't help you. 64 bit Elemental on Vista/Win7 64 can address basically unlimited amounts of RAM, XP and other 32 bit versions are limited to a bit under 4GB total, with only 2GB for any one application.

The problem is that once you can fit everything in RAM, adding more doesn't do anything. To speed up turns, you need...

2. CPU - IIRC, Civ works by having the AI process all its moves when the player is finished. While this is player friendly (the AI won't move on a turn before you do), it's a waste of CPU time and slows things down. While the game is waiting for you to move, there is lots of free CPU type. Once you're finished, the AI uses the CPU flat out to do everything as fast as it can, but as more things appear on the map it takes more time to decide and execute all those actions, and then perform all the start of next turn calculations like culture spread, taxes, etc.

I don't believe Civ 4 was well multithreaded, so you're really looking at raw CPU speed on a single core. Since cores aren't getting much faster these days, you can't get real gains there. So you're only left with a couple options to speed things up:

- Let the AI move at the same time as the player does. This may annoy the player (in that its simultaneous turns like in a multiplayer Civ game), but it lets the AI use all that CPU time that's free while waiting for the player and thus will reduce how much CPU time is needed to end the turn.

- Multithread it. If you can use more cores you can really speed things up. But there's only some areas of the game where you can do that, movement is still generally sequential (this unit moves, that unit moves). A lot of calculations can be offloaded though, so there are places to make some gains.