Tease! 

So when are you finally going to announce your next 4x to everyone else?     Also your killing off 32bit support for this next 4x right? (hope so) 

Wow times flies, already time for the next report...   

Welcome Mr. Johnson! 

Delay as long as you need to. Can't wait for the next expansion. 

Shame to read about the delay, but that gives me a bit more time to decently finish my 1.3 game.

Awesome to hear, keep up the good work!

And Jon Van Caneghem!

Great news! And, what a team you have now, with so much 4X gaming expertise   Can't wait for those announcements on what you guys have been working on and what you'll be in the near future. Will you be announcing titles soon?

Just give me LH already!!!

(Oh, and welcome Soren )

I vote no on letting 32-bitters play on huge map size, if I get a vote.  It's time to wean folks off of 32-bit.

That said, one of the things I think you guys really do well at Stardock is making games run on limited resources.   GC2 and FE both run really well on mediocre rigs.  (which I think is smart)

Soren's pretty big news.

Since it's delayed can you spoil us with some more screenshots?

I vote on letting the 32-bit users choose their own fate, for good or for ill (if my vote counts too). Afterall, even Brad has admitted that there are many 32-bit users still out there.

Now, I'm no programmer, but in the old days when a game was installed, we gamers would get the options laid out in front for custom installation. I'm not just talking about "choose your directory of install", nor do I refer to the common custom choices of 'which sound card you have' or 'how many buttons on your joystick do you want to play with'. Many games had several layers of install, depending on how well your computer was able to perform. I don't know how much investment of time, money, and resources this type of request would contain, but if possible for what SD would consider to be a reasonable amount, please consider it.

During install, could we please receive the option whether or not we want to tackle huge maps. Granted, there probably is 32-bit machines out there that cannot operate FE with on a huge map. But I would be hard pressed to believe all 32-bit machines couldn't do it. Mine operates dual core for example...

During install, could we please receive the option whether or not to have the little meeples installed? I've been watching ver 1.3 very closely to see how much memory it's consuming, and I've pleasantly found out that the worst case has been only 840,000 K (from the task manager window). HUGE congrats to SD over this cause during many of the betas and even still in 1.0, that number could climb as high as 1,940,000 K on my machine. Please consider allowing customers make their own choice whether they feel they can run the game with meeples or not. If it doesn't work for some 32-bit users, all it means is a reinstall...

Perhaps this is a bit of an aside, but I was wondering if any thought has been given for the flatting of hills/mountains when city development occurs close by since I first mentioned it in beta 4. Often times, a tile(s) is flattened, yet the characteristics of that tile are maintained. Throughout the course of a game, it can be quite annoying to path your units over flat grassland only to be jipped by the 1/2 movement penalty along the way.

Thanks

This wouldn't be bricking the game for 32-bit folks.  They just couldn't play on the largest map size. 

This would save Stardock a large amount in optimization.

Welcome Soren.

@32 bit huge maps. Is it worth the effort? ? Is it even viable to optimize memory to the point that OOMs are totally avoidable?

Speaking of Soren and OOMs, I remember one of the games Soren worked on still crashes with OOMs to this day and the company always insisted it was my PC.. but of course im running 10x the specs I was back then and it still has OOMs. Plain and simple it hits the 32 bit limit, has very little to do with what system you were running at that point. Still love the game, still one of my top all time 4x, but I still remember the OOMs well. (think I only finished 1 out of 3 or 4 games on it due to those, because I like big maps)

Point is that if you can't cross that threshold to remove the potential to OOM with 99% certainty don't bother adding the map size for 32 bit users IMO, its likely only going to lead to frustration.

Removing an option for 32 bit users > than requiring people to fully upgrade their system for a shittily optimized engine *cough* Frostbite *cough*

As someone who often lags in owning the latest and greatest technology, I appreciate that SD is trying to accommodate 32 bit users. (Although, this time around, I'm in the 64 bit camp, and it's a non-issue for me)