They have to push this kind of thing to have a reason to sell a Civ Ⅶ at all considering their biggest competitor is themselves. I would consider myself to be a “Civ fan” but still haven't even bought Ⅵ. I was waiting for it to be complete and on discount, but I can't say I'm interested in spending $80 on it even though it is now both of those things: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/12218/Sid_Meiers_Civil...
I bought VI with a humble bundle, and just didn't like it. V was fine, people just wanted some flexibility when decorating cities; but developers built an entirely new set of mechanics on top of that request, and made the game more complicated that it needs to be. With VII they seem to have doubled down on that concept, so I don't think I'll buy it anytime soon.
It's incomprehensible how much more excellent and accessible gaming is with food scaling tech like FSR and XeSS. I long resisted, but after my old GPU put up a terrible showing (on WH40K Darktide) I gave it a go and became a convert.
Steam Deck sets such an excellently low target for games, that they have to make possible, but it also does it at such a perfectly not-excessive resolution. So games need to target this pretty modest system, at modest resolution.
Beyond performance, it also encourages games to be considerate for low res gamers, fitting the elements on the screen and making everything readable & usable. It's amazing to me that info dense games like Last Spell (what an excellent squad town defender) have gotten ported & play well!
Deck has brought about such a fantastic renormalization of what PC games need to be able to do.
This is talking about recommended specs. I'm sure you can play it on a toaster but if it's anything like its predecessors, large map, late-game AI moves are going to bog right down.
I've upgraded my PC mid-game just because it was taking five minutes between moves. Which is all to say, playing on a Deck will limit your game choices.
Other Civ's did AI on a single core. It sounds like they've properly threaded it, so even an anemic 4 core machine might do better with Civ7 than Civ6.
But as they say, what Moore giveth, he taketh away, so it's also likely they've eaten that 4X win elsewhere...
I'm surprised to hear there are high core count requirements. My understanding was that grand strategies were always going to be performance-limited based on single core performance, given the interlinkedness of all game variables.
It really isn't tough to come up with scenarios where the game can schedule off lots of independent threads to work on various things, then collect the data when ready.
But 16 cores? Not just 16 threads, but cores, where the total number of possible simultaneous threads is 32? Or is this them hedging for the total number of cores where cores could also be Intel e cores?
Either way, I'll be interested to see CPU utilization when people test out the game :)
If I had to guess, the actual calculations for the logic of the game itself are completely trivial and are not bottlenecked by any modern processor or any number of cores. They're not exactly doing MCMC to simulate outcomes.
this definitely isn't the case in my experience. I run Civ VI on a relatively high end desktop (5950x + 3080 Ti) and there is a very noticeable slowdown between turns with lots of Civs/city states on large maps
Real-time competitive online games need the strategy part to work well on the lower-end systems which tend to be extremely common among the player base. A player shouldn't be able to upgrade their way to a significant competitive advantage, i.e., let them argue about 10ms worth of vsync rates rather than 100's of ms of cpu lag.
But for turn-based offline games, players with fewer cores can substitute a bit of patience. They can use the time to think as well as the computer.
The high detail rendering and animations (especially the idle characters and scenery with seagulls and alike) are the least important in this game and adds exactly zero to the joy of turn based strategy. A schematic view is way enough for this kind of game. I am a bit sceptical about this version (just like most before with supefluous graphics) if this is what gets the time and energy of the developers.
>The high detail rendering and animations (especially the idle characters and scenery with seagulls and alaike) are the least important in this game and adds exactly zero to the joy of turn based strategy.
Au contraire, as a kid playing these games I really liked taking a moment to pause and zoom in and imagine the kinds of lives my people would be having.
They probably plan for the game to be on sale for a long time, so they don't want the game to look dated too soon, and aimed for future hardware. The specs won't seem so high in a few years.
Games are long overdue to use the full CPU instead of bottlenecking of single-core performance. I hope they've actually designed for multi-core CPUs, and made as many things data-parallel as possible.
I always find it interesting that Civilization (especially 5+) is basically a board game with added fog of war. These specs seem a little extreme given that fact. That being said, anyone who's played older versions knows that the AI needs every cycle it can get. I'd love to see smarter multithreaded strategy for the AI. Its combat skills border on embarrassing.
Simply increasing processing power for the AI isn't enough. Gameplay mechanics are intimately related to the capabilities of the AI.
For example, when they redesigned combat around the 1-Unit-Per-Tile (1UPT) mechanic for CIV 5, this crippled the ability of the AI to wage war. That's because even if a high-difficulty AI could out-produce the player in terms of military, they were logistics-limited in their ability to get those units to the front because of 1UPT. That means that the AI can't threaten a player militarily, and thus loses it's main lever in terms of it's ability to be "difficult."
Contrast this to Civ 4, where high-difficulty AIs were capable of completely overwhelming a player that didn't take them seriously. You couldn't just sit there and tech-up and use a small number of advanced units to fend off an invasion from a much larger and more aggressive neighbor. This was especially the case if you played against advanced fan-created AIs.
I'm hoping they get rid of 1UPT completely for Civ 7, but I have a feeling that it is unlikely because casual players (the majority purchaser for Civ) actually like that 1UPT effectively removes tactical combat from the game.
1UPT added tactical combat to the game. Before Civ 5, the lowest level of warfare was operational. If you got your units close to the enemy, they were in position to fight. You didn't have to worry much about battlefield formations, terrain, coordinating the actions of different units, and so on.
This addition of tactical combat crippled the AI, because it doesn't understand the situation on the battlefield, and it's not good at making and adjusting plans.
I am not sure if I buy this resoning. While doom tile army is much easier to create, I found it hard to imagine major AAA game dev making same game for ever unable to create proper Ai that handles strategy and tactics with multi-tiled armies.
There are plenty of small games that handle complex armies fight with plenty units, choke-points and strategical and tactical views. Especially since the unit roaster in Civ games is quite limited in comparison to other strategy games.
Yes, difficulty scaling in CIV just equates to giving the AI unfair starting points and making it super easy and cheap for the computer controlled players to build advanced, OP units.
Previous Civ games seriously bog down mid-to-late game. It's not visual candy, it's just all the units/ai doing its thing. The more turns you take, the longer each end-of-turn takes.
I could see where suggesting 16 cores and more could be a good benchmark for a high-end experience with this game.
> For a playable experience targeting 1080p, Low settings, and 30 FPS, Firaxis recommends entry-level CPUs from Intel 10th Gen and AMD Ryzen's first generation— very old processors at this point that most PC gamers have likely long upgraded past. The graphics requirements of GTX 1050, RX 460, and Arc A380 are similarly reasonable. The old game's recommended RAM spec— 8 GB— is now the new minimum spec, probably the most significant bump for anyone already using 8 GB or less.
It's also nearly 2025 - for a desktop gaming rig, 32GB of RAM isn't really that unusual, and neither is 16 cores.
>It's also nearly 2025 - for a desktop gaming rig, 32GB of RAM isn't really that unusual, and neither is 16 cores.
/r/USdefaultism
Plenty of people all over the world can't afford or don't want to spend so much money on a new gaming rig every few years.
I just upgraded from:
- core i5 2500 (from 2011)
- 8GB of DDR3
- nvidia 9500GT
to the following config:
- Ryzen 5 2600x 6 cores from 2018
- 16GB of DDR4
- Radeon rx570 8GB
- 550W PSU
Cost of the operation:
80€ for second hand mainboard + CPU + 650W PSU
40€ for new Corsair dimms
15€ for a second hand case (went from mini-ITX to microATX mainboard)
That is 135€ in total and there is no way I would have spent much more on a gaming computer right now. I have enough to spend on a trip on the other side of the atlantic, fixing my house, go solar + some bicycle and motorbike parts and maintenance.
Steam hardware survey indicates that <10% of the market has 16 or more cores. Consumer gaming-optimized CPUs also don't typically have that high of a physical core count. Not saying it is unfair for ultra settings, just not typical even for higher-end game rigs.
16 cores is pretty high end. I have a Ryzen 9 7900X which I bought last year and that is 12 cores/24 threads. It still retails for roughly $400.
A lot of gamer CPUs don't have 16 cores. Neither the 7800x3D nor the 7900x3d have 16 cores. In the latest gen, only the 9950x3d will have 16 cores (it will likely be a $700 CPU). The 9900x3D is rumored to have 12 cores and the 9800x3D is rumored to have 8 cores.
It should be noted that Civ5/6 bog down not because the AI is that good, but because the implementation is that slow. It's just a very poorly optimized game.
It's for 4k. The lower res settings are far less. If you want a premium experience in a premium resolution you should have premium gear. Makes sense to me.
It sounds like they've done a fabulous job on scalability. Minimum specs is 4 cores, 8GB RAM and a 1050. That'd have been a mediocre machine 8 years ago.
Readit News
(back in may 2020 according to my epic receipts, but it doesn't state which add-on it came with)
You can set it to use retina resolution. Some mods even work. Better trading screen, etc.
It's kind of amazing.
Steam Deck sets such an excellently low target for games, that they have to make possible, but it also does it at such a perfectly not-excessive resolution. So games need to target this pretty modest system, at modest resolution.
Beyond performance, it also encourages games to be considerate for low res gamers, fitting the elements on the screen and making everything readable & usable. It's amazing to me that info dense games like Last Spell (what an excellent squad town defender) have gotten ported & play well!
Deck has brought about such a fantastic renormalization of what PC games need to be able to do.
I've upgraded my PC mid-game just because it was taking five minutes between moves. Which is all to say, playing on a Deck will limit your game choices.
But as they say, what Moore giveth, he taketh away, so it's also likely they've eaten that 4X win elsewhere...
But 16 cores? Not just 16 threads, but cores, where the total number of possible simultaneous threads is 32? Or is this them hedging for the total number of cores where cores could also be Intel e cores?
Either way, I'll be interested to see CPU utilization when people test out the game :)
But for turn-based offline games, players with fewer cores can substitute a bit of patience. They can use the time to think as well as the computer.
Au contraire, as a kid playing these games I really liked taking a moment to pause and zoom in and imagine the kinds of lives my people would be having.
Games are long overdue to use the full CPU instead of bottlenecking of single-core performance. I hope they've actually designed for multi-core CPUs, and made as many things data-parallel as possible.
For example, when they redesigned combat around the 1-Unit-Per-Tile (1UPT) mechanic for CIV 5, this crippled the ability of the AI to wage war. That's because even if a high-difficulty AI could out-produce the player in terms of military, they were logistics-limited in their ability to get those units to the front because of 1UPT. That means that the AI can't threaten a player militarily, and thus loses it's main lever in terms of it's ability to be "difficult."
Contrast this to Civ 4, where high-difficulty AIs were capable of completely overwhelming a player that didn't take them seriously. You couldn't just sit there and tech-up and use a small number of advanced units to fend off an invasion from a much larger and more aggressive neighbor. This was especially the case if you played against advanced fan-created AIs.
I'm hoping they get rid of 1UPT completely for Civ 7, but I have a feeling that it is unlikely because casual players (the majority purchaser for Civ) actually like that 1UPT effectively removes tactical combat from the game.
This addition of tactical combat crippled the AI, because it doesn't understand the situation on the battlefield, and it's not good at making and adjusting plans.
There are plenty of small games that handle complex armies fight with plenty units, choke-points and strategical and tactical views. Especially since the unit roaster in Civ games is quite limited in comparison to other strategy games.
https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty_level_(Civ6)
I could see where suggesting 16 cores and more could be a good benchmark for a high-end experience with this game.
> For a playable experience targeting 1080p, Low settings, and 30 FPS, Firaxis recommends entry-level CPUs from Intel 10th Gen and AMD Ryzen's first generation— very old processors at this point that most PC gamers have likely long upgraded past. The graphics requirements of GTX 1050, RX 460, and Arc A380 are similarly reasonable. The old game's recommended RAM spec— 8 GB— is now the new minimum spec, probably the most significant bump for anyone already using 8 GB or less.
It's also nearly 2025 - for a desktop gaming rig, 32GB of RAM isn't really that unusual, and neither is 16 cores.
/r/USdefaultism
Plenty of people all over the world can't afford or don't want to spend so much money on a new gaming rig every few years.
I just upgraded from:
- core i5 2500 (from 2011)
- 8GB of DDR3
- nvidia 9500GT
to the following config:
- Ryzen 5 2600x 6 cores from 2018
- 16GB of DDR4
- Radeon rx570 8GB
- 550W PSU
Cost of the operation:
80€ for second hand mainboard + CPU + 650W PSU
40€ for new Corsair dimms
15€ for a second hand case (went from mini-ITX to microATX mainboard)
That is 135€ in total and there is no way I would have spent much more on a gaming computer right now. I have enough to spend on a trip on the other side of the atlantic, fixing my house, go solar + some bicycle and motorbike parts and maintenance.
A lot of gamer CPUs don't have 16 cores. Neither the 7800x3D nor the 7900x3d have 16 cores. In the latest gen, only the 9950x3d will have 16 cores (it will likely be a $700 CPU). The 9900x3D is rumored to have 12 cores and the 9800x3D is rumored to have 8 cores.