One of the biggest challenges we have faced in developing Galactic Civilizations III has been map sizes and the memory they require.
On a number of occasions, we have tried to reduce the the largest map sizes down to improve performance and shrink memory requirements. And each time we have attempted to do that, we have ended up with a very vocal outcry of anger.
But large map sizes come with a significant memory cost to be aware of.
Galactic Civilizations, like its inspiration, Sid Meier's Civilization, is a tile based game. Virtually every space strategy game is point based (you travel across the galaxy from point A to point B without going in-between). There's a good reason why they do that: scale. If you want your space game to appear to have an epic scale, then you need to have stars that appear to be very far from one another. For Galactic Civilizations to pull off the same thing, as a tile based game, means a lot more tiles and a lot faster (late game) ships.
For reference, here are the map sizes for Civilization VI:
6996
The largest map size would require around 2GB of memory (on average). So, the largest map size in Civilization VI has around 7,000 hexes.
Let's take a look at Galactic Civilizations III:
That's right, the Ludicrous map size has 100 times more tiles than the largest Civilization VI map. More tiles isn't better, it just means the maps are much bigger and more to the point, and the memory requirements go way up.
Until you get to HUGE map sizes, you don't really need a crazy system to play Galactic Civilizations III. But what frequently happens is that people with perfectly good gaming systems will paly on the Ludicrous size and find it very slow. Why? Because you need 32GB of memory to play it well (or else you'll be swapping out memory constantly to disk).
Even if you have enough memory, picture the pathfinding for 50 players (and GalCiv III supports 128 players) if there's 650,000 tiles to potentially go through. Path finding is what most of your turn time gets consumed by.
Luckily, GalCiv III has a multicore AI which means that each pathfinding task can be distributed to your CPU. But again, even if you have 32GB of memory, if you have 50 players but only a 4 core processor, you're going to be in for a world of hurt.
For optimal performance, you shouldn't have more than 2 players per logical processor (usually 2X your cores). So if you have an 8 core machine with 16 logical threads, you're probably fine with 32 players.
However, I frequently get saved games from players who have 4 core machines with 8GB of memory trying to play on these ludicrous maps with 100 players who have given us a negative review because "obviously" we have a memory leak.
Going forward, I highly recommend not going beyond Gigantic unless you meet the specs above. In version 3.0, we will be listing these requirements when you pick the map size to help players keep themselves out of trouble.
So now you know why we keep trying to roll back those big maps.
Where does one get a PC with RAM over 16?
A 16 GB Ram machine goes for $1600 add a monitor and its $2000+, People have living costs. Apartment prices skyrocketed cause OBama let a bunch of 3rd world people in.
How do you get so much move?
Too much move can't fight.
Wow, thanks for clearing this up.
Yes ships especially can slow down your machine.
You know when i was the other guy with a celeron d in 2006 i felt the same way about the hardware. It is hard for me to shell out 1000 dollars for a computer also. These guys pay insane prices for machines. I asked for help and one guy suggested i pay 8500 dollars for a machine. My cousin think just my labtop is insane.
...So now you know why we keep trying to roll back those big maps.
Would it be possible to code the game to pathfind by sector, except the first and proximate sector are pathfinding by hex?
Also only calculate influence and hex control up to x distance from any given star, all other tiles are considered deep space and not calculated by the CPU.
My two-cent idea because I love ludicrous maps and want bigger ones.
I built a 8 core/32g of Ram computer 2 years ago (for under $1500 btw) specificly for this game, so yeah please do not remove/shrink the larger map sizes.
this topic is heaven for my problem.Most of you are experinced play at biggest map which is Ludicrous .I have some visual glitchs bugs .
https://forums.stardock.net/488481/page/1/
this is my topic , please leave comment and if u have time please chk it in your game.Than you very much...
I wish custom map size is a thing. Sure we can do it in .ini file but would be nice to has it in the game interface itself.
Can you update this list to V3.0 with its new map sizes
I've done the math (by converting # of tiles to hexsectorsize), and find that that chart ...
... already does use the new (v3.0) hexsectorsizes, i.e. 28, 40, 50, 70, 90, 120, 150, 300, and 500.
HTH!
Not as dramatic but I've also upgraded just for GCIII too. Extra RAM makes ludicrous much faster. That being said, I'm fully aware that the price for a massive map is potential slowness.
My tip for most people with weaker machines who want a larger map: kill everything. No pathfinding needed for AIs you consume.
I know people think good gaming computers cost thousands of $, but if you keep an eye out for bargains you don't have to pay that much. I got this rig on Amazon on Black Friday for $1540:
CybertronPC Titanium GTX-1080H Gaming PC - Liquid-Cooled Intel i7-7700k 4.2GHz Quad-Core Processor, 32GB DDR4 Memory, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5X), 240GB SSD, 2TB HDD, Windows 10 Home 64-Bit
I only play ludicrous with abundant everything with about 32 Majors (some custom) and a handful of minors. No problems with 3.0 so far.
I have played on ludicrous with my home built system (roughly 2 years old now) successfully (no horrible lag I mean). It is ludicrous, though, to be sure. I haven't tried it with a large number of players though ---- I figured the idea of a very big galaxy is to make the distance between habitable stars very big also, sort of like I think the Milky Way galaxy is arranged (and why we haven't had daily contact with other intelligent life).
I have 16 gb, 4 gb GTX 960 video, 256 gb SSD, win 10 64bit, intel core i5@ 3.2 ghz skylake. Cost about $1200 all told, not counting the 27 inch monitor that I already had.
I think I want to add a comment about map sizes from a different point of view. All turn based strategy games have units to build, centers(cities) from which to build, and terrain. What galciv I believe should be leaning on is the terrain difference with other 4x games. Most of space is empty, and travel between points of interest should be relatively time consuming, by orders of magnitude. Therefore long range planning is paramount. The game should NOT feel like "civ in space" in my opinion.
Citing memory is weak reasoning in this day and age. Folks buying the game with any sense review system requirements.
That is neither here nor there, and math behind the scenes not-withstanding, the reality is, the previous version before Intrigue gave us map sizes we were begging for, except for ludicrous. Intrigue is an EXPANSION, but in the map department, it is a severe REDUCTION. And one, we the customer base, as you put it, quite vocally made clear we were not happy about having reduced. The reality is, a good machine now days is quite capable of running this even on ludicrous. In fact, other than multiplayer, it is the ONLY size map I use. I don't see the point of a space 4X game where I can explore the space in 2 hours or less. I play this game on the largest maps because I don't want a game in a closet with 16 opponents and running into 9 of them by turn 50. I play this with my girlfriend, and I was stunned beyond belief to see that the largest map we could play now is ridiculous rolled back to the limits we had a few years ago. Quite honestly, at this pointy, I got Intrigue with some decent mechanics added, and got robbed of useful multiplay functionality in the process. It's not worth the trade off in my opinion. Without the maps I had before, multiplay has become meaningless to me. I will either return it for a refund or uninstall until map sizing is at least comparable to Crusade. Who plays a space game in a galaxy the size of a soup can anyway? Why would you even want to I sure don't. You lose 1 of your X's in a 4X game if you've seen it all before turn 100. Don't build a game map you have shown you can make available to us, the cite memory issues. That's for the customer to meet. If my machine can't hack it, I can upgrade. My machine didn't cost me 3 grand, and it runs this game at every level you have allowed in multiplayer...there is no valid argument that says if those map sizes work in Crusade, they cannot work in Intrigue. I vote with my dollars. This isn't worth it right now at these sizes, and I will certainly think hard before buying another product from Stardock after this.
Consider me sincerely,One of the vocal masses.
The map sizes changed in the v3.0 update, not in Intrigue. Given what you've said here and over at the "other" forum, your only option seems to be to roll back to v2.8 ...
Galactic Civilizations III -- v2.8 Legacy build
... and to go get your money back for Intrigue.
HTH.
How many tiles a sector have? I can't find it anywhere...
A "sector" -- as in "hexsectorsize", and as in the numbers used for "size" of a map -- is actually one of the "rings" of hexes around the center hexagon of the map.
See thread -- especially posts #11 and #13 -- here.
As it turns out, as discussed in the thread that I've cited here, the numbers of "tiles" (or hexes) in any given "map size" in Frogboy's original post in this thread, are *wrong* , as Frogboy used the wrong formula for his calculations. Again see post #11 in the Steam thread cited.
You need to update this info, GC3 no longer supports 128 players since the introduction of hardcaps per map size. Hardcoded limit of 75 max players on the largest map, alot less on all the others.
Just to combat some misinformation about needing to spend insane amounts of dollars on a gaming pc, here is one with 8 physical cores and 16GB of ram for 1025$: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/NMDzfH
I built a new rig in February, I only play on ludicrous. The map sizes have not appeared to change in size for me at all. My ram is 32 gigs of ddr4 with 12 threads OC'd to 4.7 ghz. I zoom along in game even after turn 300 and I am still sloggin it out with 4 factions who are still a major threat, add to it that 100 turns ago I got the damn Dread lords event! I still have not uncovered all of the map there is STILL at least 30% left which is where those bastards are hiding.
All of this on Genius! Good times. I got Large Hulls, Plasma weapons and the 3 tier of defenses...lets fight!
Because of Galactic Civ 3's unique size, both in terms of the map and number of AIs, I would actually love a GC3 benchmarking tool for hardware reviewers. Perhaps it would run 500 turns with the maximum number of AIs on a user defined map size. Occasionally you'll see GPU reviews include Civilization 6, but as mentioned it's just not on the scale of GC3. Turn based strategy games don't get much love in reviews because they're not seen as being demanding enough to get that sort of consideration, and I would love for Stardock to give reviewers something to chew on.
Here's an example, I would love to see a Gal Civ 3 turn time benchmark alongside Civ 6 in this review: https://www.overclock3d.net/reviews/cpu_mainboard/amd_ryzen_9_5900x_and_ryzen_9_5950x_review/19
Expanding on why, it seems that turn time is very dependent on single threaded performance with Civ 6, whereas Gal Civ 3 specifically recommends more cores as you add more players on a bigger map. Would we see a big contrast here, with Civ 6 not scaling with more cores, but Gal Civ 3 doing so?
Playing on a huge map, 22 civs, my turn times are close to 2 minutes.I have:Ryzen 7 1700x (overclocked at 3.9ghz)
Radeon 5700xt
32gb RAM
Asus Crosshair VI Hero
Samsung SSD 960 EVO.
During a turn change, the game uses 17-18% of the CPU and between 5-8gb of ram.
The GPU can be used as much as 68-69%, according to task manager.
What I'm wondering is if there's anyway to scale the use of the hardware to give faster turn time in the game? I mean, if there's more hardware than is required by the map size, use it? I know nothing of coding, sorry, just wondering if it's something possible in the near-average time frame? I know the game is demanding, but it feels like, even if I increase my hardware capabilities, the game ain't using it. It's midly depressing. I love the game, but I spend more time reading the web during a turn change than playing the actual game
Falconeer, how many gigs of ram does your video card have?
I have a similar setup and play only on insane maps with 30 civs. My turn times on turn 453 are about 15-18 seconds as it cycles through each civ.
I also have 32 gig ram but the most important thing I found is that your card has to have at least 6 gigs of ram on it or you will drag.
EDIT> I see your card has 8gig of ram which should be fine for large maps. My next thought is amd vrs intel and I think intel has the edge with game right now especially on some 4x games.
This forum has many threads where amd users have a bit longer turn times vrs intel users.
my cpu is 8700K oc'd to 5.0.
Yeah, 8gb DDR5 for my video card. I haven't touched the game in over a year, I thought the AMD problems had been resolved
The newest Ryzen have better single-threaded performances than Intel, I might upgrade during next winter if things go well.
It bugs though that this game is supposed to make use of multi-threaded performance (multi-core) more so than other games, yet, this being supposedly AMD's advantage compared to Intel, we're getting consistantly slower speed.
Maybe it's the API, DX11 instead of DX12/Vulkan like Ashes of the Singularity. It's probably too much work to change the API
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