Civilization V

Damien_Neil · 2010-09-17T16:18:38.000Z

Sarkus:

The graphical upgrade has to cost something. And I’m not sure what about the requirements is all that major. Steam’s data shows that single core processors are down to less then 20% of the market, so even the “I only play TF online” crowd has moved onto dual cores or better.

The graphical upgrade is worthless. Civ 4 looks fine, and I doubt there’s a single person who’d skip buying Civ 5 if it targeted similar specs. And hell, you could go back to 2D and have a better looking game.

Steam’s data does not capture people outside the core gaming audience and is irrelevant.

Quitch · 2010-09-17T16:28:33.000Z

Yes, certainly the single largest collection of PC hardware information on the largest PC gaming platform populated by the most popular online games not from Blizzard is most definitely irrelevant and should be ignored.

The era of Steam being niche ended. Ages ago.

Damien_Neil · 2010-09-17T16:30:50.000Z

Quitch:

The era of Steam being niche ended. Ages ago.

The era of Steam being used by people who don’t buy games because none of them run on their hardware has, however, yet to arrive.

Edit: Allow me to add a concrete example.

The last non-“casual” full game my girlfriend bought was Civ 4, which she bought when it released. She didn’t get to play it for about six months, because it didn’t run on her computer. Not “ran poorly”, just didn’t run at all with her graphics hardware. Eventually patches made it work, and she played the hell out of it.

She’s still got the same PC. When she heard the other day that Civ 5 was coming out, she was surprised–and then disappointed, because she knew damned well that it wasn’t going to work on her system. She’s not going to upgrade her PC just for Civ, and there’s no word of a Mac version…and who knows if one would run on her three-year-old MacBook Pro, anyway.

She’s never used Steam for anything. Steam’s hardware survey has no data on her, because she doesn’t play Counterstrike or Team Fortress 2 or Portal or any of the other non-“casual” games.

She’d buy Civ 5, though. And there’s an absolute legion of people like her out there who love Civ, would love to buy a new Civ, are just begging to become customers…and don’t exist, so far as Firaxis is concerned.

Sarkus · 2010-09-17T16:33:10.000Z

Damien Neil:

The graphical upgrade is worthless. Civ 4 looks fine, and I doubt there’s a single person who’d skip buying Civ 5 if it targeted similar specs. And hell, you could go back to 2D and have a better looking game.

For committed fans that’s true. If you are trying to attract a new audience, then better graphics are important. It’s also been five years since Civ 4, and as I recall it’s requirements were considered a bit demanding at the time. After all, Civ 3 only required a 300mhz processor, while Civ4 demanded at least a 1.2Ghz processor! I don’t think it hurt sales. ;-) Unless you aren’t playing games outside of a browser, or are only playing old titles, you’ve long since upgraded to at least a dual core based PC.

Steam’s data does not capture people outside the core gaming audience and is irrelevant.

Steam’s data is certainly not 100% accurate, but its the only indication of what gamers are actually using hardware-wise that I’m aware of. People tend to use it to support whatever position they are championing - I’ve seen people argue that it isn’t representative because it reflects all those low-end users who only play TF. And now you are suggesting it’s too high-end.

tomchick · 2010-09-17T16:34:22.000Z

Sarkus:

I’m surprised to see the reviews hitting already. I guess Firaxis is confident enough in their press build that they didn’t feel the need to force everyone to wait until the day of release, which is a nice change from the usual. But now I’m waiting to see what certain trusted reviewers say and wondering why they haven’t chimed in.

I think most of us only got our press builds only a couple of days ago, and even that has a couple of surprising technical bugs. Although the embargo lifted this morning, I’ve asked 1up to give me the weekend before turning in the review, and even that feels like an awfully fast turnaround. Civ isn’t something you can really cover in a couple of days.

-Tom

skedastic · 2010-09-17T16:35:49.000Z

I agree with Damien: I find it completely baffling that design goal #1 wasn’t make this thing run reasonably well at low settings on low-end systems.

Ironically, Joystiq says, “Here’s the good news: you won’t need a Crysis-level PC to assert your dominion over others.” That’s right, in a sense, you need a better-than-Crysis-level PC to play Civ 5:

Civ 5 minimum:

Processor: Dual Core CPU
Memory: 2GB RAM
Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics

Recommended system for Crysis:

CPU: Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better
RAM: 1.5GB
Video Card: NVIDIA 7800 Series, ATI Radeon 1800 Series or better

Minimum system for Crysis:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista), Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2
GHz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better
RAM: 1GB (1.5GB on Windows Vista)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or better

Sarkus · 2010-09-17T16:37:07.000Z

TomChick:

I think most of us only got our press builds only a couple of days ago, and even that has a couple of surprising technical bugs. Although the embargo lifted this morning, I’ve asked 1up to give me the weekend before turning in the review, and even that feels like an awfully fast turnaround. Civ isn’t something you can really cover in a couple of days.

-Tom

That makes sense. I’m just surprised to see full reviews popping up today. I noticed that RPS isn’t going to release their review until Tuesday, though, presumably for the same reasons you’ve given. But I noticed that Troy mentioned that he was playing the game on this weeks TMA podcast and after seeing the two hour stream play, it looked like the game was in pretty good shape.

Sarkus · 2010-09-17T16:40:58.000Z

skedastic:

I agree with Damien: I find it completely baffling that design goal #1 wasn’t make this thing run reasonably well at low settings on low-end systems.

Ironically, Joystiq says, “Here’s the good news: you won’t need a Crysis-level PC to assert your dominion over others.” That’s right, in a sense, you need a better-than-Crysis-level PC to play Civ 5:

Civ 5 minimum:

Processor: Dual Core CPU
Memory: 2GB RAM
Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics

Recommended system for Crysis:

CPU: Core 2 Duo/Athlon X2 or better
RAM: 1.5GB
Video Card: NVIDIA 7800 Series, ATI Radeon 1800 Series or better

Minimum system for Crysis:

CPU: Intel Pentium 4 2.8 GHz (3.2 GHz for Vista), Intel Core 2.0 GHz (2.2
GHz for Vista), AMD Athlon 2800+ (3200+ for Vista) or better
RAM: 1GB (1.5GB on Windows Vista)
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT, ATI Radeon 9800 Pro (Radeon X800 Pro for Vista) or better

I wouldn’t use Crysis as an example. My over two year old PC (that cost me $600 back then) meets the recommended specs for Civ 5 and still can’t handle areas of Crysis at a decent framerate and resolution. Crysis’ minumum and recommended specs are and always have been a joke.

If Civ5 does end up struggling at the minimum specs, then I agree that the argument can be made that they pushed things too far.

Quitch · 2010-09-17T16:43:59.000Z

Damien Neil:

The last non-“casual” full game my girlfriend bought was Civ 4, which she bought when it released.

Yeah, now you see here the problem is you’re telling me to ignore millions of points of data from a platform which sells Civ IV because you have a single point of data. A single point of data which we don’t even know is representative of anything or not.

Do you see the problem?

Damien_Neil · 2010-09-17T16:47:28.000Z

Quitch:

Do you see the problem?

Whereas, you’re using data from a survey of people in the core gaming demographic to draw conclusions about people outside it. Do you see the problem?

billt721 · 2010-09-17T16:47:56.000Z

Recommended Specs (prices from newegg):

-1.8Ghz Quad-core processor: $72.99 gets you a 2.5Ghz Quad
-4GB Ram: $90
-8GB HD: $35 gets you an 80GB drive
-DVD Drive: $16
-Nvidia 9800 or ATI 4800: $98 or $95 respectively

That’s not exactly a high-end system. Hell, the overpriced video card in my 2 year old iMac meets the recommended requirements and it was considered middle-of-the-road when I bought the machine.

Rock8man · 2010-09-17T16:48:32.000Z

Well, system requirements definitely kept me from playing Civ IV. But thankfully I’ve got a beefy PC these days that can handle Civ 5.

Sarkus · 2010-09-17T16:50:42.000Z

Damien Neil:

Whereas, you’re using data from a survey of people in the core gaming demographic to draw conclusions about people outside it. Do you see the problem?

So Firaxis is supposed to make a new version of Civ that can run on six year old computers?

Quitch · 2010-09-17T16:54:29.000Z

Damien Neil:

Whereas, you’re using data from a survey of people in the core gaming demographic

What are you providing to support this conclusion?

Note that the top seller on Steam right now is Civ V.

Shadari · 2010-09-17T16:54:40.000Z

Sarkus:

So Firaxis is supposed to make a new version of Civ that can run on six year old computers?

Nobody does that. Nobody! Except Blizzard. ;)

Strollen · 2010-09-17T16:54:46.000Z

I’ll agree that Civ has an appeal outside the hardcore gamers like we find on this site. Steam I imagine isn’t popular among the Facebook gamers, who may have played a Civ a decade or so, and maybe tempted to buy a new one. If only their machine could run it. I just don’t know if that is huge group.

The specs are such that vast majority of PC (excluding netbooks) bought in the last 3 years should run it. Even a 5 year old “gaming” PC generally you be able to run. it My old PC would have and it is 6 years old.

As for graphics not mattering in Civ. I don’t buy it. As part of the Direct2Drive deal I tried playing Civ 3. I couldn’t last an hour playing the game cause of the ugly graphics which were state of the art for strategy game a decade ago.

Fundamentally, it seems to me the question is which is the bigger market.

The 30 something who played Civ 2 or 3 as a college student and has fond memories. He hasn’t upgraded his computer for 5+ years. The only games he plays are Farmville and the like, and a couple of Wii games with his young kids.

Or the 17 year old with a new laptop going off to college. 5 years ago he was strictly a console gamer. Now as a gamer he has heard about Civ V, but the graphics have to look appealing.

To be honest I don’t know which is likely to generate more sales, but the folks at Firaxis seem pretty competent about making and selling games so I bet they do.

tomchick · 2010-09-17T16:55:14.000Z

Civ 5 kicks the ever-lovin’ daylights out of my supposedly high-end-ish Alienware laptop. Well, it was supposedly high-end-ish about a year ago. It’s a Core 2 Duo system with 3GB RAM and an ATI Mobility card with 512MB and the latest Catalyst drivers. It runs shooters like Bioshock 2 and Kane & Lynch 2 just fine, but it has to really chug to deal with Civ 5. :(

  -Tom

Quitch · 2010-09-17T16:57:33.000Z

Because shooters depend on your GPU and I bet Civ V is CPU dependent. It’s much harder to scale a game logic CPU dependency than the quality of textures. I’d guess.

Sarkus · 2010-09-17T16:59:52.000Z

Shadari:

Nobody does that. Nobody! Except Blizzard. ;)

WoW was released before Civ4. And Starcraft 2 still requires a better PC then what Damien’s girlfriend has (based on what Civ4’s requirements were, anway).

That’s disappointing to hear, Tom.

roBurky · 2010-09-17T17:03:02.000Z

What about the new 2D strategic view Civ V has? Could you not play the game using that on low-spec laptops?