2004 Building Game Suggestions
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Zarathud
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2004 Building Game Suggestions
Trying to figure out a game for my brother this Christmas. He greatly enjoyed the Impressions city-builder games (Ceasar II, Pharoh, Cleopatra) and I planned to get him the new Children of the Nile, but his system probably can't handle the slowdowns I've heard about. Have patches fixed this problem? Or does anyone have alternate suggestions?
"A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on." -Terry Pratchett, The Truth
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they've found it." -Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they've found it." -Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
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Kraken
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Tropico 2 was my favorite strategic citybuilder. There's a reinforcing feedback loop between your city and your pirate ships that drives overall gameplay, good strategic tradeoffs between the pirates' need for anarchy and the captives' need for order, a very nice and intuitive economic system, and even a role-playing aspect as you try to improve your pirates' stats. Add great music and a lighthearted sensibility and you get a really fun game -- as a strategy game, it's much more developed than the original Tropico. My only criticism is that the scenarios get repetitive...but if he liked the Imps games, that won't bother him.
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baron calamity
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Jeff Fiske
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Curious about his system-
In general CotN has received alot of praise for its performance, particularly in reference to low end machines. If you know your way around a computer, (Defrag, update drivers, etc.) it is easy to set up your machine so you rarely get slow downs.
The min sys for CotN is pretty low. We have found that as long as any one area of your system is above min-sys you will not experience slow downs except on a couple of maps(Bubastis & Men-efer), or when you have large numbers of people and you throw a festival. (300 people all pathing at the same time causes a CPU hit.)
Basically if he has-
Below 256 MB ram, a slow hard drive, a first generation T&L card and a PIII 800, he will experience slow downs on about half of the maps, and you should wait until something gets upgraded. (The slow downs are usually drops in frame rates for about 5 seconds, but the game remains playable.)
If he has 512mb RAM & win XP or 256mb RAM other OS, or a 64mb video card, or a P4 and a decent hard drive, he should be fine.
Too bad you can't sneak the demo on his machine and see for yourself!!
Happy to answer specific questions or suggestions privately or publicly.
The min sys for CotN is pretty low. We have found that as long as any one area of your system is above min-sys you will not experience slow downs except on a couple of maps(Bubastis & Men-efer), or when you have large numbers of people and you throw a festival. (300 people all pathing at the same time causes a CPU hit.)
Basically if he has-
Below 256 MB ram, a slow hard drive, a first generation T&L card and a PIII 800, he will experience slow downs on about half of the maps, and you should wait until something gets upgraded. (The slow downs are usually drops in frame rates for about 5 seconds, but the game remains playable.)
If he has 512mb RAM & win XP or 256mb RAM other OS, or a 64mb video card, or a P4 and a decent hard drive, he should be fine.
Too bad you can't sneak the demo on his machine and see for yourself!!
Happy to answer specific questions or suggestions privately or publicly.