FE screenshot of the day: 3/21/2012

Seems you forgot the arrow pointing at the bear cub saying: "Cute animal; universally feared among starting sovereigns since the early beta releases"

New units to recruit, this I like.

Turning off ground cover does remove some of the embellishment, but wow! It's so much easier to see units on the map.

Has the ZoC always expanded based on how you lay out your city? Seems like it didn't make much of a difference before, so if this is the case, that adds some value in taking the time to place where you want your buildings to be built.

I like ground cover. I usually play around x2 (I don't mind the max setting). I would like a random setting. So basically an area with few resources has lots of ground cover, but I wouldn't mind some areas that have few resources to be barren either. 

While Kraxis should have the 50% diplomatic bonus, I think Pariden should get double Influence from precious locations

 

As far as ground cover, I would probably prefer Variable ground cover ... where its thick in some places and sparse in others (independent of resource density)

Whats up with the waterfall lake right next to the city?

Is it just decorative or does it have a function?

Why has no one else asked about it, Is it just so rare that ive never seen one before?

I might be a bit of a dick here, but does this mean that the ugly, cheesy, and gamey snaking of cities is now a game 'feature'?

Well not really.

In YOUR build, all kinds of crapped increased zone of control.

In OUR build, nothing increases zone of control except for specific improvements.

Thanks, that's good to hear

I will have to turn ground cover off for the size maps I plan on using. On lowest possible settings I should be able to make a 100x100 custom map.

Is FE really that limited in map size?  

MoM was ~50x50 but there were 2 worlds, so thats closer to 75x75 total. Only 30% of that was actual land mass, while FE probably has ~75% usable land mass (I consider mountains unusable).

I would hope that I could run 100x100 at high settings on a moderate computer. 

 

So, the above screenshot is from .86? Or the next, unreleased beta? Or the SD-only version? From the looks of it, it's a screen from .86.

That's the scenic view.

EDIT: Oh...no it's not.  I didn't notice that there the first time.

 

You either misunderstand the size of a 100x100, or you misunderstand what kind of memory is required to handle the hundreds of thousands of objects that size of a map requires. I will be getting a top of the line Alienware for the FE release. It will take that and the lowest settings to run this kind of game all the way to the endgame. 

Here is a comparison to show you the scale:

This is a 5x5 map.

 

 

 

Edit:4 of these is a 100x100 map. Also known as Immense. 

@seanw3: First off, Alienware is a pretty bad value for money deal. Second, it won't matter because FE can use only a tiny bite of your RAM anyway, because it's a 32bit .exe, so your computer isn't going to help much. Once we get a 64bit OS, which will apparently be the version after Fallen Enchantress by current plans, then I too would like to have huge 100x100 maps, although then I would need to avail myself of faction mods to fill the place out.

PS: That image is only 25x25.

I was hoping for some war of culture (like in civ iv, where borderpushing was done with culture). If FE gets this as well, the joy in my heart will be immense.

 

I was thinking 100 area, oops. I may just be tired, but Win7 64bit should be able to run a 100 sector map just fine. 4GB ram and another 2x4GB video with 8 cores should make this game very fast on lowest settings. The version we have right now is on max graphics without a way to tone things down. So at release I should be able to play that size map at a fast pace. I am pretty sure that 64bit will use all 4GB of RAM.

 

You think Alienware is a bad deal? Any suggestions on a good builder then? I will probably do some research first, but I will have some serious cash to blow on a PC this fall. 

@joasoze: I concur, culture war stuff was great in GalCiv II.

I have 4GB ram on Windows 7 64bit. It tends to experience slowdown pretty early in the game on the current large maps. My processor is only 4 core and my video card is nothing special, but none of that matters with regards to how much RAM a huge map uses, and RAM is problem here.  

Yeah, Alienware is sort of known for being a bad deal. You're paying for branding with them. The best deal you can find will generally be buying parts on New Egg or elsewhere and building it yourself, but if you don't want to do that, check out Cyber Power PC, they may be your best bet, but also look at iBUYPOWER. Those are pretty much the only competitor for the fairly small market that doesn't build their own and doesn't go for Dell or HP-style simple and cheap setups. Although that might be more your speed if you don't intend to alter your computer anyway. Look into the pricing and capabilities for mainstream computers too, you may find one suits your needs better. They do tend to have inferior graphics cards by defualt, but you can switch those out. Things like cooling system and power supply will be the bare minimum, so if you want to swap parts out that's not ideal, but it can save you money.

It appears to me that it is in fact a 50 x 50 tile map, broken into 5 x 5 large 100 tile 'squares' that are ten by ten tiles each. That is, based on the other poster's comments, the size of a MOM map. The fact that FE will allow MUCH bigger maps than this is interesting, and maybe good.

 

I would agree that the "5x5" is in fact a "50x50".

 

Therefore the 100x100 would only be 4 times larger, not 400 time larger.

I used to build my own desktops from parts (mostly ordered from NewEgg), but a couple of years ago decided to switch to a laptop and bought an Alienware MX-17.  It's a very nice and powerful machine, but not without its problems.  There was a problem that I think was with the RAID software that had me replacing drives and swapping the motherboard until finally they shipped me a replacement.  The replacement machine needed a replacement memory card, and now sounds like there's a fan that might be slowly dying.  Do your research, and if you go with Alienware, consider the extended warranty.

I suspect modders will be making lots of "stuff" that will end up saying "64-bit users only".

Will there be any possibility of a 64-bit binary that can make full use of my system memory? (I have 12GB)

But we are all playing on max possible graphics. Fb said this is intended to improve the efficiency of the game, but can be turned down to accommodate less RAM usage. I also think that 8 cores running a multithread game should run much faster as far as turn speed goes.

As far as my new PC, the best solution may simply be to recreate Frogboy's PC myself. I had hoped that I could throw money at a company to avoid all the troubleshooting of a new PC. If that is impossible, I'll probably want to do it myself. 

 

So Frogboy, what exactly are your specs again? Or could you recommend the ideal machine for around 5 grand to maximize FE performance? 

 

I would love to help you build a machine. But a lot of people know more than me or Frogboy about it. Might I suggest posting in the personal computing section as this is rather off topic?