General Thoughts

from AshesoftheSingularity Forums

Okay I have played this game on two different machines.  The one with the better graphics card won (GeForce GT 635).  Both pcs had Intel Core i7 and 12 GB of ram.  I could play with Direct X 12, but direct X11 was faster in its response. 

I have been able to win only against the beginning AI.  Once you go to easy, I cannot keep up with the AI.  I cannot produce fast enough and manage all the engineers to keep pace.  To me the normal AI should be a challenge but winnable with a good strategy, but a common player should be able to beat the AI on beginner and easy.  if not then users should be given some sort of macros to help manage tasks.

I know there is more work to be down on the UI.  I find once large battles are going the interface slows down and I cannot do anything.

I have enjoyed playing the Alpha and I look forward to the game continuing to evolve.  You are on the right track for repeat play.

 

 

22,452 views 9 replies
Reply #1 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Hopefully there will be a tutorial for new players by release and that should help.

I looked up the Geforce GT 635 and while it has 2gig of VRAM it is ddr3 instead of GDDR5 which is far from ideal. To be honest I am impressed that you can play with that at all, it is always harder to control units when the game is jerky. If you were to get an upgrade someday it should help unit control become that much easier.

Reply #2 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

I've not stepped up from the Beginning AI as I'm distinctly lousy at these types of games and I just wanted to get a feel for how it was going to work. I do turn off Neutral Defenders. Is that the case when you've tried the easy AI?

I do agree with your observations and suggestions. I'm very much looking forward to the next performance-oriented update so I can have more success in managing units when the unit count is high.

And the 900 series of cards are an excellent upgrade if you're running 600 series or below. I moved up from a 670 to a 980 and am very happy in having done so. I'm also running an overclocked i7-920 with 12GB of RAM and getting 38+fps in the DX11 benchmark.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Keep in mind that Ashes is much, much harder on your GPU than your CPU due to how efficiently the Nitrous engine uses multiple cores.

We'll always be working on performance, of course, but Ticktoc is right that GPU memory is a significant limitation if it's low or slow.

Reply #4 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

It will be nice to have the option to enable the engineers to automatically build on top of radioactive and metal locations when you take a Region, by doing that you can dedicate the time to be working on your army.

Reply #6 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Quoting abiessener, reply 3

Keep in mind that Ashes is much, much harder on your GPU than your CPU due to how efficiently the Nitrous engine uses multiple cores.

We'll always be working on performance, of course, but Ticktoc is right that GPU memory is a significant limitation if it's low or slow.

 

I regret not being more familiar with the Nitrous engine's strengths and weaknesses. But are you saying that once the CPU cores are engaged that the engine looks for more processing from the GPU? Does that mean that having more CPU cores is better even above GPU architecture?

Your comment has me very curious about PC architecture optimization. I'm moving from a 4-core CPU to a six-core CPU, for instance. Where is the focus for PC biggest bang for the buck in a PC build? Cores? Clock speed? GPU memory?

Reply #7 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Hey everyone.  Thanks for the feedback.  After some more bench tests and playing around with video settings I was able to have a good session tonight playing a three way match.   I turned off the shadowing and that helped a lot.  I already know where the ship is so I don't need to see its shadow.  I kept the point light high to see the fire fights and set most of the rest of the settings on low to mid.  As Tic Toc stated my graphics card could be higher, but that won't be happening anytime soon.  I was still happy with the results.

 

Tonight I played the three way battle with the victory setting for the quanta(?) at 6000.  I also played a map with one power generator so now one was winning quickly.  The AI was set to beginning.  I was able to compete!  I was able to win by destroying both the enemies bases.   I also keep the neutral guardian on, even on easy AI.  They are easy to beat with a Hermes, Apollo, and Brute.  I also found that you need to build more than one factory.  This keeps the troop supply coming with the battle groups.  Especially when you have multiply carrier groups!  Tonight I was satisfied with the gaming experience.  I figured out a lot of the game play and was able to plan better.  I never had more than two engineers going since you just cant keep up.  Plus at some point in the game you have enough established that you  no longer need them.

 

I don't know much about CPU and GPU.  But running the bench tests a few times and playing with the video setting was a game changer for playability. 

 

 

Reply #8 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

Kazz, no. My 2.5 year old GPU is by far more of a bottleneck than my 4.5 year old CPU, according to the benchmark. For this game, and probably DX12-designed games in general, it seems a GPU upgrade is more beneficial.

Reply #9 from AshesoftheSingularity Forums Top

rgerry - Sounds great and glad you had success! I hope to find some time this weekend to play with settings and see results.

 

eviator - I ran my first DX12 benchmark yesterday. The only near-gaming PC I have is an i7-920 with a GTX670 FTW LE. I took a screenshot but don't have it handy atm. It says I'm GPU bottlenecked! I'm upgrading a similar machine to a Xeon and a GTX980SC and, frankly, I expect a similar result once I get it upgraded to Win10. From what I can see so far, it's going to take some outrageous GPU horsepower to run this game well at higher settings.