This game is being mis-sold.

[stuart3]

DW2 has become a hugely over-ambitious project.

I haven’t played DW2 for a while, but fired it up to start a new game and was shocked to be told that I am to expect performance issues in the late game unless I limit myself to 700 stars, only 35% of the game’s theoretical maximum, which automatically limits me to a 6*6 Galaxy size, 36% of the 10*10 maximum.

To be clear, I’m not playing on a limited rig. I have an 8 – core graphics card and 16 Gb of RAM, which matches the game’s currently recommended specs, and 8Gb of VRAM, double the recommended amount. And that’s obviously nowhere near enough to experience the game on a full sized galaxy.

The game has clearly expanded far beyond it’s original specs. Those of us who already have the game have no choice but to accept that it has become what it has become, but that is no excuse for effectively lying to prospective new purchasers about their chances of getting to play the game in it’s full glory.

The published recommended specs need to be updated – to 12CPU cores and a whopping 48Gb of RAM (according to the message I’m getting on the start up screen). And it must be made clear that purchasers with less that they will not be able to play the full size galaxy. It won’t be the usual matter of turning the graphics settings down a bit and continuing to play the full game. The current minimum recommended specs also need to be brought up to a much more realistic level, whatever that may turn out to be.

Coming clean to the customers about the reality of what is required to play the game will obviously impact on sales. But it needs to be done. And soon.

[AKicebear]

This practice is common in 4x games - the minimum and even recommended specs will only ensure the game is "playable" at middle and lower map sizes. A much stronger computer is necessary to play at higher settings.

The difference with DW2 (and Galactic Civilization 4, for example) is they honestly tell you that your machine may be underpowered for the settings you choose. Other games, like Stellaris, will merely let you suffer with excruciating slow play, without acknowledging it is due to your settings/hardware combo.

[Nightskies]

"To be clear, I’m not playing on a limited rig. I have an 8 – core graphics card and 16 Gb of RAM, which matches the game’s currently recommended specs, and 8Gb of VRAM, double the recommended amount. And that’s obviously nowhere near enough to experience the game on a full sized galaxy."

This is clearly close to minimum specs. Therefore, it stands to reason that your machine should perform under the least stringent conditions to play the game.

It's like you have bought a small reusable cup from a coffee shop and are saying the coffee shop should advise that you can't have the large coffee in it.

[iancmtaylor]

Yea, I don't understand. All 4x games have this issue- real time ones get really slow and turn based ones takes minutes to calculate turns. This has been a thing for decades. Are you mad at minecraft for not telling you that there is a very tiny rendering distance?

[Cauldyth]

Yeah, the game hasn't grown in requirements since its release, quite the opposite - the Hyperspeed performance patch made it perform significantly better than it did at release. As others have pointed out, the only difference from other 4X games is that DW2 is honest and transparent as to what you can expect.

[rxnnxs]

tldr:
gtx1080 very well ok with this game
cpu: you should have 32GB Ram and an i9 and then hope for optimization in the future.
up to this point, we can only support the company

---

You can watch here how my cpu and gpu behaves..

https://youtu.be/Qaugs3jqajo

[tofudog]

I have similar specs as the OP and I was a little disappointed too for a short moment.

When I look at the actual numbers however, that stops very quickly. The last game I stopped, because it was getting pointless with me having conquered half the galaxy, 400+ colonies, 3000 fighting ships (500 of them capital), 75k fighters and bombers, 2 million invade strength and a cash flow of 24 millions - increasing faster than I could drop new hulls.
Sure, the game started to show the weight of all that data, but it was still well playable.
Leaders are way overpowered by the way. Bonus values well in excess of +100% just don't seem justifiable.

Of course I am putting money to the side to afford a more powerful rig and even more insane games next year, but until then there is plenty of galaxy to keep me occupied.

[Omena]

The core counts can be a bit deceiving. I have played this game with a i7-6700k and GTX 1080 on a 3440x1440 screen and had little problems with performance (even with the max size galaxies). The only hiccups occurred when zooming into many ships, but that has also gotten a lot better now. For super-late game, there might be some slow-down, but never something that has affected gameplay much.

You can check your performance by generating a large galaxy with a lot of mature empires. You might be surprised.

[Jorgen_CAB]

DW2 has become a hugely over-ambitious project.

I haven’t played DW2 for a while, but fired it up to start a new game and was shocked to be told that I am to expect performance issues in the late game unless I limit myself to 700 stars, only 35% of the game’s theoretical maximum, which automatically limits me to a 6*6 Galaxy size, 36% of the 10*10 maximum.

To be clear, I’m not playing on a limited rig. I have an 8 – core graphics card and 16 Gb of RAM, which matches the game’s currently recommended specs, and 8Gb of VRAM, double the recommended amount. And that’s obviously nowhere near enough to experience the game on a full sized galaxy.

The game has clearly expanded far beyond it’s original specs. Those of us who already have the game have no choice but to accept that it has become what it has become, but that is no excuse for effectively lying to prospective new purchasers about their chances of getting to play the game in it’s full glory.

The published recommended specs need to be updated – to 12CPU cores and a whopping 48Gb of RAM (according to the message I’m getting on the start up screen). And it must be made clear that purchasers with less that they will not be able to play the full size galaxy. It won’t be the usual matter of turning the graphics settings down a bit and continuing to play the full game. The current minimum recommended specs also need to be brought up to a much more realistic level, whatever that may turn out to be.

Coming clean to the customers about the reality of what is required to play the game will obviously impact on sales. But it needs to be done. And soon.

Do you also complain when you play other games when they give you MINIMUM settings and the game will lag hard if you set them to provide maximum graphic settings... I think not.

MINIMUM setting is just that, the minimum you need to play the game. If you can start the game and play with the smallest galaxy then you can play the game, that is the point with minimum settings of any game.

[Ax]

The core counts can be a bit deceiving. I have played this game with a i7-6700k and GTX 1080 on a 3440x1440 screen and had little problems with performance

Ditto, my very similar i7-5775C with 32gb, 6650 XT and also 3440 ultrawide have been doing just fine until the "consider it a win" point. Especially memory is so cheap nobody should have empty sockets on their boards.

It does get a little laggy later in 1k stars 10x10 galaxies, but considering the age of this system I'm fine with 700 stars and one of each races. In fact I keep trying to justify a system upgrade but just can't find a reason not being interested in FPS.

[TylerIN]

The minimum specs are for minimal game settings with good performance.

The recommended specs are for medium average game settings with good performance.

There isn't a spot on Steam or GOG to officially specify "best experienced with" specs with all the bells and whistles and I think there's quite a broad swath of setups that can accomplish it, being that CPU core counts are all over the place in terms of efficiency cores, different SMT implementations and other shenanigans.

For the minimum specs, we looked at the different 4 core CPUs and man... there are generational and cost differences all over the board. That is why it says "4+ Physical Core CPU @ 2.5GHz (e.g. Intel: Core i3-8100, Core i5-750, Core i7-920 / AMD: Athlon 64 FX-8100, Athlon II X4, Phenom X4, Phenom II X4, Ryzen 3 1200, Ryzen 5 1400, Ryzen 7 1700)" - and that is a trimmed list!

I mean, just look at this dropdown box of CPUs sorted by core count...

cores.png (64.3 KiB) Viewed 674 times

Elliot and I both have 20 thread Intel CPUs (12 cores, 8P+4E) and that ain't top tier specs; it's high, but not top.