About system requirements

[JeF]

I noticed a small issue with the official game system requirements.

* 1 GHz CPU (2 GHz + Preferred)
* 512 MB RAM (1 GB Preferred)

Well, I tried the latest release candidates on my old AMD Duron 800 MHz, and I can tell that the game was playable but too slow, even for me. I've the impression that a 2GHz system would be the minimum to be comfortable.

The contrary happens with the memory requirements : they are too high. I don't see where this comes from. I currently play on a newer (but not so new) AMD Athlon 2600 with 256 MB RAM. It plays just fine. The game takes around 100 MB RAM space, including the game menu. Total memory occupied is 310MB though, but if you don't alt-tab often, you won't notice any disk swap.

What do others think ?

JeF.

[Tzar007]

I've got a Pentium IV 1.8 Ghz with 512 MB of memory. COTA is running absolutely fine, and I am running it concurrently with other software too when I am doing AARs. I have also a whole shebang of other applications (antivirus, firewall and such) running in the background and COTA has not been slow for me.

I haven't yet tried the largest scenarios however, and also I rarely play at MAX speed.

[iaidoka2]

No probs for me with AMD 3500 and 1gb Ram.  Runs fine when I have other programs in the background like Opera (as well as the usual anti virus, logitech kb and mouse stuff, firewall etc etc).  Also runs OK if I have Paint Shop Pro in the background.  I have run it at the fastest speed and selected every unit so it displays movement paths etc with no problems.

[sanch]

It runs fine for me on my ancient 600 mhz P3 with 512 mb ram. You can tell when the AI is thinking hard, as sometimes the minutes runs slow. If I bump from slow to normal or higher, I actually see a speedup, so I figure there's gas to spare.

For example, playing 'Charge of the Centaurs', I do 24 hours (mostly in slow speed, with a bunch of pauses) in 3-4 hours.