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A question about the number of AI empires at game setup... - 7/11/2015 6:43:24 AM

ardonquen

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Joined: 11/9/2013
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Hello there, folks! I have a question about the number of AI empires you can add at game setup.

In vanilla, you can add a maximum of 19 AI empires at setup. However, I have noticed with the Extended mod that you can add a great number more-- up to 37, I believe. If you then switch the theme back to default, this new number of other empires remains, but if you delete one of the AI slots, you cannot add it back until you have under the default maximum of 19.

I've also noticed that if you set the Mechanoid and Shakturi races to be playable, the number of AI empires you can add by default is bumped up to 21. Am I correct in assuming that the number of AI empires you can add is equal to the number of distinct playable races available in the theme you're using, minus the player?

My follow-on question is if adding more than the default maximum of 19 produces undesirable results. This can mean either the AI tripping over each other and not being able to colonize effectively, or performance/stability problems in the late game. For my case in particular, I'm using an AMD FX-6100 CPU. I'd be interested in raising the number of AI empires to either 24 or 29, and I would be playing on the largest/densest possible map size with the number of planets you can colonize on the second highest setting. I notice that if you have pirates set to 'very many', there are over 30 of the little rascals; would reducing the number of pirates offset to some extent any performance impact of adding more regular empires?

Thanks for the tips!

Post #: 1

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/11/2015 11:30:07 AM

Bingeling

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Joined: 8/12/2010
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Without testing, I assume that there is a max limit (40?) and that each race may only be represented once.

As for number of empires, the density of them of course influence how the game plays. 2 empires on a max size, max star map will be giant and be left alone for ages unless a nasty random in position happens. 40 races on a tiny map with 100 stars makes sure that most will not be able to get many colonies outside their capital influence circle until conquering homeworlds.

(in reply to ardonquen)

Post #: 2

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/12/2015 5:55:07 PM

feygan

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I'm not sure what the start limit number is right now (something like 20/21) but this is the maximum amount of races you can start a game of any size with. However you can get a game with 50 or more actual empires in it after the start. There is a check box that allows new empires to form and they can do so one of only two ways I think. Firstly if an independent planet is left alone for long enough they will grow to the point where they become a new full empire and play like any other, secondly you sometimes get AI empires (or even your own) fracturing into two empires, one will be the original one and the new one will be a rebel empire of the same race. This often happens when they suffer revolutions or really bad approval etc.

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 3

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/13/2015 12:27:44 AM

GripHAHA

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Memory is the most important thing in the game.. the more the better. As feygan said, the independent AI's will start new empires, so imo, it's best to run with the default number of empires and let independents rise... When you're setting up a game it says to run a game using a thousand or fourteen hundred stars you need 2gigs of memory. If you're not worried about memory than don't worry about the number of AI's being used. The AI's will not trip over each other... happy hunting!

< Message edited by GripHAHA -- 7/13/2015 1:29:43 AM >

(in reply to feygan)

Post #: 4

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 12:57:31 AM

Blabsawaw22

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I have 16 gigs memory and Mine runs a little jittery every now and then.. especially late game.. I play like 10x10 maps 800 stars or something like that.. so man, how much more do I need 64 gigs of memory?? I dont even think distant worlds uses more than 3 gigs..

(in reply to GripHAHA)

Post #: 5

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 3:37:38 AM

GripHAHA

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Doesn't change the fact that memory is the most important thing for this game. Anyway, perhaps your problem is with the hard drive, faster one perhaps?

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 6

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 7:35:31 AM

Blabsawaw22

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Hey I got a Samsung 840 Evo SSD.. 250Gig.. Its not my hard drive.. ha.

Its just too many ships and this isnt a 64bit game.. they didn't do enough optimization.. well, they did a lot of optimization actually but I guess you can only go so far..

I have an i7 3.2 turbo boost dual core - 16gig DDR3L RAM - 2gig video card Nvidia g55 ? and a Samsung 250gig EVO hard drive..

its not my system, its the programming and code..

I also only have this while late game and too many ships of course though..

the "fact" is this game can't use more memory cause its not 64bit code etc..

< Message edited by Blabsawaw22 -- 7/14/2015 8:36:14 AM >

(in reply to GripHAHA)

Post #: 7

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 8:41:08 AM

feygan

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Memory is not a big defining factor with this game, it is a well known fact that you simply cannot play massive galaxies in this game for a very long time before you get terminal crashes. They are probably due to something like a lack of memory that is true but simply having more will not help, the game just cannot make use of it. To give an example of this I last played a long game using the real Milky way mod along with the Extended mod, I can play for a good number of years and wipe out the Shakturi, but shortly afterwards I get constant crashes that render the game non playable.

My system specs are as follows.
Win 7 64bit
Core I5 3570k
32BG RAM
R9 290 4GB GPU
500GB SSD

Now as you can see this is far beyond any required or recommended specs for DW, the sad truth is that it is a 32bit game that is designed to play as a vanilla game and not meant to be drawn out into an epic space opera length. The only way I tend to play now is to reduce the number of systems and simply tell myself that this is due to most star systems being of no use and thus do not show up on the map.

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 8

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 11:46:15 AM

ardonquen

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Joined: 11/9/2013
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Hello again, and thank you all for your kind replies.

But yikes, the ol' 32 bit program problem? I still have nightmares about The Sims 3. I took a look at the Distant Worlds executable and it already has large address awareness apparently.

Can you tell me more about this instability and crashing, and at what point a game becomes unplayable for you? Looking through my old saves, the longest game I've played finished on 2191 and had a save file size of 60.8MB. This was before Universe, with the 'Shadows' expansion. Looking at my most recent game, it was up to 84MB by 2180 after spamming 1200 ships to fight the Shakturi, and inheriting their fleet of 300 after the war. I've read people complaining that the problems start after save file size exceeds roughly 100MB and I would be interested to hear people's personal experiences, and also what stardate things start going wrong for people.

< Message edited by ardonquen -- 7/14/2015 12:53:28 PM >

(in reply to feygan)

Post #: 9

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 12:25:08 PM

Blabsawaw22

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Couldn't tell you what stardate But I've played Long Long LOng games..

and guess what?? Yes MY save games have been over 150MB.. so there you go.. I guess I"m guilty as charged..

I have definitely had errors that crash the game before.. And by the way I play Vanilla Distant worlds Universe latest update as of 7-14-2015.. so .. its programming say what you want. They will hopefully not have to deal with this if they do a Distant worlds 2 game..

I have a funny feeling its something they just can't go back and rewrite all the code since it's probably sooo late in the stage of coding and writing to fix all the issues with having 1200+ ships and thousands of millions of calculations this game probably has to do..

but why not to write it with 64bit coding is BEYOND me.. of course I know really nothing of programming but there are plenty of other much "other OLDER" GAMES that dealt with thousands of units and still runs..

Cossacks,Total Annihilation etc.. don't make me name another three games that are older and run better haha..

of course I know they aren't as deep as Distant worlds though..

(in reply to ardonquen)

Post #: 10

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 2:23:13 PM

GripHAHA

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Like I said, memory is the most important thing on this game... I never said nothing beyond that, and what I stated is fact. Now, have you guys noticed a flicker when you go into the research screen? When this happens save the game and restart it. SSD hard drives can still be slow... You see how long it takes the game to start up? yup, and you don't think it's stuttering because of the hard drive? doesn't matter what you got, nor would it matter if it ran 64bit, lol....

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 11

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 2:37:56 PM

Blabsawaw22

Posts: 285
Joined: 12/5/2014
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Grip... get a grip.. ha.

I don't mean to be argumentative but are you really going to try to tell me this game is about memory?

no, I'm pretty sure its about CPU. of course memory is important.. but i'm pretty sure the CPU is what drives this game.

it's about how much your CPU does all the calculations. Memory is great for recall and definitely works in conjunction.

You need both CPU power and Memory.. but again look it up, Distant Worlds only uses 1 core of CPU and is not multithreaded and not 64bit which means it can't even use more than a certain amount of memory.. If this game was about "memory" then they wouldn't have opened up the floodgates and let it use a lot more memory than it is now.. especially for people with systems of 8gigs+ memory!

I don't know why you want to say a 2d space game is about memory when It's about CPU processing power to handle all the calculations..?

am I wrong? well we will see.. I can probably find the posts about the CPU intensive game Distant worlds..

< Message edited by Blabsawaw22 -- 7/14/2015 3:56:51 PM >

(in reply to GripHAHA)

Post #: 12

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 2:54:06 PM

Blabsawaw22

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Joined: 12/5/2014
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oh boy..

On top of that you said SSD's are slow?? what?? where did you get that idea? no they are fast! what computer do you have again?

I guess it's time to show you things.. haha

starting :

(taken from various steam and links around the internet about Distant Worlds..)

quote:

Strategy games are generally very CPU (as opposed to GPU) intensive. The problem is not so much drawing the ships etc on the screen, rather it is calculating where each of the thousands of ships in play are going next. Therefore the game could have a massive graphical overhaul that modern GPU's could still eat barely breaking sweat without really affecting the CPU load.

quote:

CPU heavy game, but still a well optimized game at this point, I sat and played on a computer that had an older CPU than the one I'm replacing and it still ran well.

I did learn that the game can have out of memory issues on 32-bit systems when saving after playing too long though.

quote:

If you play on a 32-bit system without the 3gb switch activated via command prompt you can get out of memory errors after playing too long.

Something about LAA not being used right on 32 bit systems. I fixed it with this:

To enable the 3GB switch on Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8:

1. Right-click Command Prompt in the Accessories program group of the Start menu. Click Run as Administrator.

2. At the command prompt, enter: bcdedit /set IncreaseUserVa 3072

3. Restart the computer.

quote:

The CPU is where the heaviest load falls in the DW games, but the catch is the games scale.

You can play a small scale game just fine on most CPU, even a mid scale game, but you can also scale the game world up to a point where I'm not sure what kind of monster PC you'd need to finish it.

this is from Eliot who made the game!!!

quote:

The best things you can do for performance in DW is to use a 64-bit OS (e.g. Win7 64) and to have a multi-core CPU.

Universe improves game performance significantly over previous versions, especially in late game.

4Gb RAM and dual-core or better CPU should be fine to run the largest maps.

quote:

Done some more research. I read this game uses GDI (deprecated windows api).

This is what makes space empires v performance so atrocious on not-ancient pcs. The cpu is having to brute-force the visuals which are no longer hardware accelerated by the gpu.

So I'm concerned again.

My cpu I'm guessing is going to be borderline: a phenom II is fine for everything else I do but it's only got maybe half the oomph of a sandybridge i5/i7 at the same clockspeed.

Have the optmizations since "legends" got on top of this issue? That's the timeline for the posts I'm reading.

quote:

Actually it uses XNA and some other routines for the performance-sensitive graphics now. The performance as of Shadows and now Universe is much better than earlier in the series. A Phenom II should be fine.

**so look up XNA and if it needs Memory..or CPU.. of course both but I'm sure the brains or CPU is what you need and is probably more important that memory!..

Watch and listen to what they talk about in the video.. and this is a "graphics" intense game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT6NeZSS3_8

< Message edited by Blabsawaw22 -- 7/14/2015 3:56:05 PM >

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 13

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/14/2015 11:18:21 PM

GripHAHA

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Didn't read any of that gibberish, I'm not here to argue with a moron. I said SSD drives can be slow, you idiot... what do we live in a time where it's impossible for hard drives to run slow? congratulations, you got the fastest hard drive ever built. Now do me a favor you moron, and stop arguing with me when you don't know what you're talking about. I could care less what you think, or what you have to say. I came on here and gave my opinion on the matter that it's, not to argue with a child that's pissed, because his computer sucks.

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 14

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/15/2015 2:11:00 AM

HerpInYourDerp

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Joined: 5/7/2015
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This game is RAM-limited only in so far as it's a 32bit programme, so there's a hard limit in place within the game engine itself that you can't go past. Because it uses GDI for rendering and not DirectX/D2D, pretty much all the work is dumped onto the CPU unless you're running WinXP and so it's forced to brute force its way through the game. There's going to be near enough zero gain going from 6GB to 128GB memory, but even a 200mhz OC or increase will be easily noticeable in-game.

< Message edited by HerpInYourDerp -- 7/15/2015 3:10:38 AM >

(in reply to GripHAHA)

Post #: 15

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/15/2015 4:15:43 AM

GripHAHA

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Lol, let me make this simple for everyone. We're talking about AI in this topic, now is it better to have 1g or 3g of memory with lots of AIs? Now, will the game run properly with 1g of memory on a 1400 star map? or will it crash? will the game run with a lower end CPU on a 1400 star map? or will it crash? Think about it and tell me what's more important... We're not talking about if the game runs good with a large battle, we're talking about AI's and what's best to have lots of them... My statement about memory is not false.

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 16

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/15/2015 2:34:33 PM

jadelith

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Joined: 5/30/2014
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Memory is *one* of the important things, like cpu and your hard drive. It's absolutely not *the* most important one.

I have 16gb of mem, and the game never uses even a quarter of it. The game *does* run out of memory, but thats not a hardware issue, it's a software one (32 bit).

If anything, it's one of the least important ones, since most people have enough mem for 32bit program max usable mem.

And.. 1 gb of ram? Who has 1 gb of ram anymore? Sure, and if you have a 2.0 ghz dual core cpu, that'd also bottleneck the game :p

(in reply to GripHAHA)

Post #: 17

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/15/2015 4:04:15 PM

Blabsawaw22

Posts: 285
Joined: 12/5/2014
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quote:

Doesn't change the fact that memory is the most important thing for this game. Anyway, perhaps your problem is with the hard drive, faster one perhaps?

I am a moron? haha why? because I told you some information that might make your opinion wrong?
I almost fell out of my seat when I read your last posting.. You obviously haven't seen what you wrote before! and Even others showed you your previous statements as well! haha

quote:

I never said nothing beyond that, and what I stated is fact.

and here is the kicker!

quote:

would it matter if it ran 64bit, lol....

If you had read the "gibberish" I took the time to show you, you would have seen Eliot the Game Developer!! saying the most important thing you can have is a 64bit CPU haha..

Here is the Gibberish! haha read what you just wrote! and I'm a child?? holy moly- aren't you the one pissed here? I love your last statement there too! that says it all..

quote:

Didn't read any of that gibberish, I'm not here to argue with a moron. I said SSD drives can be slow, you idiot... what do we live in a time where it's impossible for hard drives to run slow? congratulations, you got the fastest hard drive ever built. Now do me a favor you moron, and stop arguing with me when you don't know what you're talking about. I could care less what you think, or what you have to say. I came on here and gave my opinion on the matter that it's, not to argue with a child that's pissed, because his computer sucks.

Love it.. and love you too.. haha

< Message edited by Blabsawaw22 -- 7/15/2015 5:04:31 PM >

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 18

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/15/2015 6:08:07 PM

HerpInYourDerp

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More AI = more objects to render, more scipting to run, more logic to calculate and more pathing to calculate. Even if this game was HW-accelerated and most of the rendering is offloaded to the GPU, you're still left with the CPU needing to more work with more AIs. If a lack of memory was an actual problem, keeping in mind it's a 32-bit engine, there would be far more 'why am I getting out-of-memory crashes?' topics on this board.

Really, most of this stuff is basic knowledge, particularly when talking about strategy games in general, if you knew what you were talking about.

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 19

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/16/2015 6:37:39 PM

Blabsawaw22

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so anyway,

speaking of, I run Distant Worlds Universe with my integrated graphics card (intel 4600hd)

I have a dedicated Nvidia 755m unit installed but just turned off..

Herp, Should I be running Distant Worlds Universe with my Dedicated Nvidia card for a slightly better performance? with the information above, It sounds like using my faster/more memory video card won't change anything as this game doesn't use the videocard in a way it might matter? correct??

< Message edited by Blabsawaw22 -- 7/16/2015 7:37:23 PM >

(in reply to HerpInYourDerp)

Post #: 20

RE: A question about the number of AI empires at game s... - 7/17/2015 4:02:53 AM

HerpInYourDerp

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I think that would be the case.

AFAIK, the only time a GPU should clock up/go into 3d mode is when the game has to load up an image from file. This is just the default HW-acceleration settings of either windows and/or the driver settings, not necessarily something specific to the game.

The ui stuff should get loaded up at the start and stay in the memory, whereas things like planet landscapes, ground maps, etc. is loaded on demand and I assume cleared from the memory once you're no longer viewing it.

(in reply to Blabsawaw22)

Post #: 21