News Civilization VII recommends 16 cores and 32GB RAM for 4K gameplay — RTX 4070 or RX 7800XT is the minimum

[OneMoreUser]

The real question is did they develop it for PC first. If they did then the specs do seem a bit high, although squarely in the mid-range category for gaming PCs. If they developed for consoles first then ported to PC then...They may seem a bit low.

I bet it is just a marketing ploy meant to make people think it is very advanced, but the reality it is likely the requirements are about the graphics and those being not so optimized.

Full disclosure - I want Civ7 to be great, but 6 was not an improvement on 5 when it comes to game play and 7 seems to be more of the same.

 

[dalauder]

You mean graphics, but Civ VII is a strategy game. They probably use all the cores for simulation of AI opponents (and they do mean 16 cores).

What's the point of that? The AI was stupid in Civ VI anyways.

 

[dalauder]

I personally gave up on the new Civs when Civ VI started making me wait 90 seconds between turns. I mean, I've got a flagship Corsair SSD, good CPU, overkill graphics, and 64GB of RAM. Full games take 40 hours now, but it's no more fun than Civ I--just slow and tedious.

I just play Civ II Gold now. I've modded it to replace Cure for Cancer with Internet and Seti Program with YouTube, as well as added aerial drones and a bunch more modern stuff. I've also increased movement rates, so that you can do strategic movement cutoffs to control flanking, more like the modern movement. Games take 8 hours.

 

[Notton]

I personally gave up on the new Civs when Civ VI started making me wait 90 seconds between turns. I mean, I've got a flagship Corsair SSD, good CPU, overkill graphics, and 64GB of RAM. Full games take 40 hours now, but it's no more fun than Civ I--just slow and tedious.

I just play Civ II Gold now. I've modded it to replace Cure for Cancer with Internet and Seti Program with YouTube, as well as added aerial drones and a bunch more modern stuff. I've also increased movement rates, so that you can do strategic movement cutoffs to control flanking, more like the modern movement. Games take 8 hours.

Get a faster CPU?
CIV series is famous for AI turn lengths when your CPU is slow.
The difference was night and day when I upgraded my R7 2700X to a R7 5800X3D.
I notice less of a difference between R7 5800X3D and an i7-13700K.

If you play a lot of strategy or simulation games like Cities Skylines, CIV, Factorio, etc., always spend more on the CPU, especially with large cache. The 7800X3D or the upcoming 9800X3D would be ideal.

 

[dalauder]

Get a faster CPU?
CIV series is famous for AI turn lengths when your CPU is slow.
The difference was night and day when I upgraded my R7 2700X to a R7 5800X3D.
I notice less of a difference between R7 5800X3D and an i7-13700K.

If you play a lot of strategy or simulation games like Cities Skylines, CIV, Factorio, etc., always spend more on the CPU, especially with large cache. The 7800X3D or the upcoming 9800X3D would be ideal.

Sure, you're correct that I could get a better CPU. But what's it doing with all of those calculations? The AI is still an idiot and the game isn't any more fun for taking forever.

Civ 6 came out in 2016. I got the respectable 3600X three years AFTER the game was released and it was practically unplayably slow. How was it when the game was new?

I play Civ II if I just want to take over the world. I play Civ IV if I want 3D graphics.

 

[Amdlova]

32 cores today is bare minimum because everyone has a little server inside their homes.

 

[LuxZg]

I play Civ II if I just want to take over the world. I play Civ IV if I want 3D graphics.

Just a heads up, I started playing UnCiv on Android tablet and phone past several weeks. Game is Civ V clone, free, and graphics sort of Civ II style, just simple icons and no animations. But it plays on just about any OS (Android, Win, Linux, R Pi, Mac OS), and any hardware, and that means I can just play in my bed for a few hours and complete a game in a 2-3 days.

https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv

 

[newtechldtech]

A game recommending 32GB of RAM, but only a 20GB SSD? 🤔
The developers might be slightly confused...

Data base and tables generated while gaming. Also , AI needs extra memory.

 

[dalauder]

Just a heads up, I started playing UnCiv on Android tablet and phone past several weeks. Game is Civ V clone, free, and graphics sort of Civ II style, just simple icons and no animations. But it plays on just about any OS (Android, Win, Linux, R Pi, Mac OS), and any hardware, and that means I can just play in my bed for a few hours and complete a game in a 2-3 days.

https://github.com/yairm210/Unciv

Thanks for the tip! I do need a new turn-based strategy game for my phone. I've been playing Influence and figured out how to game the AI, so it's no good anymore.

 

[usertests]

A game recommending 32GB of RAM, but only a 20GB SSD? 🤔
The developers might be slightly confused...

It's a strategy game, so I expect procedurally generated maps using many repeating copies of the same tiles and units.

I'm reminded of kkrieger.

Civ VII's requirements ought to be tested. It wouldn't be the first game to have nonsensical requirements.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

No, who's confused is Microsoft who thinks you can run Windows 11 with a 1ghz dual core CPU, 4GB RAM, and 64GB storage. For a Civilization game 20GB sounds quite reasonable.

Oh, the storage requirements aren't surprising or bad. I'm just wondering how much benefit there really is to having 32GB of RAM versus 16GB...

Data base and tables generated while gaming. Also , AI needs extra memory.

Yeah, I know there's a lot of on-the-fly stuff that can be created. It's entirely possible that there are real benefits to 32GB versus 16GB of RAM with Civ7. But I suspect they're probably erring on the side of caution rather than really needing 32GB. We'll see when it comes out I suppose.

(Not that I'll be testing with 16GB of VRAM... I left that level of memory in the dust around 2019 and haven't looked back!)

 

[TJ Hooker]

You can surmise how many cores a particular program can use with HWiFO and others by looking at core utilization while the application is being used.

Sure, but none of us can do that for Civ VII until it's released. So beyond the published system requirements all we have is guesswork.