System Requirements for HoI3

[Deo89]

With all the new systems, all the different units and the 10,000 province monster map, I really wonder what kind of a System we will need to run the game.

What I always liked about Paradox games is that they never required high end gaming systems for the games to run smoothly, but now I'm a bit skeptic.
I can only imagine how big the save game file will be...

So my question is, what will the minimum system specs roughly be?

 

[Alexander Seil]

I hope my laptop can run this...but I expect lag, to be honest. And I can run things like Fallout 3 without lag on high settings. Be prepared to shell out money for a better PC.

 

[Hallsten]

I don't foresee the system requirements to be that much harsher than those of EU3.

 

[Alexander Seil]

I don't foresee the system requirements to be that much harsher than those of EU3.

How so?

The supply system alone is as much computation as EU3 had to do in a year for every system.

 

[Battlecry]

How so?

The supply system alone is as much computation as EU3 had to do in a year for every system.

It's somewhat different though. Most computations are monthly in EU3 (and the number of these is quite large - I really don't think what you said about the supply system & an EU3 year is true), while in HOI they are daily. While EU3 time passes in days, HOI passes in hours - so a day would be computationally similar to a month in EU3...1 year passes in a little over 1 minute on my computer, so 1 minute = 12 days in HOI3 (on my comp) perhaps? So approx 30min = 1 year...12 years ('36-'48) = 6 hours...not adjusted for increased speed at start or lower speed later on...really I think there's room for somewhat more computations than EU3, as I can't imagine anyone expecting to go through the whole game period in 6 hours (at least I certainly don't).

It's also possible that they're intending HOI3 to be more "grand" - i.e. that it will take much longer to play through the game period than it did in HOI2.

EDIT: Hopefully P'Dox can give us some small clue of their goals in this regard, i.e. how long is too long for a day to pass at full game speed on an 'average' computer (or whatever they consider average)? To me a low-end dual core with 2G RAM is pretty average, you can get these for well under $1000 now, and this is what my $500 laptop has (my PC is low-end Quad with 4G RAM).

 

[Alexander Seil]

But aren't most computations in EU3 of the sort "let's go through this array of provinces and add up the monthly incomes?"

The problem I see here is that the supply system seems to requires rather complex algorithms to tell it where to trace the supply line, not to mention that this need to be done for every single unit-containing provinces on the map, synchronized with convoys (and routes for these need to be computed, too) and adjusted for loss of provinces and units. It's orders of magnitude more complicated than anything in EU3.

And that's just the supply system. Add on top of that 200 country AI's, dozens of Theater AI's, army groups, hundreds of corps...

 

[Battlecry]

But aren't most computations in EU3 of the sort "let's go through this array of provinces and add up the monthly incomes?"

The problem I see here is that the supply system seems to requires rather complex algorithms to tell it where to trace the supply line, not to mention that this need to be done for every single unit-containing provinces on the map, synchronized with convoys (and routes for these need to be computed, too) and adjusted for loss of provinces and units. It's orders of magnitude more complicated than anything in EU3.

And that's just the supply system. Add on top of that 200 country AI's, dozens of Theater AI's, army groups, hundreds of corps...

Complexity of algorithms is not as important as the number of them; as I understand it (I'm not a professional - so maybe I'm horribly wrong) a modern CPU does 1 + 1 just as fast as [(1 + 1)/1]*2, (I believe speed [GHZ] is how many computations per second, while bits [i.e. 32 or 64] describe how complex each computation can be) but yes the number of algorithms will also be increased, so let's hope they've found a way to streamline the EU3 engine. There are certainly mathematical methods to simplify multiple algorithms into one in order that it be processed faster.

 

[Alexander Seil]

Complexity of algorithms is not as important as the number of them, as I understand it (I'm not a professional - so maybe I'm horribly wrong) a modern CPU does 1 + 1 just as fast as [(1 + 1)/1]*2, (I believe speed [GHZ] is how many computations per second, while bits [i.e. 32 or 64] describe how complex each computation can be) but yes the number of algorithms will also be increased, so let's hope they've found a way to streamline the EU3 engine.

[(1+1)/1]*2 is still just an arithmetical operation, not an algorithm.

An algorithm is, at the most basic level, a "flow-chart" type object that tells you what to do at each step, depending on which conditions are fulfilled. At each step, the engine would need to perform several computations (for example, it may have to check whether a particular line of provinces minimizes supply tax). That could get ugly very quickly given the number of times the engine needs to do this each day.

EDIT: One way to handle this is to use all the cores in a processor more efficiently (which Paradox apparently intends to do), since the limiting factor may not be that these algorithms are complicated, but rather that there are so many of them. But people with a single core will probably get 5 second wait times at midnight by mid-war.

 

[Battlecry]

[(1+1)/1]*2 is still just an arithmetical operation, not an algorithm.

An algorithm is, at the most basic level, a "flow-chart" type object that tells you what to do at each step, depending on which conditions are fulfilled. At each step, the engine would need to perform several computations (for example, it may have to check whether a particular line of provinces minimizes supply tax). That could get ugly very quickly given the number of times the engine needs to do this each day.

EDIT: One way to handle this is to use all the cores in a processor more efficiently (which Paradox apparently intends to do), since the limiting factor may not be that these algorithms are complicated, but rather that there are so many of them. But people with a single core will probably get 5 second wait times at midnight by mid-war.

Yes sorry, algorithm was not the correct word. I am under the impression though, that algorithms can be simplified by making each 'step' (i.e. the operations) more complex, thereby reducing the number of steps required. Again I'm far from a math wiz...and really I doubt they'll ever tell us exactly what they did (if they do it) to make the game run faster anyway - that's "corporate secret" type stuff usually.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

How so?

The supply system alone is as much computation as EU3 had to do in a year for every system.

Because that is what Paradox has said so far when this question was asked

 

[Alexander Seil]

Because that is what Paradox has said so far when this question was asked

Except that HoI3's minimum requirements may be EU3's recommended.

The problem is, the game is still heavy in development. For all we know, they didn't even have a working logistic system (apart from the design doc. for it) a week ago. Unless Johan can see into the future, I don't really know how they make projections with respect to what kind of a PC will run the game. One of the goals of any beta-test, among other things, is to actually establish what kinds of PC will run the game, and tweak it accordingly. But we're far away from that stage.

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

Except that HoI3's minimum requirements may be EU3's recommended.

The problem is, the game is still heavy in development. For all we know, they didn't even have a working logistic system (apart from the design doc. for it) a week ago. Unless Johan can see into the future, I don't really know how they make projections with respect to what kind of a PC will run the game. One of the goals of any beta-test, among other things, is to actually establish what kinds of PC will run the game, and tweak it accordingly. But we're far away from that stage.

The people who know how far they are in development are Paradox, so when they say something I tend to believe them more then someone who isn't part of the development-team and just has to make assumptions

 

[unmerged(123225)]

I keep hearing that if you can run EU3 you should have no problem with HoI3. But from the looks of it and knowing that it will come with 10000 provinces you really have to wonder if that is true...

 

[Alexander Seil]

The people who know how far they are in development are Paradox, so when they say something I tend to believe them more then someone who isn't part of the development-team and just has to make assumptions

And, of course, all plans laid by men come to fruition, with no snags whatsoever I'm sure that when cryTek sat down to design Crysis, their main goal was to make a game that couldn't be played on anything a normal person could afford.

 

[jdrou]

The minimum requirements may very well be the same as EU3. Aside from the Pixel Shader 2.0 requirement all the reqs are really approximate and subjective; even in EU3 there are significant speed improvements with better hardware but you could also run with a slower CPU or less memory. You certainly won't need the kind of system you'd need for the latest FPS game but you should have at least a low-end recent model video card (or high-end from 4-5 years ago) and you should certainly have more then the minimum 512MB RAM especially with Vista. Given the cost of memory anyone playing 3D games should try to get at least 2GB of RAM.

 

[Rich Oliver]

Yes and for those who want to play a low hardware intensive version without the computational drain of things like the new logistics system there's HOI2, or even HOI1.

 

[King]

I am using exactly the same machine as I used for Rome. Our goal is to aim for a similar spec as EU3.

 

[Will Lucky]

I am using exactly the same machine as I used for Rome. Our goal is to aim for a similar spec as EU3.

Didn't you use a Quad Core during Rome's Development.

 

[King]

Didn't you use a Quad Core during Rome's Development.

Still do, but I running in Debug mode which is rather slow I can tell you. When I get a proper release version it goes really fast.

 

[DarthJF]

I keep hearing that if you can run EU3 you should have no problem with HoI3. But from the looks of it and knowing that it will come with 10000 provinces you really have to wonder if that is true...

Rome should have same requirements as EU3 does, but it goes much slower with my computer than EU3. EU3 I can run satisfactorily even though it lags a bit, but Rome goes really slow, so I guess HOI3 won't be playable for me. Then again I have 5 year old computer and my video card wasn't even listed as supported when EU3 got out, so with relatively new and decent computer I don't think HOI3 should have any problems.