Well, no, not necessarily.

You can't handle the very biggest maps, but really everything upto and including Huge should play with no problems. You just need to accept that you can't have all the settings on maximum, but you can still play on maps that are about the same size as the biggest GC2 ones, and have the new features from GC3 in the game. Consider the immesnse and insane maps to be the game's approach to future-proofing - they're for top-end systems RIGHT NOW, but SD want to keep the game as a live IP until 2020, at which point only needing 16-32gb of RAM will probably seem rather quaint. Hell, Windows will probably be demanding 32gb just on it's own by then.

But yes, this news is worse still really - DDR2 is many generations behind, and don't the MSI 7592 variants all use a 775 socket? That's prehistoric. That's going to make upgrading really quite painful - you'll be needing new RAM, mobo and processor simultaneously at the least. That's gonna set you back $500 at least. And tbh, you'll be needing to do that upgrade within the next couple of years as more stuff finally goes 64-bit and starts seriously pushing the hardware envelope again; games have been deliberately under-spec for the last half-decade to avoid shutting people on 32-bit systems out of the market, but we will likely go back to how it was back in the late-90s-early-2000s when keeping your hardware up to scratch for modern games required a considerable investment each year.

The sad thing (for me) is that pretty much the ONLY reason I sprang for GC3 was its use of Insane-sized galaxies.  Pretty much ALL space 4X games had what is effectively minimal "galaxies".  MoO, GC, StarDrive, et al, have been pawning off "galaxies" with fewer than 100 solar systems.  Even if you counted just the usable systems with inhabitable planets, that wouldn't even reflect Earth's spiral arm of the Milky Way.  Insane was the very first game I've seen (in 4x empire building) that gave the feeling (as Douglas Adams put it), "Space is big; I mean really big."  [Elite: Dangerous is a space game that actually allows for billions of solar systems, but it's not an empire-building game.]  Absent the Immense and Insane map sizes, I really don't see any kind of qualitative difference between GC2 and GC3.  For what the lower scale of GC3 has to offer, I can already get that by sticking with GC2.

And that's one of the things that puzzles me.  "Your CPU is out of date and substandard!" and "You don't have enough RAM!" is what so many people here are telling me.  But then there are times -- probably about 30% of the time -- when I can play for hours without the slightest hiccup.  If 8 Gb is totally insufficient for the task, shouldn't the game choke EVERY time?  And likewise, if the CPU is so old that it couldn't possibly keep up with the required dataflow, shouldn't that also result in poor performance EVERY time?

I can see your point when it applies to different games.  But within a single game?  I know that on my side, my empire accounts for @100 colonies, @80 shipyards, and about 50 ships (mostly constructors) added every turn.  At any given time, my navy accounts for 100+ ships.  I also can see from the Diplomacy screens that each of the other Major empires have 50+ colonies each.  And with every turn, the number of factor the program has to track just keeps growing with every turn.  Yet, my intermittent instances of program lagging was occurring more much earlier in the game while those long stretches of unhindered performance have been occurring more recently.  It makes no sense to me that I had more problems when the data tracking requirement was less than what it is now, when the tracking load is several times greater.  The one constant factor between back then and now has been my PC rig's hardware.  Which is what made me think that whatever the problem is, it isn't because of the hardware's limitations. 

Quoting Captain Patch,

reply 45

Quoting DARCA1213,

reply 42

Look! Look! LOOK! https://pcpartpicker.com/parts/cpu/ you can get good CPUs right now for cheap. They are so cheap right now you can buy three processors and use two of them to rub together till they make a fun little squeaky sound.   

 ....

Seems to be a problem for everyone eventually, but it's nothing a few dollars can't fix$   

"Few dollars"?  First, that's quite the price range, just for a CPU: $24.98 all the way up to $3966.99.  Somehow, I doubt that any of those items under $100-200 would be solving any performance issues.  Second, pretty much ALL of those choices would also involve getting a different motherboard than the one I currently have.  So that would be another cost consideration.  Third, whereas I might feel comfortable swapping out video cards, changing out something as delicate as a CPU is beyond my fumble-fingered geriatric dexterity -- which means that I'd end up paying a tech to do the job.  (Not to mention how irritable they get when a customer brings in his bargain basement components and expect them to do all the technical work.)  Fourth, I believe the case is that when changing motherboards or CPUs, even if all of my current programs remain on the hard drive, it becomes necessary to re-initialize the 40-60 programs that I use on a regular basis.  That is a royal pain-in-the-posterior procedure that takes several days to complete and I would just as soon avoid doing if at all possible.  Taking all of those things together and changing CPUs is pointedly NOT a "simple" procedure.  Nor is it "cheap".  (In particular since I am surviving on my savings until full retirement age in three more years, having been unemployed -- and unemployable because of health + age reasons -- since 2009.)  But I suppose if "money is no object" were the case, your suggestion would have merit.

Quoting naselus,

reply 43

If you want the recommended specs to mean 'can run literally every god damned thing in the game on maximum possible settings', many of those games would need to ask for literal supercomputer configs. Above and beyond that, many people who really could play the game quite happily on lower settings would skip it in the belief that it's too much for their machine to handle.

But don't you think consumers should have the right to know just what is required to run everything the product has to offer?  After all, they are paying for the complete package.  "Here, you can buy this four-passenger vehicle for _____.  But we're not going to tell you that the driver can't have any additional passengers unless he also buys these other additional features.  Not until after he's purchased the vehicle that is."  And as far as I am concerned, "Recommended" does mean "In order to take advantage of everything this game has to offer, these are the requirements you must fulfill."  At least that has been the industry standard for as long as I remember; I seem to have missed the memo as to when that policy changed.

 

Solution: film yourself destroying your pc in a spectacular fashion and post it on YouTube. Remember to have a back story and funny commentary for the video, or else it's just plain. If it's a success, you will have enough for a new pc and have pocket change$

Now go! Become the face of Internet pc rage!