CPU eating

Well it's still a beta product so all the final optimizations haven't been made yet but it's also multi-threaded meaning it will use up any and all CPU cores you throw at it (to a point).

It's probably also partly because this game engine is designed to make good use of multi-threading to use all available cores, that's actually seldom the case. I don't doubt they will still have some optimization to use but because this game is turn based I think people underestimate how much power it needs and also people aren't used to games that make heavy use of today's multicore processors.

The game is not eating your CPU.  It is using your CPU.  It shows you how accustomed to sloppy inefficient programming we have all become.  Seeing our CPUs actually being used instead of sitting there idle is a fairly new thing and Stardock is leading the way. But I can't blame anybody for being startled when they see it for the first time.

One of the tricks Stardock is using is having all your idle time be spent in the AI looking and evaluating.  That way, there is minimum delay in between turns.  It was that way in GC2 as well, but modern multicores and threading techniques allow Stardock to really use it well in this version.  That is why the usage is so steady. I am hoping they are starting a trend in strategy games.

I was trying to put it a bit more gently, but I think you explained it better."   exactly people are used to games not using the full potential of their machines and assume that a turn based strategy game should's be making their computers work for a living.

This isn't poor optimization; it's intentional. The game is actually using all of your CPU.

This game is one of the first to be programmed to take advantage of 64 bit addressing, which is quite new to the game entertainment industry. This gives the game more room to keep track of objects in the game, which takes more CPU cycles to process. Add to that the tradition of GC using all of the processors available and GC3 will use more of the CPU resources than any other game. GC has also traditionally processed some of the AI functions during the human player's turn, which results in faster processing of end of turn periods, and more CPU usage than other games. Another difference between games is that GC is a 4X game, which forces it to keep track of a lot more stuff than a First Person Shooter game.

I don't think it will be long before other games, particularly 4X games, convert from 32 bit addressing to 64 bit. Some may already be doing so.

[edit: changed "single person shooter" to "First Person Shooter"]

All good points. When we talk about optimizing the game we aren't talking about making the CPU be idle longer, we are talking about being more efficient so that we can run more meaningful instructions in less time. The CPU may be 100% either way, but with optimization a lot more real work is being done in that same time.

As mentioned many people would assume that a turn based strategy game wouldn't have the tech requirements of a modern FPS. They assume what they see on the screen is all of the work the computer is doing, so when they see a burning car in a war torn street in realistic detail they assume that's harder on the computer than displaying some planets, star and ships as smaller gameplay pieces.

There are a few problems with that logic. The first is that in those small high detail areas the game only needs to keep in memory the immediate area around the player, and the game can predict where the player can move. New areas are loaded without the players knowledge but since the player is relatively slow the load can always stay ahead of him. In Skyrim you can walk from one end of the map to the other without a load screen because of this. But if you choose to fast travel you are going to see a load screen, because you jumped in a way the game couldn't predict and pre-load for you. The game does not and can not have the entire world loaded into memory, it does a tiny piece.

In our type of strategy games what you see on the screen is a tiny piece of the work the computer has to do. It has to have the entire battlefield/world/universe all loaded in memory at once. You would throw your computer out the window if you clicked on a place on the minimap in Starcraft and you got a load screen. More importantly the AI wouldn't be able to be operating in those areas if they weren't loaded in memory. There is nothing active going on in the areas the player isn't in in Skyrim, Battlefield, etc (it may seem like it because of specific triggers or timers, but when the player is away from an area the computer doesnt do anything there, those triggers and timers will all be checked and updated when the player gets back).

But we need those areas to be under just as much AI scrutiny and activity as areas the player is looking at. We need to have the entire map in memory as well as every resource, building, planet, ship, etc so that when the player clicks the minimap to check out a new area he doesn't have to wait for the graphics to load. We need the AI to be building, moving and fighting just as actively in places the player may never see as it is in the areas the player is focusing on at that moment.

Most games deal with a small set of highly detailed objects, like the room the player is in and 6-7 enemies, a helicopter flying over, etc. We deal with a universe of thousands of objects on half a million tiles (on Insane map size) where each tile calculates values for influence, visibility, AI maps for danger and exploration, and a ton of other variables. Instead of a handful of high detail objects we have thousands and hundreds of thousands of different assets all ready for display at any moment.

When I first came to Stardock one of my first pushes was to license an engine. We have small teams here and I didn't want to lose half of them to making an engine for the game. I wanted the whole team focused on game play, not engine. Brad chuckled when I told him and said "Good luck finding that engine." He was right, there are great game engines out there, but they couldn't do what we needed. Which is why when the Oxide guys told us they wanted to make Nitrous, an engine developed for Strategy games, we were so excited to work with them (but that's a story for another day).

The short version of this long rambling post is that when you look at a screenshot of GC3 vs Battlefield or Skyrim it may not be clear why GC3 needs that hardware. But what is on the screen is only a tiny part of what the computer is doing. GC3 is (to my knowledge) the 2nd 64bit only game on Steam. It is aggressively multi-threaded. It is a game that will make use of of the new system you buy today, or the new system you buy in 2017. It is Stardock's opportunity to design the strategy game we have wanted without having to compromise because the whole game needs to fit in 2Gb of RAM.

So you are right, it will certainly use your CPU.