Yeah, I had to turn them off as well, which is a shame. I've heard Stardock refer to them as 'point sprites' or something, which apparently doesn't work well with my card. It would be nice if they provided an alternative type of explosion for those of us with puny hardware, since one of the things that attracted me to this game was the assertion that it was designed to work with low end hardware.

Sure, it works. But all the spaceships just disappear into thin air instead of blowing up.

My computer runs XP. This is not an OS issue.

It also runs Dawn of War, which has explosions about 10 times prettier than Gal Civ II.

I'm not saying that you can't have your 'cool' explosions, as long as I have an alternative that doesn't ammount to vanishing spaceships.

Which version of the game are you running? If you have version 1.0 out of the box, please update because the way explosions work in the later versions is different.

Errrr... maybe the explosions are so cool so that those of us who have a 1/2 way decent computer can actually see some decent graphics?? You can turn the explosions off for your dinosaur running Win98.... don't expect the rest of us to be blinded and crippled to make things more "fair".

Maybe some of us have better things to do than fuel bill gate's juggernaught computer industry with 90% of our income.

But i digress...

It would be nice if there was a toned down explosion that wasn't quite so computer intensive. I'm playing it on a fastish 2.8 GHz laptop with 64MB Intel graphics card (it does the job for most things) and the latest drivers for both card and game. i've had to turn them off due to the game freezing for about 20ish seconds mid battle to render the explosion. Oddly enough, the explosions in the demo version worked fine, were they less cpu intensive? Anyone else notice this?

Any chance that the option to use the demo explosions could be implemented in the next update?

Haha.

I've had explosions turned off since 1.0X. Just turned them back on and it was fine. I hadn't realised this had been fixed

And answer is still the same. Why make graphic reqs for a TBS higher than action games?

I don't know why stardock borthered with all that fancy 3d graphics lol.

Whats wrong with playing something thats as aesthetically pleasing as it is enjoyable? I plan to upgrade my dinosaur of a pc just so can see everything in all its glory.

I got exactly the same problem, with an athlon 2800+, ati radeon 9800 pro, 256 Mb RAM: 1s explosions, slow loading times, ... (with galciv2 1.11)

The computer was swapping a lot, so I decided to add some RAM. I now have 512 Mb, and the game runs very smoothly.
The additional ram also decreased loading times by a factor 10.

hope this helps

<>

Some people actually have high end machines and WANT as much eye candy as possile. I am lucky enough to be able to run ANY game at the highest settings so I want it all.

Beta 1.2 has a parameter in the options menu for simple explosions.
-cc

I was responding to HIS post.

well responding to your post it really seems you are trying to pick a fight? or is it just a social skill issue?

If explosions were making my game hang I would probably complain too, why do you have to get personal about it?

'Cause it looks cooler. Any time you're ever tempted to ask a question about system requirements, that's your answer. For this or any game.

I can understand your point, however when my framerate frequently drops to 0 FPS, I get annoyed. Also when it becomes difficult to scroll when zoomed in on multiple ships I get annoyed.