English:
PDS = Paradox Development Studio(Game developers)
PI = Paradox Interactive(Publisher)
AAR = After Action Report(people write down a “game diary”, sometimes in beautiful novel style!)
Modding = To modify the game stats to your liking.(make these tanks even better or add new planes etc..)
Official need:
OS: XP/Vista/Windows 7/Windows 8
Processor: Intel® Pentium® IV 2.4 GHz or AMD 3500+
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 2 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA® GeForce 8800 or ATI Radeon® X1900,
512mb graphics memory required (1024mb Recommended).
DirectX®: 9.0c
Sound: Direct X-compatible sound card
Controller support: 3-button mouse, keyboard and speakers
Special multiplayer requirements: Internet Connection or LAN for multiplayer
MULTIPLAYER UP TO 32 PLAYERS
I can run current PDS games on:
– my 2004 notebook with Windows XP, Centrino 1,7GHz, 2GB RAM and ATI Mobility Radeon 9600 128MB and 2.5″ 5400RPM Harddisk. But that is pretty slow.
– on a 2005 System with Windosw Vista, an Intel Q6600 4GB RAM, Nvidia8600GT 512MB RAM and a normal 5400RPM Harddisk. A day passes away in HoI3 in ’36 in 2-3 seconds up to ’39 and in ’44 scen aroudn 5-6 seconds a day.
– on a 2009 System with Windows 7/64. AMD Athlon X4 810, 8GB RAM, ATI 4850 512MB RAM and 2GB RAM disk, 5400RPM Harddisk or a cheap SSD. This system is just a bit faster in every aspect.
CPU:
Here the more GHz, the better as ususal. Even with modern MulitCores, most games are still not really designed for them. So better go for the higher GHZ and DualCore, then for the 4/6/8 cores. Since HoI3-FTM we have Mulitcore support, but it still runs mostly on one core.
But games that have multicore support could run more smoothly with more cores and even more if you run them in windows or Alt-Tab between programs.(Like writing an AAR or doing modding or whatever.)
RAM:
The more RAM the better. Ususally 4GB is sufficient for all OS.
Most games use around 1 GB of RAM. Paraodx games load all game content into RAM and then it is run from there. So Mods that changed/added the graphics part of the game had often a higher need for RAM. There is a hotfix around for people that have problems. Search for “LAA patch/4GB patch”
OS:
I have no experience here with Mac..
Windows XP/Vista/7/8 should all work.
You may think of installing the game not in C:\programms as it gave quite some trouble with that directory in the past. Install in a different location like c:\games or on a different harddisk.
There is also info how to run the games with wine on Linux. I’ll maybe add that later also here in an own section.
Fell free to write me your experience.
Harddisk:
As I wrote at RAM, once the game is loaded, all is in the RAM. So the HD doesn’t matter at all anymore. Exept for savegames and reloading.
So even with a SSD or a RAM disk(where the game is already on a HD in the RAM), the game does not run faster. But it wil be of course faster with saving and loading up.
So if you write AAR’s or do modding, every second the game loads/saves might be worth every penny.
An alternative to a SSD is maybe a RAPTOR HD from WesternDigital. These are also pretty fast already. A SSD is overall a good choice for every PC system, as if used as OS HD it speeds up your PC performance by great amount.
If you have plenty of RAM, you could use some of it for a RAMDisk. I used the free one from DataRAM wich allows to use a 4GB RAM disk.
A problem with PDS games can be fragmentation. So you would like to defrag your HD more often as usual. Thats just because PD games use often many many tiny files. The average is fine ~6 to 9k but HoI3 has around 57k files..
For comparison:
Battelfield Bad Company has ~2,5k files.
StarCraftII has ~160 files.
CiVIV has ~25k files.
Company of Heroes(all AExpansions) has ~660 files.
Here a SSD shines, as it is doing selfdefrag automatically with most drivers.
GFX-Card:
As you can see from my specs above, even the old 128GB Mobile ATI can run the games. And the pretty old 8600GT can run it fine. The Intel system is just a bit slower as the AMD one.
And even my newest ATI 4850 is now a pretty cheap card. So here nearly all modern Cards should be fine.
A note, in the past quite some people had problems with their ATI gfx drivers. So using a different model might be adviseable here.
AHOI-Mods 