Seems you forgot the arrow pointing at the bear cub saying: "Cute animal; universally feared among starting sovereigns since the early beta releases"

Turning off ground cover does remove some of the embellishment, but wow! It's so much easier to see units on the map.

Has the ZoC always expanded based on how you lay out your city? Seems like it didn't make much of a difference before, so if this is the case, that adds some value in taking the time to place where you want your buildings to be built.

While Kraxis should have the 50% diplomatic bonus, I think Pariden should get double Influence from precious locations

As far as ground cover, I would probably prefer Variable ground cover ... where its thick in some places and sparse in others (independent of resource density)

I might be a bit of a dick here, but does this mean that the ugly, cheesy, and gamey snaking of cities is now a game 'feature'?

Thanks, that's good to hear

Is FE really that limited in map size?  

MoM was ~50x50 but there were 2 worlds, so thats closer to 75x75 total. Only 30% of that was actual land mass, while FE probably has ~75% usable land mass (I consider mountains unusable).

I would hope that I could run 100x100 at high settings on a moderate computer. 

 

That's the scenic view.

EDIT: Oh...no it's not.  I didn't notice that there the first time.

@seanw3: First off, Alienware is a pretty bad value for money deal. Second, it won't matter because FE can use only a tiny bite of your RAM anyway, because it's a 32bit .exe, so your computer isn't going to help much. Once we get a 64bit OS, which will apparently be the version after Fallen Enchantress by current plans, then I too would like to have huge 100x100 maps, although then I would need to avail myself of faction mods to fill the place out.

PS: That image is only 25x25.

I was thinking 100 area, oops. I may just be tired, but Win7 64bit should be able to run a 100 sector map just fine. 4GB ram and another 2x4GB video with 8 cores should make this game very fast on lowest settings. The version we have right now is on max graphics without a way to tone things down. So at release I should be able to play that size map at a fast pace. I am pretty sure that 64bit will use all 4GB of RAM.

You think Alienware is a bad deal? Any suggestions on a good builder then? I will probably do some research first, but I will have some serious cash to blow on a PC this fall. 

It appears to me that it is in fact a 50 x 50 tile map, broken into 5 x 5 large 100 tile 'squares' that are ten by ten tiles each. That is, based on the other poster's comments, the size of a MOM map. The fact that FE will allow MUCH bigger maps than this is interesting, and maybe good.

I used to build my own desktops from parts (mostly ordered from NewEgg), but a couple of years ago decided to switch to a laptop and bought an Alienware MX-17.  It's a very nice and powerful machine, but not without its problems.  There was a problem that I think was with the RAID software that had me replacing drives and swapping the motherboard until finally they shipped me a replacement.  The replacement machine needed a replacement memory card, and now sounds like there's a fan that might be slowly dying.  Do your research, and if you go with Alienware, consider the extended warranty.

Will there be any possibility of a 64-bit binary that can make full use of my system memory? (I have 12GB)

I would love to help you build a machine. But a lot of people know more than me or Frogboy about it. Might I suggest posting in the personal computing section as this is rather off topic?