I've been meaning to post this for a while but I've only just managed to... I play GalCivIII both on a laptop and on a more powerful desktop. Both are not the latest and greatest machines for gaming, but my desktop manages to play the game decently up to about large maps. On the laptop I can manage to play decently on small maps. On medium maps I get huge slowdowns. I can accept that to a point. I use low textures on the laptop and it helps. I unticked the particles option as well which helps quite a bit. However unticking the particles is so dramatic even compared to using lower textures. Without particles I can't see the all the nebula or gas clouds or black holes. The black holes especially is important as I miss out on the antimatter as it's more difficult to spot.

So basically my request is if it's possible to have a particles 'lite' feature. Perhaps be able to see all the aforementioned but without animation? Or decrease the particle count just to make it worth seeing without much slowdown. I don't know if any more optimization of textures and particles will further help.

I'm sure a lot of players will be grateful and I can finally see the black holes again, instead of having a block inaccessible area which I can only guess what's there!

Thanks