I played (and enjoyed a lot) MAN1 years agos and I 've just installed MAN2 to test. But I'm surprise by the large increase of required memory : I have only 512 Mo and it's unplayable : Just launching the program (without loading a profile) increases the swap file to 1.2 Go! When loading a game, it then increases to 1.4 Go. As a consequence, my HD is constantly labouring during the game and it's desesperatly slow. I had not these problems with MAN1 nor with beta version of man2.

I can understand that memory is required during the game. But I cannot understand that so much memory (1Go of swap) is required just to display the first menu. Is it normal ???

I will buy another 512 Mo but it's strange to me.

I'm under windows XP sp1, with an Athlon 64 3Gh + GeForce 6600 GT

I add another remark:

I ve started a game on swizerland against emily (#87972). The game crashes quite every turn during emily moves. But when I reload the game I can make my next turn and so on.

I ve version 243.

... and finally ... I had a bug during my drop phase at turn 13: I was at balance 9% and after droping a naval transport in the sea, I won the game !! This drop cannot have changed the balance. Even if it would have changed, I was several turns from a victory (wining an XL map at turn 13, it's quick, isnt it ?). Definitively strange.

I have found that if you want to be able to play trouble free in either the online or offline mode you need to have 2 gigs of memory. Online is not so extreem but in "offline" mode your memory usage will often exceed 1 gig. When i increased my memory from 1 to 2 gigs all crash problems went away.

I agree. 512 RAM is hardly enough to run XP properly let alone Man2 on top of it. A gig of Ram was ok but 2 gigs will make it all worthwhile. As an aside, why on earth are you running XP sp1?? Do as you wish certainly but, I would hardily advise going on to sp2 and do your system a favor. Either way, get some more Ram. Also, be sure to close background applications like anti virus and such before starting the game. I don't bother, got two gigs, everything just sails along...........

dont why I wrotte sp1, I have sp2 of course.
I agree 512 is quite "light" but I play some recent games without problems. I still don't really understand why so much memory is required by MAN2. But anyway if going to 1G or 2G resolve the problems, it's a good news.

I find 768MB enough. I've not seen MAN2 use more than 240MB on my system.

try playing a few games in the "off line" mode

I never had big problems running MAN2 with 512mb of Ram. I upgraded to 1gb now and havnt really seen much difference, it's a little faster on big maps like sea switzerland though.

Bah! The system requirements lie then. I thought i should be fine with 1 gig, but i have lots of crashes and lag in large maps on offline mode.

offline mode does seem to be a problem--don't know why but it seems to require much more memory than the online. But, there are a lot of other games that seem to require a lot more memory for trouble free game play then they indicate. The good news--memory is really cheap--you can pick up 2 gigs of quality memory for as little as $42 and i have seen sales on 1 gig sticks for $23. And, as an added bonus, your whole system will work better with increased memory--like rodehard said 512meg is hardly enought to run windows well.