this is basically a "can i run it thread" I believe I meet the min requirements, but I'm wondering by how much/how enjoyable will it be. 
 
I'm playing on an HP laptop with a 9600m 512mb, intel core 2 duo 2.0, and 4gb ram. Anyone have similar specs, and can share how well it runs? Any help will be appreciated, since I already bought it from the store I work at, and I don't know if I should open it, or just return. thanks in advance

 http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/

you should ask the guys at tested about this kind of stuff. Thats what they are there for!

" this is basically a "can i run it thread" I believe I meet the min requirements, but I'm wondering by how much/how enjoyable will it be.  I'm playing on an HP laptop with a 9600m 512mb, intel core 2 duo 2.0, and 4gb ram. Anyone have similar specs, and can share how well it runs? Any help will be appreciated, since I already bought it from the store I work at, and I don't know if I should open it, or just return. thanks in advance "

"  http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/cyri/ "

" @Renahzor: @edinxbox@live.nl: Yeah thanks, I think this is my best bet. Is the demo close to the final build? "

I play on a new dell studio 1558 i3 with integrated graphics, it's playable. So i'm pretty sure you can get by.

I think you could run it with everything on low.

Even if it runs, don't play the large maps with 10+ civilizations unless you have a good computer. My game was running great when I started so I pumped the graphics settings nice and high and played with the largest map available.  
 
Now in the modern age, there's so much going on in my game that my computer just chugs to a crawl trying to make all of the calculations necessary to render everything. Long load times, constant texture pop-in and weird graphics glitches started happening.
 
I brought my graphics back to the lowest possible settings and it's running okay (just okay) again. Still the late game will always tax your computer. The complexity just ramps up so drastically.

The game actually looks good on minimum, I have the same specs as the OPs computer, except for a slightly worse graphics card, a 9400m, cause I'm on a laptop. I run it on minimum, and it's fine for the most part. In the late-game though things might slow down, and turns take the computer a while to process, mainly.

thanks for the responses guys. 
 
@XII_Sniper: so you can still play it normally on min? I don't have to play it with hexagon view or whatever

Here's what to expect. 
The leaders will be still photos, they won't be animated. You'll see a toooooooooooooooon of texture popin. It won't be that nice to look at. And man, I might steer clear of the largest maps. Good news is its a lot of fun. So fun in fact you might be inspired to upgrade your PC for it.

I can just barely run it now, but I'm planning on a system upgrade in the near future, so hopefully that will change. Thankfully the game really does look decent even at low settings. Not great, but not so bad that it feels like you're missing something. Man, though, the end game will bring just about any system to its knees.

" thanks for the responses guys. 
 
@XII_Sniper: so you can still play it normally on min? I don't have to play it with hexagon view or whatever "