Is there any game in the world that can handle so many opponents? The processing power it takes to play so many is huge.
I really think it will take more than just a GPU upgrade to improve the performance significantly. It will also take a CPU upgrade.
Also, you should probably watch your CPU/GPU temps as well. Many CPUs and GPUs will automatically reduce clock speed to avoid being burned out.
This... I think this right here is the biggest limitation that the game as a whole faces...
32bit games have been standard for a Very very very long time now in computer terms, but 64 bit is very very new. PCGamer ran a few tests on StarSwarm and Ashes of Eternity (both 64bit) and found that unlike previous massive games like say... Crysis, 64 bit games have the ability of scaling to a point that the processors once again become the determining bottleneck on performance...
THink about that.. it has been many many years since a CPU has been the "slow" part.
I honestly suspect that StarDock has themselves firmly between a rock and a hard place on some of the stuff they are doing. I suspect that they CAN RIGHT NOW implement all the diplomacy and AI stuff that players have been bitching about since alpha...
However I also suspect that doing so on a 64bit architecture would basically melt most computers. So to make the game playable for the average player they limit what the AI can do.....
Cause I suspect if we the players are actually honest.... I bet most of us are pushing our systems far more than we think we are.... and would probably have a much more enjoyable game experience if we lowered the numbers some...