Can my PC handle Empire?

[Suraknar]

Another Gig of Ram should seal the Deal.

A friend of mine in playing it on a Intel 2.4 GHz(single core) with 2 Gigs or Ram (DDR2 333) and Nvidia 6 with 256 Video Ram, all graphics options set at Low, unit size option at Large, no extras (HDR etc), and rather older HDD too.

Ram Standard is 2 Gigs now days.

Also do not neglect Hard Disk Drives, older slower drives will make load times longer, and could also make you lag a bit, more Ram helps as it reduces the frequency the game has to Load things, still, there are limits to that. Defrag your Drives of optimal performance.