way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Hi everyone,
right now im playing a SP game with a large galaxy (255 systems), max CPU and max neutral empires, difficulty high. Its turn 61 now, and each turn is taking like 20 seconds to process. Its really annoying, since is the first time im playing such a huge universe im wondering is there is a way to speed things up. I cant be about my specs, i have 512 mb ddram, 2,4 ghz and stuff like that.

thanks in advance !

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Nope, sorry.

It takes time.
A 255 systems 20 player PBW game takes a looong time to process in the mid-game....
And I can see no way you could speed up a SP game with those settings.

[ April 04, 2004, 19:38: Message edited by: Ruatha ]

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

heh well i noticed in the topic i stated "late game". Well i guess turn 61 is not considered late game....

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Happy people. It's turn 86 now in my pure AI STM game (11 AIs, 1 observer[me],0 neutrals) and it takes about 12-15 minutes to process turn. Sure, my comp is a bit ... slow - 300Mhz P2, 256Mb Ram (eah, a little bit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) but it really hurts.
I thought that I've found a solution for this problem - SE4Batch, but unfortunately it doesn't work with v.1.91 for me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif . Is it my problem only or it really doesn't work?

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

In my experience, the processing of the turns is rather fast, even on computers with modest specs. It's the combat that kills it. I've had turns where I'm pretty sure there was absolutely no combat around mid-game, and it takes five seconds to process everything. Then when there is several battles on the next turn, it can take longer, depending on the size of the battles. I remember waiting ten minutes for a turn after I had arranged for a few large AI fleets to... stumble... onto a few fleets of mine. And send in a few planetary-capture fleets.

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Oh man, let me tell you, 20 seconds is NOTHING. Nothing at all. I'm on turn 167 of a 255 system, 10 AI, TDM Modpack game. Turns take about 5 minutes to process. And I had a game that took about 10-13 minutes to process each turn. And I have a good computer!!

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Yeah, I spend a lot of time staring at the "Player X taking turn..." screen. Sometimes I read a book or magazine while the turns are processing. I tried doing other stuff on the computer like reading this forum, by using ALT-TAB to switch to another program, but sometimes SEIV crashes when I do this so I no longer attempt that.

I used to play SEIV on a Pentium I - 233 MHz and it was SLOW! While I wait for the turns to process I'd eat meals, take showers, brush my teeth, make phone calls, do all sorts of stuff. Last year I upgraded to a 800MHz computer which I'm using now, and it's much faster (compared to before). But I'm hoping to buy a more up-to-date machine by the time SE5 comes out next year.

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Turn any of the following off:

Mines
Fighters
Sattelites

Basically any extra thing that the AI builds tonnes of.

I'm a bit early in experimenting with it but with no MINES I notice a huge difference in the Turn speeds. The others seem less so, but still noticable.

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very similar to me, except that I still use a PII 233MHz computer. 20 seconds to process a turn seems incredibly fast to my. I must wait about 30 minutes in a later game for the next turn!

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

thanks for all the comments and possible helps

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

The PBW server is set to assume a turn has failed if it takes more than 20 minutes to process. Sometimes this forces people to run turns offline. The longest I've ever seen was 35 minutes.

Re: way to speed up late game turn processing ?
 

Defeat a few of the lessor AI players and the game speed will improve.

Play not using an FQM map - go standard
Do not save every turn, save manually or do it once every 3 or more turns.

Run the AI turns and see if there are any bottle necks.