turn speed
 

I love Dominions 3. I actually bought it
Regardless, my posting this will undoubtedly be perceived as immature. Of course, if one would accuse of such a characteristic, I would not be surprised, and he could join the bandwagon of those who thus deem me.

Turn speed in this (beloved) game is slower than Oprah's bowel movements. I'm not running some yesteryear computer/horse drawn cart. Granted, it isn't the art's state, but it's pretty danged good.
I'm taking five minutes to get a turn in after 2 in-game years. I've had one where it took me 15 minutes to get through a turn (fortunately back then I knew how to read, and had something to do).
I've read somewhere about speed programming that was going to be implemented in a patch, but was thrown out because it crashed the game. What happened to that idea? I loved that idea!
Obviously MP players shouldn't have such a problem with this, but poor strategists like me need Easy AI like an umbilical cord.
To me, this is like ford saying "If the car stops working, walk"
That is an acute exaggeration.
Seriously- any info?

Re: turn speed
 

1) What's your RAM and processor speed? Any background processes that could be stealing CPU cycles?

2) How big of a map are you playing? Turn processing on 500+ province maps take a lot longer to process than a 200 province map.

Re: turn speed
 

Due to how long it can take for turns to process, I stopped playing on maps that were much larger than 200 provinces in sp. It can be fun to play on a large map for that epic feeling, but it's a lot easier to play on smaller maps. If you're having problems on relatively small maps, you shouldn't be and maybe it's a hardware issue.

Re: turn speed
 

I'm running a Pentium D 805 right now (god I hate this CPU+MOBO), and at 300+ provinces, turn resolution takes longer than I like.

I believe the patch was going to enable multi-core use under Windows, as currently Dom3 will only utilize one core of your CPU. Unfortunately, I doubt that it will ever be attempted again.

Best suggestion is to start out on smaller skirmish style maps, and as you get better at the game, ease yourself into larger maps for SP until you find your happy medium between speed and scope.

Re: turn speed
 

Try MP, it is loads more fun!

If you do you won't even notice slow turn generation as you will only get a turn a day for example. :)

Re: turn speed
 

Number of nations can be a big factor in this. If you play against 14 nations and all of them make an average of 2 battles per turn in the indie phase, that's already 30 battles to process.

Re: turn speed
 

Processor: AMD Athlon 64 3700+
RAM: Over a gig
And my processes are pretty clean.
Thanks for the input, but playing smaller maps, or maps with less nations, is like telling me to eat cake.

Re: turn speed
 

I thought it was like telling you to eat cookies. :(

Or like telling you to lower your settings on Crysis if your framerate is choppy. ;)

Basically you have 2 options, play games that are small enough to process at a rate that you are comfortable with, or multitask. My roommate runs a dual monitor setup and likes to play streaming video while he is gaming. For Dom3, I just play in windowed mode, and browse forums or surf while turns process.

Re: turn speed
 

The reason why the speed boost was canceled was that it turned out not to work at all. Getting CTD when starting the game kind of rendered any theoretical improvements moot and it turned out to be unfixable.

Now, I have no idea why you are having such trouble with the speed. I've not had problems with Dom3 at all. Faerun 466 with 20 nations hosts turns in around a minute or so even on turn 50, but the machine has Core2Duo E6600 (so 2½ years old) and 2 GB RAM on an Asus P5B Deluxe mobo.

Does your machine have everything updated as it should? BIOS, hardware drivers (mobo drivers are especially important for this) etc? Is the machine cleaned regularly from extraneous crap (CCleaner, defragging etc)?

The reason it sounds so strange is because even with my old machine, which was a 500 MHz Celeron on a literally lightning blasted motherboard with literally crumbling coils and shot equipment, I didn't get that bad performance out of the Dominions series games. That computer died just before Dom3 came out, but it ran Dom2 just fine and I could maybe hit a ten minute hosting time on it with Faerun 424 an all nations but Ermor on it. Granted that Dom2 is not Dom3, but your machine specs are such that you should be getting significantly better hosting times out of it.

Re: turn speed
 

In less than a minute?
I alt+tab after 5 sec :)

That's thee most viable solutions to wait times I have found
15 minutes seems absurd and is far beyond what I even get on my laptop, though its processor is on par with yours...

Re: turn speed
 

Everything has its pros and cons. The non-immediate hosting times is actually one of the reasons that Dom3 is still alive on my machines.

There are plenty of games that play fast. And they tend to get me in trouble. Luckily they only tend to last about a month on my machines before Im tired of them.

Dom3 allows me to play on huge maps, with many more "players" in the game than most. It shares the computer well with other programs running so I dont have to END the game in order to check on other things then go back into the game. The long hosting times make sure I check my other work, check on things in the house, do my chores, stretch once in awhile. Even remember to eat and sleep. :)

Personally I would be willing to see things put back into the game that were removed due to hosting time considerations. Id be willing to put up with even LONGER hostings for the sake of more events, smarter AIs, more map options, etc.

Altho I must admit that I have an advantage. For really large and long games I can have a server do the hosting work. It hosts much quicker and doesnt tie up my desktops CPU while doing it. If you want, I can set one up for you. Ive had people who have played single player games on my server that have run over a year. :)

Re: turn speed
 

RAM "Over a gig" probably explains the discrepancy. 1 Gig of RAM is pretty low for a modern computer, and Dom3 is a data-driven (i.e. RAM-hungry) game.

-Max

Re: turn speed
 

I also have long turn delays on big games. What I do is play several games of Dominions at once. When I finish a turn and am waiting for the ai, I tab out to the other game and keep playing.Is working well so far.

Re: turn speed
 

Haha! For awhile I was running 2 instances of Dom3 at a time. Since it localizes to 1 core, a little wiggling could insure that both games were on separate cores, and get their full processing power. But I noticed as the games got deeper in (turn 30 or 40+), sometimes I would End Turn, then Tab over to the other one, and suddenly I'd be SO confused about what my research goal was, or who I forged X item for, etc.

It is fun though, but you have to stay sharp to pull it off. ;) The best suggestion I'd have in such a case, is run a different TBS game in another tab, so you can keep thought patterns cohesive, but still not be pressured with your time and attention, or bored while waiting for turns to resolve.

Re: turn speed
 

clever, clever, gym.