I am playing on everything by default, average map size I believe.
I've tried running the AI resolution phase 3 times from the same savegame. All three times it took 4-5 minutes (stardate 2043.2) I've had a different set of 2-3 empires doing combat or whatever they are doing when the game "hangs" for a few minutes. So if it's combat then AI actions are truly random.
I've ran Windows' perfmon to see how the CPU was used during the AI action phase. 100% CPU usage of one core of my E6600 during the whole phase, that's a darned big lot of CPU cycles. Then I figured out that SEV uses 100% of one core whenever it is in the foreground (in both single-core and dual-core modes), even when I am doing nothing but staring at the system view. It's not like it takes a lot of CPU to draw the little 3D graphics, my NVidia 7950GX2 should take care of that. As a comparison, with the same system in Everquest 2, at max graphics settings (but the shadows) and lots of PCs and NPCs running around me inside a city, I am using 40-50% of both cores. With that much CPU used in SEV I expect nothing more than a Kasparov-level challenge from the AI
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