Unit Limit / Save the Megagame

[Hadrian_II]

The megagame (Perpetuality) might now come to a very disapointing end, as we have hit the unit limit, and now summons and spells like earth attack and ghostriders had stopped working properly.

I know that a game on a 1000 province map and 65 nations on it is a bit out of the bounary of the game, but its still a bug and it might be fixed (*pleeease*).

Dumb question to the end, why is there such a limit anyway?

[Kristoffer O]

The limit is there as it lowers hosting time. Hosting time is proportional to the unit limit IIRC. All possible unit nbrs are cycled through every turn I think. Thus games would take longer time to host regardless of the actual number of units in the game. The current limit was set *too* high. 1000 province maps were not on our maps when we set the limit.

I'll ask JK and see what he says. There is a patch around the corner anyway. I hope it will make it to christmas. It would be fitting. Unfortunately I only have a few free days left, so it might become the 2008 new year patch instead.

[vfb]

Whenever it's released, Christmas or New Years, please know that it is very much appreciated!

[Dedas]

Maybe one should be able to set the limit oneself? Longer hosting times should not be a problem for megagames.

[Agrajag]

All possible unit nbrs are cycled through every turn I think.

As a hobbyist programmer:
That sounds unlikely, why would you need to access a unit number for a unit that doesn't yet exist?
I could see how hosting times could get huge with a very high unit limit if you actually reach that limit (since then all numbers up to that limit are used and therefore must be cycled through), but I'm guessing that if you reached the limit, then a longer hosting time won't be a problem for you. (so an even bigger limit won't be a problem.)
A limit that does make sense to me is if you are reaching a point where you risk overflow.

Though obviously I don't have access to the code, so I can't be sure

[capnq]

Agrajag said:

As a hobbyist programmer:
That sounds unlikely, why would you need to access a unit number for a unit that doesn't yet exist?

I can take a guess at that.

At minimum, you have to check every unit number up to the highest one assigned so far, even if thousands of lower numbered units have already been destroyed. Renumbering the units to account for casualties would be even more time consuming than just cycling through the range.

[NTJedi]

Kristoffer O said:
The limit is there as it lowers hosting time. Hosting time is proportional to the unit limit IIRC. All possible unit nbrs are cycled through every turn I think. Thus games would take longer time to host regardless of the actual number of units in the game. The current limit was set *too* high. 1000 province maps were not on our maps when we set the limit.

I'll ask JK and see what he says. There is a patch around the corner anyway. I hope it will make it to christmas. It would be fitting. Unfortunately I only have a few free days left, so it might become the 2008 new year patch instead.

Yes increasing the unit limit and commander limit would help my huge SP game as well.

Ideally an adjustable game setting would work best! As time passes we all will build/recieve/purchase more and more powerful computers. The adjustable game setting would allow more powerful computers to process larger games with a simple setting change.

[PyroStock]

I'm around turn 100 on a SP 700 province map. I only have a 2700 computer, but it still does all the "AI thinking" and turns in about 20minutes. I'm far more worried about hitting a unit cap then a 60+minute wait. edit:99% of the map is conquered terrority.

[Loren]

I think there is a problem with how some things are looked up. Try to do army setup with 10,000 units in the province. It can get insanely slow. This only makes sense if the system is recalculating a bunch of stuff it should be precalculating.

[Zeldor]

The additional problem is that Dominions does not want to consume more processing power. Nor CPU nor RAM. I would really like to see it taking 70-90% of my power to make turns faster. Now I gain practically nothing from a faster computer.