Slow AI turns (1.13)

[neofit]

Hi,

I've just started a second game of SEV with the 1.13 patch and the Balance Mod v0.95. I'm at around turn 40 and at least once per turn 1 to 3 random empires take a few minutes to make their turn. I don't know if it's related to the mod or to the stock version, and I don't want to start another game with stock up to turn 30 or so when it started, but I wonder what i scausing this.

I don't remember seeing that in my first game. I played it with patch 1.08 and stopped at around turn 60 when all my fleet supplies went poof, but IIRC turn processing was smooth.

I've read a few threads here and I believe it is related to empires engaging in combat between themselves, I just don't want to log into them and spoil the game by knowing where they are, etc. If so it's simply unbelievable.

I'm running on an Intel Dual Core Duo E6600. This CPU can re-encode a 9GB DVD into 4GB in under 12 minutes - allegedly, mind you . I can't believe that half that time (and CPU cycles) is needed to process an AI turn, it's not like AIs are doing anything smart anyway. Did someone forget to re-comment some debug sleep loops? I thought it may be a dual-core issue, but it does the same when I set SEV to run on one core with SetAffinity.

So now it's bordering on the unplayable. Around turn 40 I do all I have to do in about 30-60secs, then wait 5 minutes for the next round. If only there was a real windowed mode - one that would scale to higher resolutions like the fullscreen mode does (I'm playing at a native 1600x1200 res), and that wouldn't induce a 10 secs mouse lag - I may be able to surf the net or do something else while the AI is "thinking". If I Alt-Tab out of a full-screen game turn processing just stops, the game does not seem to run in the background.

Any suggestions? (besides "take more time to make your turn to balance things out" )