Long turn times - solved

glider1

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Hi there
Just in case anyone out there is frustrated with long turn times, I suggest that you change your play style and thank Firaxis for what they have done in GnK with multi-threading. It really is a special moment in the history of the Civ series.

For the first time ever, long turn times aren't an issue, because what I do is increase the difficulty level to the point where I must study what is going on in the game in detail.

But here's the crunch....
I do that study in-between the turns....

On higher difficulty levels it means that long turn times simply do not matter because I navigate the menus and even get into city view in between turns. I can study the demographics, the economy, the geopolitics all during this time....

More often than not, the next turn has started, and I'm still studying the effect of the last turn! If you push as much of your study of game progression between turns and not during the turns, the long turn time problem is basically over.

This is an absolute first for the Civ series and I think this moment in history where we can do things in between the turn, should be acknowledged and we should be very happy....

It just means that we have to play the game at a great enough difficulty where studying the ins and outs matters....

Unfortunately, the in-game information that is available to us is insufficient and so only mods like Info-Addict makes this way of playing feasible.....

I think that Firaxis should now work on a DLC upgrade to the user interface and information screens, that complements this ability to study them in between turns.

I would by an interface upgrade DLC that's for sure.
Cheers
 
what kind of comp are you running this on, ever since gods and kings I have had no long turn times and I allways play the biggest map, with 12 civs.
 
what kind of comp are you running this on, ever since gods and kings I have had no long turn times and I allways play the biggest map, with 12 civs.

lol same here. Turns take about 3s unless i'm playing multiplayer then it may be about 20-30s
 
I find G&K runs much faster and seems to load almost instantly compared to the early versions of Civ V. I recall waiting for 2 minutes for a game to load when it first came out and half the time it would lock up during a load. Now it seems effortless.

Video drivers are key to this so be sure that yours are up to date. I was playing a huge map the other day and suddenly my video started stuttering and it took forever to select units and get through a turn. I quit, checked my Steam file integrity, which was fine, and finally figured out I'd broken my video driver somehow. I looked up Nvidia's site, found a new beta driver with improvements for Civ V and installed it...game save worked perfectly and the game plays like on a new PC.
 
I find turn times are several times longer with G+K. It's bad enough that it has a significant effect on my enjoyment of the game :(.

(Graphics settings are irrelevant for me, it's the main AI thread that takes all the time)
 
what kind of comp are you running this on, ever since gods and kings I have had no long turn times and I allways play the biggest map, with 12 civs.

I used to be able to run vanilla with no turn times on Standard maps, but with Gods and Kings standard map turn times are as bad as large maps.

That's what I found strange. When I went to a large map, the turn times weren't any worse than standard as I feared they would be. Something else is slowing things up.

I find turn times are several times longer with G+K. It's bad enough that it has a significant effect on my enjoyment of the game .

(Graphics settings are irrelevant for me, it's the main AI thread that takes all the time)

This is how I feel too. I am getting less enjoyment. I have less desire to go deep into the modern age, and less desire to start new games.
 
It's always been this way for me. Bigger map, more players, closer to modern era all = long turns. Drivers are all fine, PC is just aging, apart from a replaced vid card and hard drive.
 
Some of you really need to clean your systems. I have found GK to run faster (particularly load times) and turn times are at least as quick as vanilla (comparable maps and number of civs). Cleaning your systems mean latest video driver (which is not the same thing as "fine"), defragmentation of hard drive, boosting your paging, getting rid of stuff running in background and most of all, get rid of mcafee and go with something better, and turn off the .civ5save extention for indexing and scanning. Then you will understand how those that are running similar specs (assuming you are at required specs) have no problems with load and turn times.
 
What is .civ5save extention for indexing and scanning? That's greek to me.

I do need to defrag- although it never seems to affect my computer performance, and I wonder why I wast time doing it. I need an anti virus. I also run with a firewall and anti-spyware. Not running them is not an option for me (considering Civ5 requires you to be online). I also often have firefox open (I tried closing it, it doesn't have any effect that I can tell), and another program open (which I can't reveal what it is).
 
Some of you really need to clean your systems. I have found GK to run faster (particularly load times) and turn times are at least as quick as vanilla (comparable maps and number of civs). Cleaning your systems mean latest video driver (which is not the same thing as "fine"), defragmentation of hard drive, boosting your paging, getting rid of stuff running in background and most of all, get rid of mcafee and go with something better, and turn off the .civ5save extention for indexing and scanning. Then you will understand how those that are running similar specs (assuming you are at required specs) have no problems with load and turn times.

When you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, it's best to say nothing at all.
 
what kind of comp are you running this on, ever since gods and kings I have had no long turn times and I allways play the biggest map, with 12 civs.

I've got an old 2010 grade laptop but as I said in the OP, the turn times are slow yes, but I can do things in between the turns for the first time ever in the civ series and still play into the end game eras.

However the only way that I can do things in between turns, is if I push the difficulty level up sufficiently so that studying the various screens matters....

Firaxis should work on an interface DLC upgrade that is optional and does not change the game play, but encourages this ability to study the game in between turns. At the moment we have to rely on Infoaddict.

Cheers
 
When you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, it's best to say nothing at all.

30 years in IT and custom-built several high-end PCs. You?

I actually did these things myself, since I was a bit out-of-date, including switching from AVG to MSE. Since I autosave every turn, I decreased turn times 20% in an apples-to-apples test.
 
30 years in IT and custom-built several high-end PCs. You?

I actually did these things myself, since I was a bit out-of-date, including switching from AVG to MSE. Since I autosave every turn, I decreased turn times 20% in an apples-to-apples test.

If you were trying to imply some form of knowledge when it comes to IT by that post, you probably shouldn't have mentioned that you still were running AVG in 2012.
 
On home PC, sure, I'm cheap and frugal, not to mention procrastination. :) I did say that I was out-of-date and should've switched to MSE a while ago. At work, we still run McAfee which I've been fighting the powers-that-be to get rid of. Too ingrained in legacy processes, I was told. Sometimes you do the best you can with what you have and GK actually spurred me to make some overdue changes for the better.
 
Each Ai now individually takes their turn times, so a mpa with 2 playesr and 4 city states will be quick, while a map with 12 playesr and 24 city states PLUS barbarians will take longer.

There also appears to be a bug where the animations plays in Fog of War (therefore, unseen to your eye) which in turn, if bombers/planes are used, will prolong each turn. I've observed this because the turn times increased by a large amount of seconds onyl when an AI declared war on another player, and recently not a single civilization seemed to be advancned enough for the longer turn times to appear, thus I think they need to fix this bug..because I do believe it exists.
 
Solid State drives. They are coming down in price. Get one. Or 3. Just be aware that not all SSD's are the same performance-wise.
EDIT: +1 on MSE.
 
I reported the slow turn times through a problem report before G&K was released, and they had me submit systeminfo and dxdiag reports.

Now Civ is running much better with G&K for me. I also uninstalled and reinstalled the game, but I think they may have improved the game. My CPU meter is fuller than before, unless I am making it up to myself...

Another thing that slowed the turn times down was the mod that I was playing... :D Now, at least if the computer is doing something I can at least view information, or sometimes even do things while the computer is doing stuff... unless I am imagining it... sometimes are more responsive than others...
 
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