The game is interminably slow when i am playing on a medium sized map and i have reached the modern age where there are many railroads, cities with ports or airports. In some cases, not withstanding the freezes that occur in between turns, or even during my own turns after my last unit has moved, or a worker passes some invisible barrier and just stalls for about three minutes or so, once i have ended my turn, it can take up to thirty minutes for me to have my machine back to play the game. This has been the case for some time. In addition, if i take over a city that has a port, an airport, or if i nuke one, then the game freezes for some time. i have not observed on a friends machine that such lags occur when he nukes another civ city that has an airport, but then come to think of it, he did not have many cities or so large a map--but he also had PTW, so that might have corrected the problem.
i have observed these lags, however, on my machines (both Mac and PC). i read somewhere that the machine calculates for every city every possible move or something of a unit, etc. so this results in longer turns for those playing on larger maps.
As the lags get longer over time, as the game progresses, then i think that must be true. i just know it is frustrating as hell, and i think it is a big fat BUG whether we want to actually call it that or not. It's just another item on the very long list i have of problems with this game. i continue to hate this game as much as i love it. i can only hope that with Civ IV the creators actually listen to the fans who have kept this game alive...
