Ways to improve between turns time

[quikesan]

Hi!

I usually like to play large maps (Huge, Giant, Gigantic) with many civs (30 o 40). But when I reach mid game, the time between turns may be 1 minute or so. And further on it may take even more.

Is there any way I could shorten that time?
I guess smaller maps and less civs, but, any other way?

cheers

 

[xtended2l]

Upgrade your PC?
I mean no joke, I play on gigantic map too and time between turns is like 5-6 seconds for me.

 

[IPEX-731BA5DD06]

best thing you can do, is upgrade video card, 4 Gig of memory is limit, as 32 bit game.
I'm assuming you don't have a 1+meg video card. I play on Gigantic maps, 30 sec modern onwards.
Change options, so less time spent on AI decisions, less civs, speeds it up markedly.

If you play with 50 civ's, on Gigantic map, EXPECT SLOW turns times, if it does turn at all.

Ideal, depends on your system, etc.

 

[quikesan]

I have just upgraded my PC with a GeForce GTX 1060 6gb, upgraded the RAM to 16 gb, and an SSD hard drive (don't really now if hard drive times affects game, but still).
I haven't really notice any shorter times.
The thing is I used to play such big games (big map, lots of civs) and the time between turns used to be ok almost until the end. At medieval age turns may use to take 5 secs or so.

Recently I noticed that time between turns take longer than before even at the beginning of the game.
As an example, a Gigantic map with 25 civs, in the turn 180 (pretty much, the very beginning of the game), the turn times are around 20 seconds.

So, that's why I ask. Is there any new recent feature that takes a lot of resources and increases significantly the time between turns?

 

[devolution]

Last week I spent some time profiling the DLL and I've succeeded in reducing the turn times by a about 1/3 by caching some AI evaluations. AND2 is not very optimized at the moment and certain parts of the AI code is very inefficient.
I am confident that turns times could be cut by at least half if we focus on optimizations for the biggest bottlenecks: AI civic evaluations and game option checks.

Having said that, I am impressed by the efficiency of the pathfinder, tendering system, building cache and the reachable plot set. @Koshling obviously did a stellar job here

 

[quikesan]

Which game configurations take the most resources and increase time between turns?
I mean, is there any game option that I can turn off and reduce time between turns?
Limited movements for example?

 

[45°38'N-13°47'E]

Last week I spent some time profiling the DLL and I've succeeded in reducing the turn times by a about 1/3 by caching some AI evaluations. AND2 is not very optimized at the moment and certain parts of the AI code is very inefficient.
I am confident that turns times could be cut by at least half if we focus on optimizations for the biggest bottlenecks: AI civic evaluations and game option checks.

Having said that, I am impressed by the efficiency of the pathfinder, tendering system, building cache and the reachable plot set. @Koshling obviously did a stellar job here

Caching is very dangerous when it comes to MP games. That's why I deliberately avoided it on some occasion and I removed part of the caching code somewhere. Most of the time, I think I've added an "if Multiplayer" condition though, if I'm not mistaken. As I asked in another thread, would you like to join the team or share your code so that I can check it and merge it into the next release, of course adding you to the credits?

 

[thegreekweegee]

Only way to reduce turn times without in game tricks (like smaller maps, less civs, and so on) is to get a faster cpu or overclock it if it supports overclocking. The higher the single core performance, the better. Civilization 4 is not a multi-threaded game in any sense of the word, so an i7-8700k would benefit it much more than a ryzen 7 2700x, as an example. Also, make sure other programs don't take cpu time off it.

Outside that, well, I can't help; optimizations have to be done from the dev side, whichever can be done.

 

[Arakhor]

Which game configurations take the most resources and increase time between turns?
I mean, is there any game option that I can turn off and reduce time between turns?
Limited movements for example?

Turn off storms. Also turn off Barbarian World if you're using the option that allows barbarians to turn into civs, because the more cities and units on the map, the slower games go in my experience.