Why are wait times in peacetime turns significantly longer than wartime turns?

[I_batman]

When I played random games, I usually played Conquests, 1.22, Huge map, 16 civ's. Lately, I have been focusing on scenarios built by members of this site, primarily El Justo's, but not exclusively his. I have found that there are huge decrepancies in wait time between peace time and war time. In fact, I am playing TCW 1.4 right now, and I have 5-7 minute waits when at war, 45 minutes plus at peace. The scenario contains 29 civs to start, in one of two locked alliances, so the state of the game is either total warfare or total peace.

Does anybody know how the programming for the game is geared to create such a situation?

I know it can't be the exclusively the quantity of units in the game at any one turn, because the turn immediately after peace is declared I zoom up to these huge wait times. I am talking a factor of 8-10 times longer at peace.

From what I have read, most, if all, large scenarios suffer from this problem.
However, I would see the same thing in the regular random games as well, though not to the same degree.

Anybody have a clue what is going on with this.
Really for my own understanding.

thanks

 

[Chieftess]

It's possible that other civs may be at war with eachother. Also, if you have a unit active, and press shift-enter to end the turn, the turn goes by a little quicker.

 

[I_batman]

It's possible that other civs may be at war with eachother. Also, if you have a unit active, and press shift-enter to end the turn, the turn goes by a little quicker.

OK, I can accept that, but why the HUGE decrepancy in wait times between peace and war? How does the computer program handle peace time turns compared to war time turns?

thanks

 

[Aegis]

There are probably more units moving around and there are lots of different actions taking place, ie. battles.

 

[vmxa]

Are both games the same in terms of water? In a game with lots of coastal cities and newly founded or razed or captued city cause a run to see if all trades are still valid. This a real pain late in games on huge maps.

 

[Doc Tsiolkovski]

It's not the unit moving that takes processor time - it's the trade route calculation.
The worst thing is warfare with destroying road connections and razing Harbor cities; but simply building a Harbor comes close.

 

[Renata]

To add to what DocT said, if the whole world is at war, there will be many fewer trade routes to calculate, because no trade is possible between civs that are at war. Hence the faster interturns.

As soon as you go back to peace, all of a sudden you have to calculate trade routes on a huge map for each of 29 civs with each of 28 other civs -- time to go out for coffee.

I honestly have no idea how people manage to play such games.

Renata

 

[Willem]

To add to what DocT said, if the whole world is at war, there will be many fewer trade routes to calculate, because no trade is possible between civs that are at war. Hence the faster interturns.

As soon as you go back to peace, all of a sudden you have to calculate trade routes on a huge map for each of 29 civs with each of 28 other civs -- time to go out for coffee.

Another possibility too is that in war, the AI doesn't really have to decide where to move it's troops. It's going to send them towards the enemy, and usually to a city it has already selected for conquest. In peacetime though, it has to take more time to decide where to move a unit since there are no clear targets for it to select. Just a guess anyway.

 

[I_batman]

Another possibility too is that in war, the AI doesn't really have to decide where to move it's troops. It's going to send them towards the enemy, and usually to a city it has already selected for conquest. In peacetime though, it has to take more time to decide where to move a unit since there are no clear targets for it to select. Just a guess anyway.

I think your thoughts and Renata's thoughts combined may explain it more fully.
I know that it cannot be simply the trade route calculations because another mod of the same scenario has condensed the starting amount of civ's down to 8, with precisely the same map, except for the nationality of a number of cities.
That scenario can still linger at 15 minutes/turn in peace time.

I guess no one know precisely what the program is doing, except for the coders that actually built it. Sure would be nice if they released that code when Civ 4 comes out, since it is to be a totally different game engine.