Why are your turns taking so long?

[hardcore_gamer]

I have seen people complain about them having to wait a considerable amount of time after having pressed the end turn button, but I have yet to see this happen. Though I will admit that I have only played the demo since the full game doesn't unlock for me until the 23rd.

For me, it takes about 1-2 seconds most of the time for a turn to pass. Does large amounts of RAM make a difference? I personally have 5 GB of RAM and am using a 64-bit version of Windows 7.

EDIT: Speaking of which, is there any word on a possible 64 bit version of the game?

 

[Maniacal]

5 gigs should be more than enough RAM, your CPU speed will help a lot too, as during turn change the slow down is from your computer processing the AI's actions which takes up processing and RAM power. The more stuff it has to do (units, cities etc) the longer it takes.

 

[RX2000]

Mine is pretty instantaneous on the map I'm playing now. I'm doing a normal sized map. I'm only in the Medieval Age so far though. We'll see when I get to Modern. It might start taking 1-2 seconds then.

I have 4 GB RAM, Windows 7 32 bit.

 

[Bill Bisco]

My Civ4 turns on Vanilla BTS took about 1-2 seconds. On the same hardware of my effective 3 Gigs of RAM takes 4-5 seconds with Civ5. I'm hoping further patches will address it.

 

[digitalcraft]

Yeah. Mine seems slower than it should be. 4gb ram, fairly quick computer, but Civ4 is way faster, and Civ5 is only doing about half the things under the hood that 4 was. It's not the graphics. The graphics run perfectly smooth.

 

[geofelt]

I also see the long turn time.
I have a i7-920 @3.3 5870, and 6gb.
With the resource monitor active, I see only about 10-15% cpu activity while waiting.
What gives???

 

[Zelig]

With the resource monitor active, I see only about 10-15% cpu activity while waiting.
What gives???

Well interestingly, 10-15% is pretty much what you'd expect if only 1 logical processor was being used.

If you're comfortable with it, and curious, I might turn off hyperthreading and see if usage jumps up to ~25%.

 

[Panda_Power]

I also see the long turn time.
I have a i7-920 @3.3 5870, and 6gb.
With the resource monitor active, I see only about 10-15% cpu activity while waiting.
What gives???

Same gear here...an i7 920 oc'd to 3.8GHz, an XFX 5870 and 6GB of RAM and the long turns start right from the beginning...very odd! The game should be using all 4 cores right?

 

[bhavv]

I think everyones turn times are fine, but some people find them oo long, and others dont.

I dont mind. Turns take longer because I'm reminded to move all my units.

 

[JakeCourtney]

Wait till you get the full game and get larger maps with more units in late periods of the game.

Don't be judging performance on a standard size map with only 100 turns.

 

[Shurdus]

But it is odd that turns should take ~5 seconds in the classical and ancient eras. I would assume this will get patched.

 

[geofelt]

Well interestingly, 10-15% is pretty much what you'd expect if only 1 logical processor was being used.

If you're comfortable with it, and curious, I might turn off hyperthreading and see if usage jumps up to ~25%.

I believe that Windows-7 knows the difference between normal cores, and hyperthreads. It also knows to redispatch to the same core if possible to preserve core cache contents.
I do see a small bit of activity on all logical threads, even though not much else is going on..
This early on a normal map, I don't think it should be a noticeable delay.

 

[CTH]

My hexacore uses not all cores (not in any significant way at least) during the "next turn" phase, only two is used (going between 40-70 percent), at the same time does civ5 use 1 gb of ram... strange that it still takes so long time, I wonder if it has something to do with that the AI moves all units and that you can see the animation of it (I was very supprised that there was no option to hide friendly and enemy moves as in civ 4, in fact there was alot of options that I missed...)

 

[Falcan]

In Multiplayer, where the only AI was the barbarians, the turns took 20 to 30 seconds to process. That was agonizing as it really makes the turns feel very slow.

 

[Iceciro]

In Multiplayer, where the only AI was the barbarians, the turns took 20 to 30 seconds to process. That was agonizing as it really makes the turns feel very slow.

No city states?

 

[silentknight111]

a game takes 4-5 seconds to process the movements and strategy of 8 or so AI every turn and everyone's pissed.. heh. Gotta love how we're tuned to instant gratification.

I personally don't find the time between turns to be bad at all.

 

[Iceciro]

Not just the regular AIs - city states are doing stuff too, plus barbs seem to be pretty active.

 

[Schuesseled]

1-2 seconds is pretty darn quick compared to the odd couple of minutes it takes to watch the civ 3 and 4 ai move a stack of workers into your territory.

They have vastly improved end of turn time, and all the enemies combat turn is pretty much done instantly.

 

[bob_d]

Civ 5 seems sluggish to me compared to Civ 4, and I'm playing on an i7-860 computer with 8 GB of DDR3 memory and an ATI 5750 video card. Pretty high end.

 

[Watiggi]

a game takes 4-5 seconds to process the movements and strategy of 8 or so AI every turn and everyone's pissed.. heh. Gotta love how we're tuned to instant gratification.

I personally don't find the time between turns to be bad at all.

ROFL exacty what I was thinking... I remember Civ 4 release days with all the memory leaks and big delays between turns lol.

edit: Guys, you gotta remember that the civ franchise has traditionally had its fair share of release woes... with bugs and what not. Civ 4 has been patched up, so I dare say they'll improve the inbetween turns processing like a heap of other things.