[Suicide Junkie]

Smaller galaxy and/or fewer AIs makes for fewer combats...
Still, a minute or two is hardly excessive...
The best battles in SE4 can take three hours to process.

I think the main problem is the fact that SE5 demands fullscreen attention depsite the complete lack of user input.
Whenever turns are processing in SE4, I just alt-tab and bring up IRC or the forums.

If you play SE5 in windowed mode, then you can do that, but the rez is somewhat pathetic. I've already asked Aaron to add higher rez windowed modes, but more encouragement can only help.