Turn Calc Time

Hota · #1 July 30th, 2001, 10:10 PM

Hi all!

On my PC (400 Celeron w/ 160 Mb RAM) it takes upwards of 2-3 mins to calc the AIs turn! Anybody know of anyway to speed it up? Thanks!

-Hota

capnq · #2 July 31st, 2001, 02:36 AM

What else are you running at the same time or in the background? I play SE IV on a three-year-old Pentium II/233 with only 64M RAM, and most AIs take only a few seconds each for their turns.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Baron Munchausen · #3 July 31st, 2001, 03:11 AM

First, do you mean 2-3 minutes for ONE AI turn? Or for all of them? A few minutes for all of them is not surprising for a large game. How many ships and units do the AI races have? When they start to have hundreds of ships and thousands of units each it does add up to a lot of processing time.

Hota · #4 July 31st, 2001, 03:54 AM

It's late in the game with around 100 systems in the galaxy. It takes a few minutes for all of the cps to move. I have the number of ships allowed set to 200 and the only things running in the background are my virus software and nic. Are there any options to speed it up a bit? It gets kind of frustrating do move a fleet 1 space away from an enemy and then have to stare at the screen waiting for the battle to start!

-Hota

capnq · #5 July 31st, 2001, 06:08 PM

I routinely turn my antivirus shield off when I'm not Online, but if your system has an "always on" DSL connection, that wouldn't be a good idea for you to try. I'm not familiar with "nic".

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

LazarusLong42 · #6 July 31st, 2001, 08:45 PM

Hota,

My computer is similar to yours, and very late in a game it can easily take two or three minutes. Of course, at that stage it routinely takes me half an hour to run my turns. So that three minutes is a good time to grab a snack

LL
http://seiv.pbw.cc/

Hota · #7 July 31st, 2001, 08:49 PM

Unfortunately that's what I've been doing and I'm afraid if I try to finish my current game I'll put on 4 or 5 lbs :-)

-Hota

Baron Munchausen · #8 August 1st, 2001, 12:36 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Hota:
It's late in the game with around 100 systems in the galaxy. It takes a few minutes for all of the cps to move. I have the number of ships allowed set to 200 and the only things running in the background are my virus software and nic. Are there any options to speed it up a bit? It gets kind of frustrating do move a fleet 1 space away from an enemy and then have to stare at the screen waiting for the battle to start!

-Hota

Now this sounds different from the AI turn. You are waiting for a MOVE to go through when you try to attack something? I'm not sure what could cause that. Badly fragmented disk? How many turns do you execute before saving and restarting the game? I think it's got some memory leaks that can fill up your system resources if you run hundreds of turns without a stop and reload. Does your disk run a lot when your turns execute?

#9 August 1st, 2001, 08:47 AM

See Monster AI

for a discussion of 9000 SECOND AI turns. I hope that I can suggest some easy changes to the engine based on my optimization and previous AI experience. If so then the changes should be in the next patch or two. In the meantime just focus on crushing any AI that gets big and let the small fry alone. Basically that is what you do anyway, isn't it ? I think when the hardcode was written he just assumed that no AI empire would EVER get that big, an unfair assumption that says the AI can NEVER WIN. I really hated the cheating in MOO2 by the AI, but at least on impossible setting the AI would whip my butt sometimes, especially the Saccra....

capnq · #10 August 1st, 2001, 02:16 PM

quote:
I think when the hardcode was written he just assumed that no AI empire would EVER get that big

I think the more likely assumption is that he thought no one in their right mind would mod the quadrant size limit above 100 systems. I've yet to finish a game in a "normal" large quad, and have trouble imagining that I'd want to bump that up to the 255 hard limit. Reading your reports of your Huge Game experiments almost frightens me sometimes.

------------------
Cap'n Q

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the
human mind to correlate all of its contents. We live on a placid
island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was
not meant that we should go far. -- HP Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"