[raynor]

One of the key elements of Gal Civ is that it is multi-threaded. This means that it is making tons and tons of calculations at the same time that you are completing your turn. One of those calculations is the somewhat complicated computation that compares the cultural significance of every one of your planetary facilities, starbases, etc against that of each one of the AI empires. The really cool feature of a game that is multi-threaded is that the game appears to run extremely fast. You really don't have to wait very long when you press 'End Turn' because the game has been making most of its calculations while you are moving your own ships around.

The developers of the game decided to shorten the game save time by not saving your status towards a cultural dominance victory. They also made the decision to shorten the game load time by not calculating it immediately upon loading the game. Instead, they spread this calculation out over two or three turns. They did this to speed the game up and let players get into the action quickly.

Can you imagine how cool this is? Instead of waiting a couple of minutes while the game does this calculation, you can instead get right back into the game. The game is actually performing this computation *while* you are playing the game. This is really quite an awesome feature. It isn't an easy thing to do, rest assured.