A couple of simple ways to make it more friendly

[Epaminondas]

Loren, 10 minutes in terms of turn generation in a large map game?

Is this what I am supposed to expect even when I get a new computer shipped to me?

Jeez...

[Endoperez]

Epaminondas said:
Loren, 10 minutes in terms of turn generation in a large map game?

Is this what I am supposed to expect even when I get a new computer shipped to me?

Jeez...

Well, with all nations in game, in a huge map, after 10-15 turns... Most nations will have at least one fight per turn. Just generating all of those takes time. In smaller maps, with fewer enemies, generation is much faster.

[Cainehill]

Epaminondas said:
Loren, 10 minutes in terms of turn generation in a large map game?

Is this what I am supposed to expect even when I get a new computer shipped to me?

Jeez...

Yep, until/if Illwinter addresses the issue of graphics settings having an effect on turn generation times.

[alexti]

Loren said:
The problem is that Dominions isn't recognizing that it's been switched away and releasing the video. I think it's not monitoring the message queue while it's thinking.

You don't need to monitor message queue to get hidden or brought to the background. I could see why there might be a problem bringing Dom3 window in the foreground in this situation, but hiding it should be working. And when you refer to 10 minutes, is it just 'AI thinking' phase or total turn generation time? I'd imagine some combination of map and nation may produce longer 'AI thinking' times, but 10 minutes seem to be way too much from my experience (for me vast majority of turn generation time is spent in 'resolving battles').

[Loren]

alexti said:

You don't need to monitor message queue to get hidden or brought to the background. I could see why there might be a problem bringing Dom3 window in the foreground in this situation, but hiding it should be working. And when you refer to 10 minutes, is it just 'AI thinking' phase or total turn generation time? I'd imagine some combination of map and nation may produce longer 'AI thinking' times, but 10 minutes seem to be way too much from my experience (for me vast majority of turn generation time is spent in 'resolving battles').

What I think is going on is that while it technically goes into the background, if it doesn't monitor the message queue it doesn't see what happened and know to release the screen.

And I do mean 10 minutes of AI think time--this on a 3ghz processor with oodles of ram. Admittedly the memory is currently in single-channel mode. I've been having trouble getting a response out of Corsair about the memory chip that died--I've come to suspect that something is wrong in their e-mail and I'm going to call them again Monday and try a different e-mail address.