Slow AI turns (1.13)

[neofit]

Hi,

I've just started a second game of SEV with the 1.13 patch and the Balance Mod v0.95. I'm at around turn 40 and at least once per turn 1 to 3 random empires take a few minutes to make their turn. I don't know if it's related to the mod or to the stock version, and I don't want to start another game with stock up to turn 30 or so when it started, but I wonder what i scausing this.

I don't remember seeing that in my first game. I played it with patch 1.08 and stopped at around turn 60 when all my fleet supplies went poof, but IIRC turn processing was smooth.

I've read a few threads here and I believe it is related to empires engaging in combat between themselves, I just don't want to log into them and spoil the game by knowing where they are, etc. If so it's simply unbelievable.

I'm running on an Intel Dual Core Duo E6600. This CPU can re-encode a 9GB DVD into 4GB in under 12 minutes - allegedly, mind you . I can't believe that half that time (and CPU cycles) is needed to process an AI turn, it's not like AIs are doing anything smart anyway. Did someone forget to re-comment some debug sleep loops? I thought it may be a dual-core issue, but it does the same when I set SEV to run on one core with SetAffinity.

So now it's bordering on the unplayable. Around turn 40 I do all I have to do in about 30-60secs, then wait 5 minutes for the next round. If only there was a real windowed mode - one that would scale to higher resolutions like the fullscreen mode does (I'm playing at a native 1600x1200 res), and that wouldn't induce a 10 secs mouse lag - I may be able to surf the net or do something else while the AI is "thinking". If I Alt-Tab out of a full-screen game turn processing just stops, the game does not seem to run in the background.

Any suggestions? (besides "take more time to make your turn to balance things out" )

[Randallw]

I have had the same problem. Last time it happened it seemed to hang at player 13. Around that area, 12,13, was my Klingon set which the game said didn't have any flags. Seems to me the AI combat shouldn't hold things up so long seeing as how the ai can do it at full speed instead of basically slowed down for us to watch.

[pujal]

I gave up large maps because of this. Its all about the small map with low comp #'s! lol.

[neofit]

I am playing on everything by default, average map size I believe.

I've tried running the AI resolution phase 3 times from the same savegame. All three times it took 4-5 minutes (stardate 2043.2) I've had a different set of 2-3 empires doing combat or whatever they are doing when the game "hangs" for a few minutes. So if it's combat then AI actions are truly random.

I've ran Windows' perfmon to see how the CPU was used during the AI action phase. 100% CPU usage of one core of my E6600 during the whole phase, that's a darned big lot of CPU cycles. Then I figured out that SEV uses 100% of one core whenever it is in the foreground (in both single-core and dual-core modes), even when I am doing nothing but staring at the system view. It's not like it takes a lot of CPU to draw the little 3D graphics, my NVidia 7950GX2 should take care of that. As a comparison, with the same system in Everquest 2, at max graphics settings (but the shadows) and lots of PCs and NPCs running around me inside a city, I am using 40-50% of both cores. With that much CPU used in SEV I expect nothing more than a Kasparov-level challenge from the AI .

[neofit]

It IS combat that is causing this slowdown during the AI turns. I went into settings.txt and changed 2 values: "Space Combat Maximum Time (Seconds)" and "Ground Combat Maximum Time (Seconds)" to 10. They were at 300 and 180 respectively. And bingo, no more than 10 secs per AI player turn.

Now I don't want to break AI combat by doing this, so I'll just stop playing until a hotfix is released. I can't stand waiting for 5-10 minutes in between my 30 seconds turns.

Maybe there is a setting somewhere that will prevent AI combat to take place in real (non-accelerated) time in the background?

[Atrocities]

I too am having a significant slow down of AI turns after the patch was applied. In fact the game has forzen several times cuasing me to have too alt ctrl del out of it. Most frustrating.

[raynor]

In another thread, someone speculated the new delays are related to the AI chasing after other AI ships in repeated combats. In other words, pre 1.13, the combat between a frigate and a colony ship might just end unresolved until the next turn. But now in 1.13, the colony ship will retreat and the frigate will chase it--thus triggering a new combat. This will then continue until the strategic movement of either ship has been exhausted.

If this is the case, (and I have no idea since it was just someone else's speculation), then I hope Malfador will make the whole retreat setup a configurable option. In other words, with one toggle, allow folks to choose the limited combat map of SEIV.

All the alternatives seem significantly more complicated. Here are some ideas:

1. Increase the strategic movement expended when you retreat. Let's call it the "tax" on "flooring" your engines to escape and say that you instead expend two or more strategic movement points. If the AI turn delays are related to multiple combats, then increasing the retreat penalty to two lost movement points will at least HALVE the number of repeated combats. This may be the absolute easiest fix. (Again, this is all based on one long line of assumptions. )

2. An alternative that would be harder to code and probably not even remotely workable would be one where the game calculates in advance whether or not one ship is likely to pursue the other one, compares their movement points and then determines if one ship can retreat from the other one. For example, consider two scenarios:

A. A Frigate with more remaining movement points than a Colony Ship attacks the colony ship. Let's assume the colony ship will run and the frigate will chase. If the Frigate has more movement than the colony ship, do not let the colony ship retreat. Then, when the combat is over, you may want to set the Frigate's remaining movement points to Frigate Movement - Colony Ship Movement. Of course, to be "fair", you might say the Frigate needs to be moved in some random direction "towards" the most like escape path of the colony ship. But I say you should just forget about that one. Let's just say they had a long and circuitous escape route in just one sector.

B. A Frigate with less movement points than a Colony Ship attacks. Because the colony ship has more movement points left, it *can* retreat. After the retreat, the Colony Ship will have a new strategic movement total that is its previous total minus the movement points of the Frigate. Similarly, the frigate will have its strategic movement points reduced to zero. Again, ideally, you would might want both ships to have moved a number of spaces on the strategic map. Again, for the sake of simplicity, I say to just ignore that.

Oops. I guess I better get to work.

[Raapys]

The reason this happened in the new patch is because of the new reatreat option causing multiple comabats and this point:

15. Fixed - Space combat no longer ends when the distance between enemies remains the same or increases.

In other words, many combats lasts for the full 5 minutes instead of stopping after 20 seconds, like some of them would before. There were slowdowns with AIs at war with 1.08 too, it's just become far more pronounced.

I think everyone should be mailing Aaron about this, it's really ruining the game right now. He needs to go through the AI vs AI combat code and speed it up *alot*.

[Spoo]

I get the impression that AI combat is limited to 8x real time. Instead it should be allowed to go as fast as it can.

[Raapys]

Yeah, I'm afraid that's possible. At any rate, Aaron needs to have a long look at it; it's the only real slowdown in turn processing. It was bad at times in 1.08, it's unplayable in 1.13.