[Test] AI Turn Length

[Ghoulvarine]

So I was reading up on a few things related to how the AI turn length starts taking longer when you're in the late mid- to late-game and people coming up with what works for them such as disabling attack and move animations. Though it helps a bit, it doesn't really quite solve the issue in the first place. To this day, I don't think anyone has come up with a concrete answer as to why it happens all the time, forcing players to use standard size at most if they're going for a test of time or rushing early victories if they want to play on larger maps.

So what really happens during the AI's turn that's making it slow to a crawl during the late eras? Is it really all about the processes taking place when they get large enough? I did a test where I tweaked game files to give me massive advantage and spread fast to cover almost the entire map with my cities. By turn 30 I was already in the atomic era (modern for civics) with 31 cities on a standard size continents map with 10 city states and 8 civs total including my own. My opponents only got to place a second city by this point. (This is on warlord difficulty so they don't end up with extra units and have 0 additional tech).

I found out that the same thing still happens and the AI turns started to take longer to end by turn 33, 8-12 minutes at a time. How can this be when each other civ only has two cities and a few units? I don't have much either since I only have about 6 beefed up units that have massive movement so I can destroy barb camps right when they spawn so barb pops are kept non-existent. Since I control almost all the land with my cities, the AI civs won't be processing them either. I can see the quick movement animations end abruptly too for both AI civs and city states so I know they should be "done" with their turns. No one is at war either. So what's really taking up the processing time? This mystery will probably not get solved as we inevitably prepare for the coming of Civ 7.

[Evrach]

Wait, uou mean that youhave to waot 8 to 12 minutes before each of your turns ? What a hell

[Ghoulvarine]

Even when I played on the 4-Leaf clover map so only 4 civs, it still takes about half those times. The more puzzling thing is why the sudden increase in the amount of time taken for the turn to process from about 20s to 30s tops to over ten minutes? Mind you it was still good by around turn 30-32 when I basically have 80% vision of the whole map all at once from my cities and units. There are no FPS drops. I could even still access the tech and civics tree, government policies, leader screens, etc. during the AI's turn without issue, even on earlier turns when it still took less than half a minute for the turn to complete.

Regardless of the world era, something about the player crossing into the late modern or atomic era will trigger this absurd AI turn length without fail and there's seemingly nothing going on at their end. All their units have moved so what else could they possibly be calculating with their two-city empires? They haven't even met all the other civs. Also another detail I forgot to mention. I'm using the R&F rule set, so it doesn't even have to worry about GS mechanics like volcanoes and diplomacy.

Now I have not tested whether this would be the case if you choose a later era start. But I suppose it might end up doing the same thing.

[grognardgary]

This I do not get. I play huge continents map 12 civs 10 city states on marathon, My rig could most charitably called an antique and I have only 8 gigs of ram. And I have never seen that long a time between turns.

[Evrach]

I just loaded an old solo game to see.
Atomic age, big map with 7 remaining bots. Ai turn lengh is between 8 and 12 seconds.

[grognardgary]

Originally posted by Evrach:

I just loaded an old solo game to see.
Atomic age, big map with 7 remaining bots. Ai turn lengh is between 8 and 12 seconds.

!0 to 12 seconds is not an issue but I thought he said 10 to 12 minutes and that is insane.