VERY long AI turn processing - is it normal?

It can be as there is a slow memory leak which tends to lengthen AI turns and AI will lengthen as their empire gets bigger and more complex to run though I don’t expect this to be that much of an issue with a small map and relatively few empires it is in large maps with 15+ AI empires.

The best work rounds for the memory leak is to manually save quit and re start when it starts getting irritating auto save can help but it will extend the end of turn processing in turns when it auto saves. There are a lot of other ways to deal with this which a quick search on this forum will pick up. It is to be hoped that the next patch, due Monday will help speed up turn processing and perhaps solve issue entirely

The AI in SEV is not the smartest you will find...I'm afraid that the complexity that makes SEV awesome, also makes the AI crap. But the Balance and IRM mods VASTLY improve the AI over what stock offers, altogth evan stock is getting a little bit smart. You will find that while the AI usually has no chance of beating evan the greenest player...It can give you a run for your money when defending its systems, and if its lucky enough to designate a Huge planet as a research compound...

To deal with longer processing times you should probably get a hobby. My hobby when waiting for multiplayer games is playing single player games And when playing single player, you could always read a book or something

The delays are primarily due to combat between players, and then due to ship movement. There have been several speed-ups in the latest set of beta patches that will be released in Monday's official patch.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

That was so funny I would have fallen off my chair and literally rolled on the floor laughing had there been room it was also a good job I had finished my tea as well.

As to AI's the stock AI is ok but not that hard to beat and the prime tactic a research rush is one it can seldom answer. Any fights after the first ten years tend to be a bit one sided

The balance mod defends really well and will launch harassing attacks on soft targets if it can expect a significant butcher’s bill in any war. Its better at research and keeping its stuff up to date mostly because the tech tree has been shortened and in some parts simplified it is also a better diplomat than the stock AI

The IRM is as good as the BM one at defence and it frequently better at research especially early on and defiantly empire management than most players. It is a good diplomat and is very aware of how strong it is in relation to you it will surrender if it’s beaten badly enough but doing that is not at all easy. It did have problems with launching attacks but they are fixed now and remembering what it was like before this problem occurred I expect any war with it to be very bloody especially early on when the AI will have a tech level lead on you.

The red bar represents combat. On a side note, the number of AI combats is reduced in the upcoming Balance Mod update (v1.05) - the AIs have decided not to be so angry with each other all the time.

The biggest difference between this game and most other games is that the combat is actually a full combat and not a "dice roll" type scenario.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

I have got the problem, the red bar is AI combat and if its present to a large extent then their is a war going on involving that AI and its running through the battles involved it will more than likely clear its self up if you persist as the AI's will stop shooting at each other in a few turns and the game will speed back up. The next patch includes several AI turn processing speed ups and general improvements in strategic combat speed so this should be less of an issue.

The memory leak work round didn’t help here because this slowdown wasn’t caused by it.

EDIT

indeed in this gamew the AI operates on the same playing field that the human player does no cheating no short cuts

Design creation also take a lot of time, it's quite noticable with IRM when you start a game with full tech and the full lot of design is being created.

In my last game turn processing lasted about 15-20 minutes with 20 empires in a 250 system galaxy - and memory usage increased by around 150-200MB every turn.

I would have been happy to have 1 minute of turn processing there.

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As I play it whilst working it gives me a chance to do some work whilst it processes and the turn time on my Play by post game is around 72 hours so twenty minutes is relay fast by comparison.

A lot of reason the game takes so long to process a turn is that memory leak not withstanding runs the AI turns just like player turns and how long does it take players to process their turns in the old days I used to have SEIV parties where we played a hot seat game and we had to limit player turn time after on of the less decisive regularly took over an hour, his record was three as we left him to it and watched a film whilst he got on with it or not as the case might be.

I am sure it could be speeded up ,it has been in the past and will be again on the next patch but the core point that the AI plays on the same basis as a human player will I think remain.

20 minuts? yur crazy, id delete the game before id set for 20 minuts wating for a turn. and for the guy that took 3 hrs, id shoot him THEN delete the game and prolly burn the disk too.

im wating for the patch in hopes of it really speeding things up, ive yet to take on a huge map with alot of AI since even on medium sized with 10 or so opponants im taking far longer than im willing to wating for the AI turns. its even more annoying when you relize that 9 out of 10 AI battles are single scouts fighting at warp points. that serve no purpose what so ever. who ever decided it was a cool idea to have the AI send single ship after single ship through a warp point that its lost 500 other ships in the second its built, should be slaped.

id wate 10 minuts tops if it was an epic AI battle where hundereds of ships were involved but the turn times are far and away to much for very ......... well usless really, 'gains' if you can call destroying 1 enemy ship a gain that is.

Even if the end turn process time will be improved in the next patch, there will certainly be places for even more time optimization. And that certainly will be a good thing.

Still, this is an epic type of turned base game. So by definition it is far from being an action type of game where everything happens quickly. Personnally I would encourage MM to remove the number of race limit (20 races max) and fix the quadrant map problem when there is more then 255 systems in a game. I will enjoy playing with 100 races in a vast quadrant, even if the end turn process goes on for hours.

Basically, the point is to get the choice of doing the type of game you like knowing its limitations, which depends largely on your PC specs.

I'm always playing with the BM mod, and I wish that the diplomatic rules will stay the same between all empires. It's ok if the AI is more tolerant with other races, but it should be true for all races. But I trust the good captain to balance this the right way.

Cyber_Tech wrote:

I'm always playing with the BM mod, and I wish that the diplomatic rules will stay the same between all empires. It's ok if the AI is more tolerant with other races, but it should be true for all races. But I trust the good captain to balance this the right way.

I use the complete opposite philosophy for IRM. I don't want AI to play nice with each others and the player, i want wars to happen often and more action than just border dispute. I also don't want the AI to leave the player build up unchecked... Of course, the level of aggressivity depend on the races involved, but the "play nice" AI should never be part of IRM again.

BTW, the AI has had serious improvement in 0.9a, it should be more aggressive than before, and even invade worlds. They are also more likely to attack undefended targets along the way, even when not officially at war.

Cyber_Tech:
The rules are the same for AI-AI and AI-Human. Improvements were made so that most of the AIs won't be as quick to anger over small things and have more opportunity to build co-operative treaties which helps them to improve their resource and technology base.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

But to be effective, the AI must be more aggressive and take over systems and take the room to have the resources and technology. Also some of the race have traits (or victory conditions) that are more useful if they are at war than if they are at peace. Some of the races should be set to upset the balance and create opportunity for war rather than have everyone seek to be at peace for as long as possible (Wich favor the human player a lot). And i don't find it fun if i'm the one that must start the hostilities, i prefer to have the "moral high ground" for it.

It's really dependent on the race's personality. Some are friendly, others are not. But I never did say they just seek peace, just that they are slower to anger. Being somewhat cooperative allows more colonies and infrastructure to be built at the beginning for neutral or peaceful empires. Once available space becomes an issue, then that's when anger levels rise and behavior becomes more aggressive - but now at least they have the backing to support large numbers of units and warships. Of course, an aggressive race will start attacking sooner and might expand slower, but their traits tend help fewer ships do more and gain lost space by reducing others' space.

Perhaps more importantly, a range of AI behaviors is more interesting for players that are interacting with them. If every race is just hostile, it becomes boring much too quickly.

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Space Empires Depot | SE:V Balance Mod

One way to end this problem,
From the holy Chinese Sun Tzu Art Of War.
"Eliminate your enermy before they get to u."

Be more aggressive, kill them as soon as you can.

This is completely off topic considering the thread is about turn process time but I would suggest that any one who thinks that the point of "Sun Tzu’s the art of war" was mindless aggression re read it in a better translation if no the original language. It’s about planning, preparation and only fighting when you need to and than on ground and place of you’re choosing. It even suggests that it is better to allow your enemy an escape route when you have them beaten.

I would avoid any translation or interpretation designed for MBA students in the 1980's or early 90's as they all missed the point and that there are other lesser known Chinese texts on business administration which would be more to the point.

yes I am and the patch is due monday 26th of march

A big benefit in speeding up combat would be to do something similar as the people from Stardock did in GCII. There they calcuate the chances of the outcome and forego a real combat calculation if the outcame was quite sured. Ok for SEV it would be much harded to estimate but still I see only this option. If i think of all the useless battle simulations of frigates hunting eachother with absolutly no chance of getting into fire range, for both empires ships have the same speed. I think at least for such cases the outcome is quite obvious and SEV could ignore these most time consuming hunting battles.

Of course, i did not mean for all the race to be berserk. It is more fun if you can have some allies. But building up for 60 turns without a single fight is just as boring as having an eternal war with everyone from first turn...

Btw, you should take a look at what IRM 0.9a AI can do, Bmaxa did a great job on it.

Orion66, while the AI turn processing will speed up next patch, the real benefit of it is being able to have the game run while minimised/Alt-Tabbed (this is not available right now). A serious SE V game is a long-term project and you are going to have to learn to multitask to get real enjoyment out of it.

Otherwise you may as well make custom AI opponents (disable randomly generated empires) who then surrender to each other so it's down to you vs Some Massive AI. That way, you can be sure all combat is going to directly involve you.

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

Isn't there an option during game creation to allow the AI empires to team up against human players? Doesn't that do the same thing and without having to create each empire?

"Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been and will always long to return." ~Leonardo DaVinci

Not until it gets debugged. What it does right now is "have Everyone declare war on EVERYONE EVERY TURN". It would make for extremely lengthy turns ^^;;

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Playing Touhou games (Go here if interested . No, nobody else is that good/insane as that replay). No rush for SE V bug fixing.

if there are a lot of combats, especially since your in a small universe there can be, the turns take MUCH longer then peacetime.

its generaly agreed that SEV was released to early and most people think it should have been held back until say v1.17 -1.20 but given that it was relesaed the way it was I think a lot has been done to fix it its unfortunate that 1.25 broke some stuff but coding is a black art some times and that happens.

GCII is mechanicaly a very much simpler game and it uses shortcuts to speed things up. The AI 's in it are not playing the same game as the player just simulating it. Very much as Civ did in days of yore. It could be done that way in SEV but its not been the way the game has worked for as long as I have been playing (SEIII demo just before SEIV came out). The computer players lay SEV on the same terms as a human player as I have said before.

I play by post quite literaly mailing a CDRW I also play the single player game a turn or so at a time as a break from work as I work from home as I said before.

So, if you had not paid for it, you would not care to wait? I doubt . But seriously, what is wrong with this game, from my experience with the scripts, is the inefficient coding. Lot's or redundant process or process that could be simplified. But optimizing the code is a very long process, especially with a game of this scope. Don't forget this game is a 1 coder project, not a coding army like many larger game company have. But for something that is done by only one guy, the patching rate is phenomenal.

This remindes me of the old days: back when every 3rd person was yelling about how crappy everything was in SEV: Then the people defending the game vigilantly: The long threads of point and counterpoint and endless flaming upon flaming. Phong warships in orbit preparing to beat the crap out of the farah...(Stupid non race implementation into SEV, oh well i got me sithrack anyway:) You could probably find said threads burried in the endless tracks of the oldest forum entries...
Oh and Get a hobby: it helps to pass the long time inbetween turns: In the words of that one guy with the affro: "SEV more than a feeling"

Orion66: Just set your game to use a small quadrant with a low number of AI. The turn process will be the shortest and you will still have plenty for your money. In fact there is so many options that you can certainly find the setting that best suit you.

I have an AMD4200 X2 with tons of cpu power.

I've played games on my old 286 that was almost as complex, that while using 1-2-3 mins on a turn, is a long time, could be explained on my 286.

However, on my 4200 mhz machine, why should this takes AGES.

I can't hack waiting 1-2 mins on a gameturn when I use sometimes only 30 sec on my own!!

Janster

I have noticed a big drop in the number of AI-AI combats in BM1.05. That has definitely sped up turn resolution.

Funny though that we have to play this epic game on small with few AI's to be able to make run -1- round within somewhat decent time.

Anyway, its a gamekiller just as well as the AI not being up to it.

I am still amazed this isn't focused harder on.

Janster

The AI is a very difficult thing to do. We did a lot of work for the one of IRM, but it's still too weak because it's not aware of what is going on. It's difficult to implement a proper decision process when the AI cannot evaluate situations and make self evident choices...

Edit : And it's difficult to focus on the AI when so many bugs still plague the game (quite a few affect the AI).

Yeah I guess, I wish I had the time and knowledge to do anything useful.

The concept of the game is pure genious, but the execution is hopeless.
I wish that they'd strip it down a bit, and rebuild it and keep the parts that work, then leave it for the modders to add more complexity, like Total War Realism project.

Testing the IRM mod btw, I had two major early attacks, it was rough as I had to throw a few ships together, and I had to retake a planet, my FIRST ever planet fight..it was GREAT.

However..now..2 hours later..and tons of turns.....there is nothing happening, I have a fleet of 8 ships on two warppoint, they should be no match for the AI, but nothing is happening..

Janster

I dont know if my problem is the same, but I have had the game sit on the part right after the numbered AI is done for over an hour. I have a good computer, and there are only 13 empires, so I am not quite sure what the problem is.

"only 13 empires"
Out of a possible 20
Sheesh.
JK