Post combat freeze

Hi,

I've been playing BM for about a week. I've noticed that after I press the Close button after combat, the AI takes quite a long time to process (on a P4 2.4Ghz i takes about 30 seconds), during which the computer freezes (no mouse neither keyboard input accepted), regardless of whether there were 20 ships or just 2 ships fighting. This happens during both the AI's turns and my turns. I don't know what the AI is calculating after each combat. I think this is related to the BM, as no such problem occurs with stock games.

Is there any way to expedite this post combat processing.

Thanks,