#238 Option to disable, Francisco de Coronado, because AI slows turn taking.
This is a really great game, keep up the good work!
AI turn taking slows the game down after nomination of founding father, "Francisco de Coronado."
Francisco de Coronado (Exploration)
"All existing colonies become visble on the map."
When this Founding Father is attained, the "Waiting for ____," time for AI turns increases a great deal. Sometimes, the map will not move while other times the map will jump around slowly tracking slow moving units. Regardless, the turn goes from 30 seconds of wait time to 15+ minutes of wait time, depending on how big the AI opponent colonies are during the current game. In fact, I typed all this up in the time it takes the AI to make one turn.
When I play a game and select founding fathers, I always make sure that I pick Francisco de Coronado dead last, so to delay this from occurring.
Here are my recommendations with how to deal with this,
1: Player gets better hardware(not the point of this ticket.)
2: Warn the player, in the Founding Father requitment dialog, that choosing, "Francisco de Coronado," may slow down game play a great deal for those with slow hardware and/or low RAM (also, not the point of this ticket.)
!3: Allow the player the option to disable, "Francisco de Coronado," from the pool of selectable Founding Fathers. Thereby bypassing this problem entirely (unless the player manually explores the entier map,) via a checkbox in the Founding Fathers selection dialog. While including a warning that this Founding Father may slow the game down for some players.
Due to my ignorance, I don't know why the AI doesn't cause this harsh load on the PC prior to attaining, "Francisco de Coronado." Isn't it doing this in the background already, yet only becoming visible to the player after, "Francisco de Coronado," is attained? Perhaps, there's a solution from looking into this comparison?
Note: Large, long-playing games of FreeCiv also have this occur as the AI civilizations get larger. Larger AI civilizations=slower AI turn taking. I note this because there's no Founding Father, "switch," that's being flipped suddenly like it is for FreeCol; despite FreeCiv not actually showing the player the other AI players' civilizations. That may mean, FreeCol is doing something correctly and efficiently up until attaining, "Francisco de Coronado."
Specs:
Game:
FreeCol game version: 0.11.6 (Revision: ${FreeCol.Revision})
FreeCol protocol version: 0.1.6
Installation Method: sudo apt-get -y install freecol
Terminal Command: freecol
Mods: None (Vanilla)
Mode: Singleplayer against default AI
In-game Settings: Default
Java:
OpenJDK Version: "11.0.9.1" 2020-11-04
OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 11.0.9.1+1-post-Raspbian-1deb10u2)
OpenJDK Server VM (build 11.0.9.1+1-post-Raspbian-1deb10u2, mixed mode)
OS & Hardware:
PC: Raspberry Pi 4b
RAM: 4GB
OS: Raspbian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 32-bit
Kernal: Linux raspberrypi 5.10.11-v7l+ #1399 SMP Thu Jan 28 12:09:48 GMT 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux
Graphics: OpenGL ES 3.0
Chip: Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
I deal with this by disabling animation for native units.