It seems to me that if the loading times were longer, there wouldn't be so much lag after pressing the Turn button. There might be something wrong in the coding even. Maybe a command line is out of order. I'm not much of a programer, but it feels like the computer is waiting for something. Then once it gets what it needs, it runs normal. It might be better to just make the loading times longer to keep gameplay as smooth as possible.

I always figured the lag spike at the beginning of the turn was all the AIs making their decisions/moves at the same time, since there is only one turn for everyone.

I've been playing a lot of strategy games like this lately and I've never seen this before because they usually allow the AI to do what it needs to before you're given control back. There needs to be some kind of wait system until the AI has finished all their moves. Then once the game has finished, it should look normal again.



Another thing I've noticed is that sometimes my video cards get loud. Happens more often when I'm moving around certain systems. I do have the settings maxed but I don't have AA on. I'm also running Tri-SLI on GTX 470 video cards. I doubt this game runs SLI efficiently, but there's something weird going on in the rendering. I've also noticed that game is not using the extra fame buffer (RAM) from my extra 2 video cards. I know Shogun 2 was also this way but you were able to change the .ini file:



Defualt:

gfx_video_memory 0



My 3 video cards:

GTX470

1280MB RAM



1280 x 3 = 3840MB convert to bytes = 4026531840



New Settings:

gfx_video_memory 4026531840

The lag spike when the turn starts is because it has to sequence all of the AI actions at the same time when the game "unpauses" as the turn starts.

If you've ever played a Total War game, you would know that this should never happen. Each faction should have it's own turn then. One thing great about TW series, each faction takes a turn and the camera focuses on their unit movements so you know exactly what units are moving where, only when the FOW is revealed though. That's how it should be. As you said, it does look like the AI is running all faction turns at the exact same time. That's crazy. You would need a 8-12 core CPU for something like that if you're playing with 8 factions. It looks really weird when other faction ships are still moving around at the beginning of your turn. That's poor design choices.



This is suppose to be a turn base game, then why is AI acting like an RTS?

While I do agree that the time it takes at the start of a turn should be shortened, this is not a TBS or a RTS, it's somewhere inbetween, and it should stay that way.