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[Anatoli]

I started genning a small world (67x67) three hours ago.  I actually took out some of the civs, reduced the number of interactions and such to try to make it go faster...

It's currently on the year 352.

After three hours.

I can't stop it because it takes so long to update that Windows just assumes the program has crashed, so I can't even hit escape.

Abstraction, Toady, abstraction is your friend.

We do not need to know the exact location of every granite goblet since the beginning of time.  There are reasonable ways to abstract this amount of data without losing the ability to shift a dwarven goblet halway around the world through the trade routes without needing to throw probability rolls for the chance to be traded on each and every individual item each and every game year.

From what I'm seeing from the comments so far, there's a problem/bug with many world that slows down world generation dramatically after 250 year range, grounding them to a standstill. Unless the events (and items) and other things go up dramatically during that time, and I don't see how that would happen, it's not a problem of abstraction.

I can't be completely sure, but my advice to you and everyone else: Make any world size you want, but make it under 250 years. You'd be better off starting a new world. And let's hope Toady fixes the problem. (Also, can anyone add this to the bug trafficker? I'm not good at filing out forms (a good skill to have, I know) and I haven't the problem myself, with short worlds I have, so I can't be completely sure of my statement.)

[abadidea]

If there's anyone who's having major worldgen problems:

Medium region, age 200 (I asked for 512 but it stopped there), extra volcanoes, higher mineral than default

http://www.box.com/s/2s5ytqmgze4xbu1k9bac

And it has these interesting little hidden valleys in the mountain ranges

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[jaxler]

HOW THE FUCKING HELL DO HUNT VAMPS!!!!

[Buttery_Mess]

HOW THE FUCKING HELL DO HUNT VAMPS!!!!

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You walk up to people and ask them if they are vampires, and if they are, they will tell you they are.

[jaxler]

HOW THE FUCKING HELL DO HUNT VAMPS!!!!

You walk up to people and ask them if they are vampires, and if they are, they will tell you they are.

EDIT: HOW THE FUCKING HELL DO I HUNT VAMPS IN FORTRESS MODE

[FearfulJesuit]

Wait, they don't lie?

[Footkerchief]

Abstraction, Toady, abstraction is your friend.

We do not need to know the exact location of every granite goblet since the beginning of time.  There are reasonable ways to abstract this amount of data without losing the ability to shift a dwarven goblet halway around the world through the trade routes without needing to throw probability rolls for the chance to be traded on each and every individual item each and every game year.

Do you think the game is actually doing this?

[Buttery_Mess]

Wait, they don't lie?

It occurs to me this is a genuine spoiler. So if you want to miss out on the fun of working it out, don't reveal this HFS.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've only encountered one vampire, but I just walked up to her and confronted her, claiming she was a creature of the night, and she said yeah, she is. And then we fought, and she beat me up, but the guy I recruited not five seconds earlier killed her for me.

[abadidea]

Did titles become more relevant by some magic (sphere-related I assume)?

There was a goddess of freedom with a title like "The Towers of Liberty"

And just now, I found in the histories...

Uthros Hoppermop the Hairy Hurricane, weregoat.

There are no words.

[NW_Kohaku]

Abstraction, Toady, abstraction is your friend.

We do not need to know the exact location of every granite goblet since the beginning of time.  There are reasonable ways to abstract this amount of data without losing the ability to shift a dwarven goblet halway around the world through the trade routes without needing to throw probability rolls for the chance to be traded on each and every individual item each and every game year.

Do you think the game is actually doing this?

Well, there's something very wrong, here. 

Watching the game as it generates these maps, it's obviously falling into a geometric complexity pattern with time. 

That, alone, means that there needs to be some greater degree of abstraction, even if trades are handled in a more abstract way... especially if Toady is going to start handling every single individual in the region as a historical character a few versions from now.

Reducing the number of civilizations down to 1 lets me fly through 300 years of history in just a couple of seconds, even on an otherwise unaltered medium map. 

Putting it up to 3, and the generation of the world slows down at a rate following roughly "1/t" where t is the amount of time gone by.

Trying this again with only one civilization to go all the way to 1050, the computer really chugs to process dates past around 300, and is saying an FPS of 0 at year 600, but still puts out a new year every 1.5 seconds or so.  The previous map generated faster, so maybe that one had a less-complex civilization when I genned it? 

If it isn't trading that causes this increase in complexity, then I'm not sure what is.

Of course, with that said, I'm not getting Legends Viewer to work for me right now, so I can't really open up Legends and get any useful information from it right now.

[Starver]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I've only encountered one vampire, but I just walked up to her and confronted her, claiming she was a creature of the night, and she said yeah, she is. And then we fought, and she beat me up, but the guy I recruited not five seconds earlier killed her for me.

Congratulations!  You just killed a delusional goth!

[Starver]

That, alone, means that there needs to be some greater degree of abstraction, even if trades are handled in a more abstract way... especially if Toady is going to start handling every single individual in the region as a historical character a few versions from now.

At some point in the past[1] I remember Toady actually mentioning he was implementing population abstractions, where previously (I assume) he was tracking each and every individual.  So he knows how to do it.  And I recall there was a definite worldgen speed-up at the time, although that could have been any one of a number of other optimisations, responsible.

My best guess is that in implementing such an increased Historic Figure tracking he's effectively eaten back into the original gain, although we're still at a Better Place than if the original optimisation had been skipped and the added complexities necessary for the Caravan Arc expansions had been set up.

Fine tuning might be possible, of course, and and perhaps the also mentioned "Far too many bangles being worn by vampires" thing[2] is going to be the reason and thus the solution.



[1] Mid-way through .31?  I think it was about the time when fields/improved settlement spread came in...

[2] Each wearer is a definite, non-abstractable Historical Figure.  And if every single one of those is accruing vast amounts of jewellery for which each and every item is supposed to be a non-abstractable item relevant to the history of said HF, then that's probably not helping.  If the item-overload is unintentional, then nixing it could give an immediate performance enhancement almost as a side-effect.  A pure guess on my part.

[rtg593]

Yes!

And

No!!!

Yes because I just finished designating and digging 120 levels to get to magma, and found it highly frustrating...

No because I just finished designating 120 levels... Well, you know the rest... First fortress that lasted more than a couple years... 6 years in, 170 goblins in a pit about to be drowned, 100 dwarves in a graveyard, looking forward to my first ever seige... Sigh...

Eh, I'll wait for the bug hunt to "finish," maybe my fortress will encounter some !!FUN!! between now and then...

[NW_Kohaku]

I'm playing around with worldgens.  If there's one thing that really seems to kill the speed, it's having a large number of sites that are connected to one another, especially by road. (Even when it is the same civilization that is trading amongst its own sites.)

When I have large maps that I put lower-than-normal limits on populations and they don't expand aggressively for one reason or another, the game's simulation speed goes by very quickly.  I actually sometimes notice odd behavior where the speed slows down then suddenly shoots back up, but without the ability to really probe legends mode without a reliable 3rd-party tool at this time, I can't really trace what that actually entailed, although it seemed like there might have been a contraction in population.

Also, goblins definitely are easier on the complexity.  At least, without them expanding or attacking anything.

I think another contributing factor may be that I tend to up the x and y variance of the biome-altering map features like elevation so that the map doesn't end up with one giant mountain blob taking up 1/3 of the map, and instead has a chain of dozens of small mountainous regions, and that gave dwarves far more chance to spread and get in contact with humans and elves.

It's actually extremely variable whether one of these map generations will get bogged down or not, as sometimes it ends up with permanent age of myth and nobody really doing anything for 500 years.

EDIT:  even making the population limits very small (200), while it seems to help some, does not actually stop a small region from experiencing a lot of slowdown.  In fact, I actually find it to generate medium or larger worlds faster with the same amount of civilizations on the map, just because the interaction seems to be what drives this slowdown. 

One thing I am noting, however, is that any time the world hits a Golden Age, the frame rate will basically never recover, while the super-fast generations all take place in the Age of Legends.  Messing with the number of procedural supercreatures generated does not seem to have a direct impact on generation speed, however.

[Proteus]

Cool, a new version ....
deidn´t have time to play yet, but already generated a world (300 years, which took my main compi ~2 hours )

Am just digging through the history/sites, nice informations you get now about the population of the sites....
this here definitely seems to be a Metropolis, open to all races

502: Katengicen, "Skinnedsaved", town
   Owner: The Awe-inspiring Group, humans
   Parent Civ: The Empire of Towers, humans
   5494 humans
   40 amphibian men
   61 dwarves
   37 cave fish men
   34 reptile men
   20 rodent men
   7 goblins
   1679 elves
   20 kobolds
   741 dogs
   48 llamas
   2 sheep
   417 ducks
   928 geese
   604 cats