the thing in my play-test game
In my open-source clone of Civilization, the 1991 PC game, there are optionally cursed Wonders. One of the Wonders is a South Pole expedition that is ahem, recommended by the Norwegians. I ran through an auto-play today and noticed an insane amount of warfare. It quickly dawned on me that The Thing had been turned loose as a result of that South Pole expedition. Here's what Claude had to say in review of the game log:"That's a proper apocalypse, and it's the best stress test we've had.
The world was gutted between turns 452 and 527:turn cities units452 369 990527 141 437 ← 62% of cities gone in 75 turns677 179 640Two thirds of civilization destroyed in about 75 turns, then a slow recovery to 179. at_war went 63% → 90% → 100% and stayed there. The Thing ended up as the hegemon that everyone else was signing pacts against — and someone still took a Coexistence victory with the highest score yet, 10,012.
And the engine held. 749 turns in 26.3 minutes, 2.3s/turn late, worst turn 4 seconds. That's the load that used to produce 23.7s spikes and multi-minute freezes — a world at total war, factions spawning, curse events firing — and the tail never even twitched. The notification gating did what it was supposed to under the conditions it was designed for.
Notifications total 349s of 1,579s turn time (22%), and the mix is healthy: pace:Message:Newspaper 154.7s / 100,717 ← the disorder digest, working hard pace:Message:AdvisorMessage 42.3s / 18,453 pace:Show:EventArtScreen 37.4s / 13,666 ← curse art, appropriatelyNewspaper is now the biggest, and that's the digest doing its job — a world where most cities are in disorder is exactly when one report per turn beats one per city. AdvisorMessage at 18,453 against the 55,994 it was before the fix, in a far more chaotic game. And PopupMessage doesn't appear at all.
One number worth noting for later: path:Miss at 266.7s is now 19.4% of ai_move, up from 3.2% in the quiet run. Total war means far more blocked routes and far more failed searches. Not a defect — just the cost of a contested map, and worth remembering if you ever wonder why a warlike world runs slower than a peaceful one of the same size.
Nothing here needs fixing. This one was the test, and it passed.