I'm currently playing on the maxium size galaxy with max planets/stars/artifacts/normal tech speed and AI level of challenging with 9 AI players. Normal is what I mostly play in games, but the computer seemed to not fully utilize their worlds. So I felt bad about beating 'em.

This is my sixth or seventh trial & error play through..After the newest patch came out, I started a new game (and I swear I remember reading somewhere that there were new icons for player created races..can't find 'em though) with the settings I always use as listed above. So this time around I'm actually doing fairly well ( I suck early on with the military rating so the other races like to pick fights or try and take my money). However..After the whole galaxy has been claimed by the races and about 60-150 turns into that I experience a game killing amount of lag during the Turn Phase.. Before clicking the Turn Phase the game plays perfectly and it isn't until I actually get back to my turn that my sound skips repeatedly and mouse freezes several times for around 10-15 seconds sometimes more. While I'm a patient guy, those seconds add up in the terms of hundreds or thousands of turns.

So just to make sure it wasn't my computer giving me trouble, I reloaded one of my older saves from a different play through (it's also pre-current patch) where I was roughly the same size and had about a 10million difference in population (so I figure it's all about the same size then with the same amount of things going on in the map) and sure enough..It plays perfectly. Zero lag on turn phase..So it has me kinda bummed out that I've done so good this time around and it's totally killing me with the delay in turns. I don't want to even bother playing through again if it'll just get eaten by the lag monster in the later game..And that is a true bummer indeed.

If anyone has this problem and found a way to fix it, any help would be awesome and many thanks for taking the time to read through my rant.