Stopped distant construction from rebuilding local terrain

I traced recurring Expedition stalls to distant rival construction. Each foundation change was rebuilding all nine detailed terrain patches around the player, even when the work happened far away.

I now compare only the cells affecting the local terrain region and its deformation skirt. Nearby building, settling, removal and terraforming still refresh the landscape, as does travelling into another region.

“Rival building work no longer needs to rebuild terrain around the player when it happens far away.”

In the saved, CPU-profiled RTX 3060 comparison, the short 21-unit Resume sample improved from 7.27 to 36.23 FPS, with its 99th-percentile frame interval falling from 1917 to 50 ms. Those measurements belong to that controlled test; this clip shows current native Expedition movement while the twenty rival economies continue running.

The same test campaign resumed without resetting its progress. Startup still takes several seconds, and this does not establish sustained large-army performance or multi-hour stability.