This is directly copied from the Total War Blog graphics settings guide.
This is directly copied from the Total War Blog graphics settings guide.
"Units in ETW are hugely improved over Med2, each unit can have variants of each body part modelled- torso, legs, arms, head, hat, cross-belts, hair, cuffs, face hair, and hands. It’s a huge number of variations to render and a challenge to efficient instancing."
Is the guys serious Clonarmies
But good guide!
As ForlornHope explained HERE on high setting the soldiers look different. See his screenshots.
The only thing is that they have locked the unit detail settings to High in most rigs which is a shame... my 8800 gts 320Mb delivers only Cloned armies even if I set everything to high they should have allowed people to mix and match ultra,high, etc 'cause I'd rather have different soldiers than nice trees to look at
Cloned armies isn't as big an issue as it was in previous games, as the units are so meticulously detailed that it isn't as noticeable.
Is there any way to go around the games limitations?
I really want this high unit detail, I'm even willing to trade shadows for it!
Born to be wild - live to outgrow it (Lao Tzu)
Someday you will die and somehow something's going to steal your carbon
In contrast to the efforts of tiny Israel to make contributions to the world so as to better mankind, one has to ask what have those who have strived to eliminate Israel from the face of the earth done other than to create hate and bloodshed.
yes. look around this forum. you edit a text file and it unlocks all options. its so easy.
The angelic advice is right here...
Made an old P4 3.0 MHz HT with 3.0 GB RAM and GeForce 7600 GT 256 MB graphics card set at 1680 x 1050 resolution go all ultra settings for me. Big - I say BIG - difference. So I salute DrWizardPHD.
PS. You can't see this preferences file unless you tell the computer to show its hidden files and folders. In Windows XP, you do that, for instance, by open up a window for any folder in your computer, select "Tools" in the menu for it, select "Folder Options" on the list there, then click the "Show" tab, and finally find and mark the option to show hidden files and folders.
Last edited by Demokritos; March 09, 2009 at 07:58 AM.
GNOTHI SEAUTON (Know Thyself) - precept inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
MEDEN AGAN (Nothing To Excess) - another precept inscribed in the aforementioned place
I wonder which or if there is a setting that can disable rain detail, cause rain seems to affect fps allot in my game, even when the game is paused.
demokriotos, do you have vista verison of the guide? it would be damn helpful.
Thanks a lot Demokritos and drwizardphd, you made my day and saved me an expensive VC upgrade... +rep
I can't believe that CA capped the hardware like this... After applying the change my VC is actually handling ETW much faster :-) on ultra/high settings...
@CroMagnon - I don't think there is a setting which can reduce the detail of rain alone. You probably need to tune down the general setting for detail in the game. Just experiment with those settings to see what works for you. Start with all settings on lowest possible (including perhaps resolution on your screen) or off completely, and then work your way up one setting at a time until you reach your threshold.
By the way, if you have an NVidia (GeForce) graphics card, have you tried enabling triple buffering on the 3D settings of that card (not the video settings inside the game) together, perhaps, with a program called RivaTuner? This combination solved a problem to run M2TW on max video settings for me.
@Master Magic Mage - Sorry, I'm not familiar with Vista. But you should find the directory for that preferences file (properly called preferences.empire_script or preferences.empire_script.txt) by searching your computer for it (perhaps stating the search conditions to include hidden files).
Edit: I came across the following (unconfirmed) reference for Vista owners in an other thread: C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts
But another one wrote "I have the steam version of ETW and the files were located at
c:\users\username\appdata\roaming\the creative assembly\empire"
@Jegui - Yes, it is rather odd that CA fooled many players to believe their cards weren't good enough to run this game properly.
Last edited by Demokritos; March 10, 2009 at 02:59 AM.
GNOTHI SEAUTON (Know Thyself) - precept inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
MEDEN AGAN (Nothing To Excess) - another precept inscribed in the aforementioned place
With Vista, for me at least, it was C:\Users\[my name\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Empire\scripts
Make sure you have hidden folders and files set to be viewable.
yeah i found it. still, cant run any better. for me, its takes AGES to load a battle.
Are you running the demo by any chance? Because some guy said that line is missing in the demo. In the full game, you find it the 11th from the top in the preferences file.
The above tweak only affects the detail by which the graphics can be rendered, a step from medium video settings up to ultra. Which is a BIG beautiful step. Loading and turning times are governed by other things. I don't have much of a problem there, not with Windows XP, P4 3.0 MHz HT, and 3 GB RAM. Vista and 2 GB RAM might be more problematic.
Read point #3 in the quote which you quoted.
Well, you saw my specs, didn't you? If I can, surely you should be able to do it, and more smoothly, too. You'll like the show.
GNOTHI SEAUTON (Know Thyself) - precept inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
MEDEN AGAN (Nothing To Excess) - another precept inscribed in the aforementioned place
meh, it is probably my massive lack of RAM. only got 1022 mb, and im on a vista.
GNOTHI SEAUTON (Know Thyself) - precept inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, Greece
MEDEN AGAN (Nothing To Excess) - another precept inscribed in the aforementioned place