The age of the SSD is here, folks.

[talljoe]

Hey all,

We all have criticisms of R2TW, and those of us who have been here for a while know that the game will improve a lot over time (remember the Shogun 2 released in DX9 with no anti aliasing?). But I've also seen many, many people complaining about load times and AI turn times.

Well, I'm running it on an SSD and I have to say both load times and turn times are completely negligible. If don't watch AI movements (which is mostly ships) then the turns are incredibly fast. I really think if you plan on playing TW games, then the age of the SSD is here. They aren't very expensive anymore, I got my samsung 840 250gb for $150 on new egg.

I also have a fast processor, so I don't know if that helps with turn time (4670k). But I would highly recommend the ssd.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Yeah, the loading times are really not that bad. Probably one of the few positive things I currently have to say about the game.

[a tw player]

Loading times are fantastic on my SSD also, barely 5 seconds to load up even large battles; incredible.

Turn times take the mick though. They start off fine but, now in my campaign at turn 60, they take more than a couple of minutes...I actually have to go and do something else once I click end turn to pass the time.

[xxax]

Load times are negligible, but i don't see many people complaining about those. Time between turns on the other hand is INSANELY long.

[TeutonicKnight]

I'm using an i7 proc, 16GB of RAM, and have the game installed on SSD. I have not noticed any significant lag issues. I did have a problem with end of turn, but I turned off "Show AI moves", and now it's two minutes, tops. (worst time recorded was just 97 seconds from end of turn, but I'm padding it a little for when I wasn't using a stopwatch)

[Lord-Fisher]

£150? Cheap? Pfff...

My loading times aren't actually that bad, and I don't have an SSD, though I think I'll get one anyway

[accapulco]

I have a 15 year old HDD (I know, I know) that has been savaged by rampaging barbarian hordes and in the worst condition but my battles no matter the size load in 10-30 seconds where as in Shogun 2, 1 peasanto vs 1 peasanto would take literally 3-5 minutes. I cannot even fathom how you could watch ai moves and keep your sanity by turn 100 so keep that turned off guys! My end turn takes about 1 minute so its not super bad, I take the time to open the in-game chat rooms and talk to people about the game etc.. Shame that they are region locked though, wtf CA? I would've liked to go talk in english speaking rooms rather then just my country. But noo gotta keep em barbarians outta white people's rooms eh?
Also alt-tabbing works so good for me, some people are having problems but it seems random due to very bad or no optimization in the game which should get fixed soon. I can alt tab anytime even mid battle and the game will be fine, where as old total wars took like 5 minutes to load the game back and could just crash after making you wait. Mind you this isn't praise on the game this is just some things they somehow magically managed to get right.

[Vernah]

The turn times for the huge amount of factions has actually been a positive for me. I was amazed that with the huge amount of factions that my turn times are below a minute. Load times for the map and battles are fairly quick. My main gripes have to do with the poor optimization with the GPU, which I hope will be fixed with driver updates from AMD.

[Mansen]

Load times are pretty long for a game, but not long for a game of this kind. Europa Universalis takes about as long to load as this does.The end turn is pretty much on the CPU so I can't really complain there, considering I have a 3570k...

[Emperor Domitianus]

With proper HW the game runs fine. It's not only Rome II, it's all games. Think about incoming BF4. The game support only the latest tech DX11 and Windows 7/8. Is this the case to comply? NO. If you cannot run the game because you are out of the present moment resign and move to older games and do ruin the reputation of a company. It's made of people not of robots without a heart and a mind.

[Medina]

I don't get the loading time problem at all. I don't have any problems. Loading times for battles is arround 15 seconds. Loading times between turns around 35. I am using a normal Hitachi HDD. No SSD.

[Fenr1r]

Yes and no. If you want the best performance now then you need a SSD. People can't complain about slow loading when using an older HD. However, there is no excuse to not have SLI or Crossfire support at launch on any game in 2013.

[smoke]

Load times are negligible, but i don't see many people complaining about those. Time between turns on the other hand is INSANELY long.

Remember, you can untoggle "follow AI moves", that really helps

[smoke]

Load times are negligible, but i don't see many people complaining about those. Time between turns on the other hand is INSANELY long.

Remember, you can untoggle "follow AI moves", that really helps

[Idomeneas]

Ssd are still very expensive for what they deliver in terms of volume. They can be of use if only you use them for your OS and really important programs. They are still of very limited space capacity to use them for fooling around with games.
My 2 cents.

[Emperor Domitianus]

Yes and no. If you want the best performance now then you need a SSD. People can't complain about slow loading when using an older HD. However, there is no excuse to not have SLI or Crossfire support at launch on any game in 2013.

I agree with this. SLi would improve alot.

[Romans]

SSDs certainly make loading times shorter but they don't make turn times shorter. No extra data is specifically being read or written to your drive while waiting for turns, it's just calculating operations based on already loaded memory. What affects how fast your computer will do turns is CPU and RAM, CPU being the most crucial.Thought I should point this out.

[talljoe]

SSDs certainly make loading times shorter but they don't make turn times shorter. No extra data is specifically being read or written to your drive while waiting for turns, it's just calculating operations based on already loaded memory. What affects how fast your computer will do turns is CPU and RAM, CPU being the most crucial.Thought I should point this out.

Oh ok, well my turn times are super short... I'm playing as Rome on hard, about 55 turns in, and I've never had a turn take longer than 10-20 seconds, and even then it's because I see AI movement and have an island ally with lots of ships moving around.

[Dynamo11]

Loads fast for me on a standard 7200 rpm HDD, doesn't stop the awful graphical problems

[Dynamo11]

Loads fast for me on a standard 7200 rpm HDD, doesn't stop the awful graphical problems