Sparta Let's Play

[LysanderOfSparta]

Howdy, folks!

I ended my Roma campaign early this morning due to savegame incompatibility, and decided to start up a Sparta one instead. The Roma one was just a testbed for this campaign, anyways.

First video is live here: https://youtu.be/xjiJzVNmbik
Episode 2: https://youtu.be/oLpoz4QD5u4
Episode 3: https://youtu.be/TPhJ52-pCw0
Episode 4: https://youtu.be/M4RgKNdNKaw
Episode 5: https://youtu.be/wuXnR7hfQXw
Come judge me! Or don't; I'm not a cop.

[Jake Armitage]

Sorry, but why recruiting best units first? You're going to lose money this way since you'll face an higher upkeep.

[Sarkiss]

water looks really pretty. any graphical submods you use with it?
have fun with your campaign

[Nordling]

Sorry, but why recruiting best units first? You're going to lose money this way since you'll face an higher upkeep.

The first judge is here!

[LysanderOfSparta]

Sorry, but why recruiting best units first? You're going to lose money this way since you'll face an higher upkeep.

For RP reasons, really. If I were to play the game and try to min/max everything there'd be no challenge. I like to build powerful armies, then deal with the repercussions of my choices. It's a viable play style, to a certain point. And no need to apologize. I don't in any way pretend to be a pro; I know enough to win a campaign on my terms. I will also try to remember to address this point when I make the next video.

water looks really pretty. any graphical submods you use with it? have fun with your campaign

Yes, quite a few! There's a modlist in the video description, but here's the link for ya: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1570423242
Taken together, I've found the FPS impact to be relatively minimal, but it's best to play with your settings and see what works best for you, depending on your PC.

The first judge is here!

The first, and probably not the last. Just wait til they see how I build my pike armies. I'm a firm believer in muh pikes! strats.

[Jake Armitage]

You're right, sorry to have asked!

[LysanderOfSparta]

You're right, sorry to have asked!

No worries! I'm glad you did; it gives me more to talk about next time I record.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Sacurason, regarding that list of mods you use, have you noticed any performance improvement with this 'Performance maker for massive battles'? I was using it for a period of time and didn't really notice much of the difference. That was, however, at the time when I in general had some performance issues with the game, so perhaps my judgment of it was not so accurate then.

Also, are you currently using Orbis Terrarum? Is it compatible at the moment?

[mAIOR]

Sacurason, regarding that list of mods you use, have you noticed any performance improvement with this 'Performance maker for massive battles'? I was using it for a period of time and didn't really notice much of the difference. That was, however, at the time when I in general had some performance issues with the game, so perhaps my judgment of it was not so accurate then.

Also, are you currently using Orbis Terrarum? Is it compatible at the moment?

I amvery much interested in this as well as 40 vs 40 battles turn ito a lag fest for me too (only have 8 gigs of ram on my laptop so that might be the origin of some of the lag). I have an ongoing athenian campaign where I houseruled that I tried and confederate withall greek factions. Only one I couldn't get was knossos.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

I amvery much interested in this as well as 40 vs 40 battles turn ito a lag fest for me too (only have 8 gigs of ram on my laptop so that might be the origin of some of the lag).

From what I've read, this lag problem in larger battles is actually down to shortcomings of one's CPU, though these are mostly speculations and I don't think there is any official stance on it.

[Nordling]

I amvery much interested in this as well as 40 vs 40 battles turn ito a lag fest for me too (only have 8 gigs of ram on my laptop so that might be the origin of some of the lag). I have an ongoing athenian campaign where I houseruled that I tried and confederate withall greek factions. Only one I couldn't get was knossos.

Same idea here, also played a campaign like that. You beat them in the field, lay siege to hieraptyna and suddenly theyre all itching for a peace and confed!
They made it easy for me since they declared war on me first tho.

It is the go-to solution for most of warfare with factions that you confed with. No need to take the final settlement, lose a part of your army during the siege and suffer PO penalties when you can just confed

[mAIOR]

From what I've read, this lag problem in larger battles is actually down to shortcomings of one's CPU, though these are mostly speculations and I don't think there is any official stance on it.

Interesting. I will tedt it on my desktop and see if the problem persists. I have a 7th gen i5 on my laptop so it should be good ebough. Certainly enough for a game that came out 5 years ago...

@Nordling, in my campaign I wasn't even at war with most factions. I had conquered Greece, part of sicily and Carthage and my power was so overwelming i only needed to offer thebSpartans 10k, rhodes another 10k and Psrgamon joined me for free. I am planning on a remake of the Athenian empire so I want to get coastal cities around the med and Asia minor. Some factions forced me to go further in land and i had to take out Pontus and some African factions. I am going after the tolomies after since i am now more powerful than they are. My navy is strong with 2 full fleets and one half fleet with the smallest ships being trieres.

Fleets are really good in Rome 2 as you can use them strategically. I took a number of towns using just fleets. They have some of those artillery ships which provide fire support and then the marines make short work of the rest.

So yeah, knossos defied me I murdered them :o)

[hbghimself]

Sacurason, can you give some details on your PC. I would like to use some graphical enhancements too, but am not sure if my system can make it.
If you read this GS, maybe a small overview on PC rigs (nothing too detailed)and the capability of those running R2 with several mods would be nice in the Tech-Threads 1st post.

[~Seleukos.I.Nikator~]

Interesting. I will tedt it on my desktop and see if the problem persists. I have a 7th gen i5 on my laptop so it should be good ebough. Certainly enough for a game that came out 5 years ago...

That's pretty much the same type of CPU I have, though from what I know what matters most here is the power of each core rather than the number of cores the CPU has. Basically, it's been maintained that R2 has an ability to use only one core at a time, so the more powerful that core is the better. Though, I've also seen some people saying that this is just a myth and that R2 can in fact utilize more than just one core simultaneously. I believe GS might be able to say more about it.

[mAIOR]

That's pretty much the same type of CPU I have, though from what I know what matters most here is the power of each core rather than the number of cores the CPU has. Basically, it's been maintained that R2 has an ability to use only one core at a time, so the more powerful that core is the better. Though, I've also seen some people saying that this is just a myth and that R2 can in fact utilize more than just one core simultaneously. I believe GS might be able to say more about it.

Still, it should be enough to run a game from 2013 pretty smoothly. If anyone else has any tips I would appreciate.

Sorry for detailing your thread Sacurason. Looking forward to episode 2.

[LysanderOfSparta]

Still, it should be enough to run a game from 2013 pretty smoothly. If anyone else has any tips I would appreciate.

Sorry for detailing your thread Sacurason. Looking forward to episode 2.

No worries at all! I'm going to try and get some recording done right now - I found out one or two mods weren't really compatible w/ DeI(the animations one and the destructible objects one) so I removed those and now I can't load my save. Mod list has been updated accordingly. Not a big deal, will just replay the first turn.

Once I'm done I'll come back to give everyone a full reply

[LysanderOfSparta]

Alright, video is currently uploading! 4.5 GB so it'll be about an hour or so.
[QUOTE]Have you noticed any performance improvement with this 'Performance maker for massive battles'?


Honestly, I'm not 100% sure. I need to run a battle and take note of the FPS counter, then activate the mod and check again. Tentatively I'd say yes? Either way, unit detail + amount of units will *always* have the most effect on FPS.

Also, are you currently using Orbis Terrarum?

Sure am! Haven't seen any compatibility problems, but DeI makes so many changes that it can't hurt to check with the mods. Need to remember to add that one to the list.

I amvery much interested in this as well as 40 vs 40 battles turn ito a lag fest for me too (only have 8 gigs of ram on my laptop so that might be the origin of some of the lag).

Depends on your specs. Most important one will be is still GPU, but Rome 2 is definitely waaaaay more CPU intensive than most. I think 40 v 40 battles will cause frame drops for just about anyone, even me to a certain extent, and I have 8 GB RAM myself. I really notice the CPU lag in some city battles, when troops move around on the walls.

Only one I couldn't get was knossos.

Same! I mentioned that in my video. I wonder what's going on behind the scenes to cause that. Knossos refused confederation even when I owned Greece, Macedon, Pergamon, Italy, and parts of Africa.

You beat them in the field, lay siege to hieraptyna and suddenly theyre all itching for a peace and confed!

If I have to sacrifice good men to confederate,chitty chitty bang bang, gonna die.

Sacurason, can you give some details on your PC.

Sure.

CPU: i5-7400
GPU: GeForce GTX 1060 3 GB
RAM: 8 GB

Don't remember a whole lot of the rest, know I'm using a Corsair liquid cooler for the CPU. That's enough to run most of the game settings on high w/ large unit sizes. Only get noticeable frame drops in very large battles, as I mentioned above, and even then I believe it hovers in the 40's so it's not particularly unpleasant. And even then we're talking frame drops when I zoom in up close, not so much while I'm actually commanding my troops.

All of the mods, even taken together, don't have more than 1-2 frames lost per mod. If that. I would say the most impactful one is the Rome 2 HD, which actually replaces a lot of textures with higher quality ones. Maybe the particle effects one and the lighting one have some effect too.

That's pretty much the same type of CPU I have, though from what I know what matters most here is the power of each core rather than the number of cores the CPU has. Basically, it's been maintained that R2 has an ability to use only one core at a time, so the more powerful that core is the better. Though, I've also seen some people saying that this is just a myth and that R2 can in fact utilize more than just one core simultaneously. I believe GS might be able to say more about it.

Really? I'd heard that for Rome 1, but not Rome 2. Honestly, for what Rome 2 is achieving, I have strong doubts that the game would work on modern systems whilst utilizing a single core. But hey, I'm an IT tech, not a bloody CPU engineer! *shrug*

If anyone else has any tips I would appreciate.

Run a 40v40 battle on the lowest settings, then look away from the battle when the lag hits so there's nothing graphics-intensive onscreen. If you're still getting low framerate, the bottleneck is more likely your CPU - if the lag goes away, it's more likely your GPU. Have Rome 2 running in windowed mode so you can check out how much RAM you're using in task manager, too. See if you're using all of it or not.

But yeah honestly you can have a decent PC and still have some issues w/ 40v40's. I pretty much had to buy this computer to record Rome 2 at acceptable levels, and I *still* want more RAM and a better CPU. >.>

[LysanderOfSparta]

Second episode is live here! https://youtu.be/oLpoz4QD5u4

[mAIOR]

Run a 40v40 battle on the lowest settings, then look away from the battle when the lag hits so there's nothing graphics-intensive onscreen. If you're still getting low framerate, the bottleneck is more likely your CPU - if the lag goes away, it's more likely your GPU. Have Rome 2 running in windowed mode so you can check out how much RAM you're using in task manager, too. See if you're using all of it or not.

But yeah honestly you can have a decent PC and still have some issues w/ 40v40's. I pretty much had to buy this computer to record Rome 2 at acceptable levels, and I *still* want more RAM and a better CPU. >.>

Even on the highest settings the lag goes away when I am not looking at soldiers. There are some also some battles where i get a lag spike and then it goes away. The only thing that makes me wonder if it is something solvable is that 20vs20 are fine even at max settings. When you increase to 40vs40 though, that is a problem regardless of the situation. Which doesn't make sense.

My laptop has an i5 - 7300 HQ a 1050ti and 8 gigs of 2400MHz DDR4.

[LysanderOfSparta]

Even on the highest settings the lag goes away when I am not looking at soldiers. There are some also some battles where i get a lag spike and then it goes away. The only thing that makes me wonder if it is something solvable is that 20vs20 are fine even at max settings. When you increase to 40vs40 though, that is a problem regardless of the situation. Which doesn't make sense.

My laptop has an i5 - 7300 HQ a 1050ti and 8 gigs of 2400MHz DDR4.

Well, GPU Benchmark says that your GPU is significantly weaker than mine. Could be the problem. But yeah you can also check CPU usage in your Task Manager performance tab. Get a battle up to the point where it's lagging, then check to see if your CPU is being utilized at 100%. If it's not, it probably isn't the CPU. Every now and then I randomly get a battle where the lag spikes on/off for no reason - those ones tend to show my CPU spiking up and down, too.

And you're lagging even at lowest settings on 40v40, but fine on Max 20v20? Hrm. I couldn't really say, but it doesn't seem totally unreasonable that 40v40 would just be a lot for the GPU to handle even when gfx aren't turned up. I'm no expert, though.