Insane lagging across all of medieval ii...

**smitty** · August 01, 2007, 05:33 PM

Last week my computer was running fine but I hadn't played medieval in about a month. I went on vacation and came back to find that medieval was completely dysfunctional because of lag. It lags hardcore at the map screen and during battles, particularly sieges. I decided a good defragmentation might help out (I had 77% defragged hard drive) and a nice re-install. After a complete uninstall/delete I re-installed, had loads of problems installing patch 1.2 (multiple installs of this took place... may be a source of problems). Finally I got 1.2 to install and now when I run the unmodded game I STILL get insane lag issues. I turned shadows down to low and got a better fps on smaller open-field battles, but compared to what I used to be able to do a month ago this is terrible. My comp normally runs battles with 3000 men on a siege with very little to no lag issues, now it can't handle any sieges whatsoever and battles with over 1000 men slow it down a lot. Any help? I'm going to test some other games (Oblivion) to see if I have bad fps hits there too, perhaps my graphics card died over the weekend?

*I've tested Oblivion and noted no problems in FPS. This does appear to be a medieval ii specific problem. Just my luck with LTC 3.0 and SS 4.0 out now.....

**I've continued testing with medieval, performance has increased substantially from when I first tested two days ago, but I'm still encountering a lot of problems I shouldn't have (as in I didn't experience them the first 6 months of playing medieval). Some of those problems are that when I view my troops zoomed in I get some lag, especially when I scroll across the generals' bodyguard unit (this proved true over 3 different battles). I noticed a strange hit in fps when archers all prepared to shoot their arrows, fire arrows especially seemed to create lag. Once the arrows were in the air fps increased again, but it was lowest as they were being released from the bows. Another hit in fps came on the campaign map when I loaded a venice campaign with campaign shadows ON. I also did this with HRE, campaign shadows on, still terrible lag, I couldn't even switch between towns. I disabled the campaign shadows, attempted a campaign with england and no fps hits occured. I re-enabled campaign shadows and did an england campaign and a Turk campaign and saw NO fps hits this time. Very strange... I did see an increase in performance when I turned battle shadows from high to lowest, and another bit of an increase when I did shader 2.0 to 1.0. Although these are nice, I'm desperate to get my comp back up to pre-crash stats, which meant I could run shader 2.0, shadows on high, all graphics on medium with NO fps hits unless I was doing a very very large 4000 troop battle or something. I know these results are incredibly inconsistent and random, hence a lot of my concern, but I appreciate any help or advice you guys can offer.

Also, could this be .net related? I haven't re-installed that each time I re-install medieval... And for the record I've re-installed medieval 5 times over the past 2 days, and I hear rumors that multiple installs can cause issues...

**smitty** · August 02, 2007, 03:30 PM

Update:

After a driver update and yet another re-install of medieval (including a regedit delete of the sega folder after the uninstall) the only persistent problems are the crazy lag during battles, my performance is terrible. I'm not sure if my processor or video card just went kaput. Are there any programs I can run to test their functionality? Also, the lag disappears when I turn my battle view to behind my troops where the only things on screen are trees and rocks. If troops or buildings enter my vision then the lag kicks in hardcore. The lag is consistent even with shadows off, shader 1.0 running instead of 2.0, and bloom disabled. Nothing seems to improve performance. I hope this narrows down the problem possibilities.

**smitty** · August 02, 2007, 11:24 PM

SOLUTION!

After much aggravation I have found it was a problem with my x800 GTO drivers update. For the record, the 7.7 does not work well with Medieval. Catalyst 7.7 functions with medieval ii like drunk Christians function with hopped-up Muslims in Jerusalem. Anyway, I've reverted back to Catalyst 6.12 and things are great again. I know nobody ever replied to my problem, but for those of you that were interested in finding a solution (or for those with future problems), investigate your drivers and consider a revert. Thanks to those who cared enough to read the thread even if they had no solution to offer. SS4 here I come!