This mod so bloody slow?

[Leard]

Its too damn big, I can't play the late era campaign and some of the factions in the early one (it just crashes to desktop). It takes about a minute to change turns (may not seem like long but over 60 turns thats an entire hour wasted waiting around) and sometimes it crashes. My computer isn't crappy because I can play the game on about medium settings its just the campaign map, I haven't had a chance to get into a battle because I get frustrated from the slowness and quit or it crashes so I don't know if they'll be any better. You've done a excellent job with the mod and I'm not saying in anyway you've done bad but how can I improve it so I can actually play it without crashes or long waits. I don't know if its my graphics card or memory or what because I know bugger all about comptuers, my graphics card is Nvidia GeForce 7300 by the way.

[Sevachenko]

Well from what i've experienced myself and from what others have mentioned, Byg's Grim Reality does increase the delay of waiting for your next turn. So I'd try reinstalling SS without it and see how it performs. A price for fancy traits.

As for crashing, I can't really say. Crashing after doing certain things on the main menu area like clicking too many factions or going from early to late era is known. Although if you are just randomly crashing often then there is a possibility of corrupted files and I'd do a clean install.

[Barser]

uff! the geforce7300 is terrible.. I had one once. Couldnt really run mtw2 so good job of getting it to work.

[Nicholas H.C]

I have a 8600 GT. No lag whatsoever

[King Xiao]

I have a 6800gt and i can't play SS anymore as it just takes too long. Seeing as a 7300 isnt much of an improvement, i would just stick to playing SS 5.1 like me, may not be much but atleast the turn times are decent. Any gfx card from 6800 to before 7800 is pretty much the same as they can be overclocked.

[Barser]

7300 is much worse than 6800 gt trust me I know. It is a budget card that is very slow.

[WRL]

http://www.guru3d.com/index.php?page=rivatuner

Riva tuner is a powerful tweaking utility for Nvidia cards. Read the link if you think you can handle it, you can try a slight overclock of shader clock, memory clock, and the core clock. Don't overdo it, try a little at a time.

[Spamostoc]

I have an ages old ATI card and I can run SS just fine. Whatever card you have really needs to be chucked.

[hellas1]

@ WRL,

I looked at the Riva Tuner and I must say that overclocking is dangerous!

Especially, if your like me, when you don't have $$ to pay for Boo-Boos!

Is there a safer way other than overclocking to get more juice out of my graphics card?

I've downloaded the newest beta driver for the Nvidia card already.

Incidentally, the card I have is a Nvidia 7350 and it works fine, plays SS 6.1 great. I just want to extract more power out of it if possible

hellas1

[WRL]

@ WRL,

I looked at the Riva Tuner and I must say that overclocking is dangerous!

Especially, if your like me, when you don't have $$ to pay for Boo-Boos!

Is there a safer way other than overclocking to get more juice out of my graphics card?

I've downloaded the newest beta driver for the Nvidia card already.

Incidentally, the card I have is a Nvidia 7350 and it works fine, plays SS 6.1 great. I just want to extract more power out of it if possible

hellas1

You have the latest drivers, and remember beta's are still in development, so they don't guarantee better performance, but to 'get a little more juice' without buying a new card, you'll probably resort to OC. Take your core GPU clock speed, and google the next in line series find it's core clock speed, and slowing move your defalt speeds slightly within that margin. This will make the card run a little hotter, howevver it's always good make sure inside your case there's good ventalation, Riva tuner is a more advanced tool, Coolbits is an older registry tweak, and it actually has a set to optimise button, so you can have less worries with overclocking, it's older, but easier, as rivia tuner is powerful and can alter almost anything on the card.

Today, overclocking is so commonplace that equipment vendors expect you to do it. Look, for instance, at AMD and Intel: Their enthusiast-class parts are completely unlocked and primed for a clock jump. Look at some memory vendors: OCZ, for one, allows a 5% overclock on some of its memory without voiding the warranty. Look at Nvidia and AMD's ATI: Overclocking controls are downloadable from their sites, or built right into their driver interfaces.

Way back when, it was insane to overclock your computer. Now, it's almost insane not to.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...2188777,00.asp

[Leard]

Wow, 50 makes a difference then. I would buy a new card but I hardly play any games on the computer and if I do I'm playing one at a time.

[Gorrrrrn]

The end turn slowness is well-known.

Some slowness may depend on whether you have other processes running in the background.

You may have a slow-ish main processor. AN upgrade to the graphics card might speed things up a bit too. (7300 not really designed as a games playing card. In nVidia terms x800 + are best games cards - although I'd be reluctant to recommend a replacement as a lot would depend on your budget and your motherboard.)

But even optimised many of us still have to wait a minute between turns. Basically it's the price you pay for having the AI making more moves and more decisions. If it had a smaller map, fewer factions and less complicated AI it would run quicker. But then it wouldn't be Stainless Steel.

Remember this isn't an arcade game or an RTS. It's a strategy game and that means it gives you time to think and plan out your moves.

[King Xiao]

Yeah, i think it is my processor as i have a Athlon XP 3000+ lol. Not even a 64 series.

[Marto]

"Remember this isn't an arcade game or an RTS. It's a strategy game and that means it gives you time to think and plan out your moves." [/quote]


I like this ^^. I was thinking this to myself the other night. Some of my best strategies, realisations, or just simple ideas have been fostered by the wait.

One of the beauties of the game is that you can just thunder through it slashing and burning with little care for dread, reputation, the lives of your family, or even the course of your empire, or you can slow it down to chess speed and come up with a dastardly plan to steal the world to your own ideals whilst you come out smelling of roses....

[caralampio]

No matter what card you have, the end turn in this mod is long. I have an ATI X1650 (not great but good) I can play with almost everything on high but the AI turn still takes from 1 to 2 minutes.

I have resorted to reading a book during these intervals and I'm amazed I've almost finished it! Well as someone said, over 60 turns you're losing 60 minutes time (60-120 in my case).

[Grandmaster Ryu]

Seriously - just remove BYGIII - it will reduce your turn times by like 75% - No offence to BYG of course, his mod rules - it's just only intended for people with cash xD

[Nicholas H.C]

I got Byg 3 on my SS mod i don't really have slow turns

[Grandmaster Ryu]

Good! =]

BYG is so more realistic for the campaign - I'd even use it... just need to upgrade my laptop

[eisenkopf]

the type of graphics card (as long as it's a dedicated one and not chipset) does not influence the performance of the campaign map significantly. since when do graphic cards handle the actual non-3d processing like the AI decision-making and scripting? the cpu and ram are more important for your performance problems. if you can't reduce the number of processes running besides m2tw, do as previous posters said and remove Byg's script. you also might want to turn of shadows and display of AI movement, though.

[Grandmaster Ryu]

To be honest I don't mind long turns as it gives the player some time to think about their next moves, and what the effects of them will be.