Medieval II Total War battle slowdown to ridiculous level

**Malcolm_Reynolds** · February 03, 2011, 03:01 PM

I am deep in a campaign in MTW II. I have not had this issue happen in this campaign until now.

The battle menu slows down to maybe 1/3 frame per second, I can't click on units, the movement is choppy, and the city battle that I'm fighting for I'm ready to just give up because I don't want to spend 1.5t hours on this battle.

I have NOT had this problem in this campaign until now.

My system:

AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual
Core Processor 5600+
2.81 HHz, 3.25 GB of Ram.

Fresh boot, not even a browser running in the background. Processes 38, CPU USAGE (on campaign map) 0%. Commit Charge 561M/4164M

Display Adapters NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT (Dual)
Driver Date 4/3/2010

My faction leader (Spain) is in Toulouse, with 736 men, being attacked by a family member of the French with 1017 men. The battle starts out ok, but slows down, like I said, to well under 1/3 frame per second.

Unplayable.

The rest of this campaign has worked just fine.

Any thoughts?

**Squid** · February 03, 2011, 03:21 PM

Moved to appropriate technical help forum. The one posted in is for site related technical problems.

**Neige** · February 03, 2011, 03:29 PM

Something with the AI and siege equipment. I've had this before a few times. Once I sallied out and the AI dropped all siege equipment, the lag disappeared. It's possible you had the same issue.

**irishron** · February 03, 2011, 03:56 PM

I'd say it is.

Try turning down your monitor resolution, turning off the eyecandy, etc. If this does not help, it's the battle ai being stupid.

**Woolridge** · February 10, 2011, 11:22 AM

Something like this?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLKQOVMZtnE

Yes, it's very annoying. And I'd say it is something related to siege equipment as well. And also happens when 6 militia units try to climb up the same siege tower at the same time.

I'm about to lose Toledo to a Jihad. I have like 3 Seleucid stacks, plus 2 Kwarezmian and 1 Moorish at Toledo's gates. I'd like to put up some resistance!!

It has to be something about the siege AI. My computer can handle high numbers with no problem. Isn't there a solution?

**irishron** · February 10, 2011, 11:47 AM

Instead of siege equipment, how about the walls you are sieging? They can and most of the time will cause a performance hit in a hot second being 2048 x 2048.

**Woolridge** · February 10, 2011, 05:22 PM

Saw something funny that may be the source of the problem.

http://img534.imageshack.us/i/0004ty.jpg/

http://img15.imageshack.us/i/0005sq.jpg/

http://img109.imageshack.us/i/0008gd.jpg/

So the wall is perfectly done, but the terrain directly underneath forms some kind of valley, leaving some space that forms a graphics glitch. The enemy troops are getting into my castle using that "hole", but there is no room at the other side, no path that links it to the rest of the map, just a few buildings. No unit is supposed to get in there.

Could that be?

In any case, the siege machines have something to do with the problem. Before the enemies used this glitch to get in the castle, and presumably making the game almost freeze, I had experienced some serious slowing. Fortunately enough, my general unit was about to charge an enemy catapult. The slowing issue went away as soon as my first knight hit their first men. So bad it returned two minutes later.