Too much candy hurts...

**Re_Minder** · May 20, 2011, 07:06 PM

...my PC.

I have a serious problem with SS and I thought that maybe someone here would give me a clue how to fix it.

My PC is poo, athlon 2000+, 768 RAM, GeForce 4 128Mb. Yeah, I know its bad, and I can't do much about it. You probably know it barely makes the minimum needed for vanilla M2:TW. But the funny thing is, I can play vanilla M2 and Kingdoms without any major problems.

Now when it comes to SS6.3 (6.4 for some reason doesn't run for me), it is a greater strain than I can handle. It IS pretty, but the eye candy drops my frame rates so bad that its barely worth playing, and I'm not talking about battle maps only, CG map in Iberia, for example, scrolls insanely slow as well. In battle maps it's fine when I fight in plains... but God save me from any trees. As soon as I turn my camera to face any more than a couple of trees, frame rate becomes horrible even with 1x speed.

I want to ask a couple of questions:

1) Are there any mods that improve the performance of SS6.3? All I saw was the mod to make turns faster, but I don't mind waiting a bit as long as battles and CG maps aren't choppy.

2) Which SS version added the most eye candy? I'd rather play a not that pretty version that runs and looks like vanilla, but has (most of) the fixes of SS6.3... (for example, if you know that SSx.x ran smoother, please say so)

3) Any tricks to improve overall performance?

Thank you in advance.

PS. I know it's impolite... but for those whose only advice is "buy a better PC"... go xxxx a xxxxx. I can hardly afford my internet ($20/month) a new PC or even parts are out of the question completely. Any OTHER advice is really welcome tho.

PSS. If I should've posted in some other section, forgive me... I'm new to this forum and TW series.

**k/t** · May 20, 2011, 08:31 PM

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=375815
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=243167
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=371688
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=379507

Ah, the wonders of search...

These were the search terms in Google, in case anyone thinks I only found those because I r teh 1337 haxxor: stainless steel campaign map lag

**David93** · May 20, 2011, 08:33 PM

I know its a bit obvious but are your graphic settings at low? reduce the unit sizes to small as possible.

**Re_Minder** · May 21, 2011, 04:58 AM

Well... thanks for advice. I did use google, tho my keywords were probably not quite the best.

I've tried most of the solutions and they didn't improve the performance much. At least I've read that SS6.1 is less laggy.. gonna try that.

Cheers.

**Squidgyness** · May 21, 2011, 05:32 AM

You could try upgrading your memory. Go look at your System Information (its in the start menu) and look up what type of memory you have, then go to ebay and get more of it. It's only about 10-15 quid for 1GB, which would help you do other stuff besides SS.

**bɑne** · May 21, 2011, 06:41 AM

Moved to Bug Reports & Technical Help. And read my edit comment.

**riknap** · May 22, 2011, 08:15 AM

you could try editing the following file
C:\Program Files\SEGA\Medieval II Total War\mods\SS6.3\default.cg
and the two settings
[video]
grass_distance=9000
unit_detail=very high

lowering the unit_detail prevents the PC from rendering distant units as 3d, instead making them sprites (ie. less "effort" for the computer); same goes for grass_distance (I think)

then, you could always play 6.1 as you've posted, or even 5.1 (or was it 4.1) which doesn't use Kingdoms, though of course features will be missing.
While I would also recommend overclocking your Athlon 2000+ (1.67 ghz is a bit.... anyway), I'm not sure it's advisable unless you'd like to spend some time reading on how to do it (and that also depends if your motherboard itself could support it).

**Re_Minder** · May 22, 2011, 12:20 PM

I've actually changed the grass distance and unit detail, it was mentioned in one of the threads k/t mentioned, and while it improved the battle performance a bit, the CG map was still as slow. I could bet that the advice of removing trees would have helped in the CG map, but the way how that had to be done was described quite vaguely.

Overclocking a PC as old as mine is bound to result in its death, I'm already facing various issues regularly.

6.1 had many graphical changes that 5.1 didn't, so I might try that... I'm currently playing Darth's mod, which runs very smooth. I guess if I tampered with it a bit, I might add the guild and trait/ancillary changes from SS6.3, which would be quite awesome...

Anyway, thanks for the help.

PS. Generally, I don't believe my comment was worth censoring, as I avoided using any curse words and insulted trolls in general rather than someone particular. Oh well, it doesn't matter much anyway.

**Losthief** · May 23, 2011, 12:34 AM

Originally Posted by Re_Minder

I've actually changed the grass distance and unit detail, it was mentioned in one of the threads k/t mentioned, and while it improved the battle performance a bit, the CG map was still as slow. I could bet that the advice of removing trees would have helped in the CG map, but the way how that had to be done was described quite vaguely.

Overclocking a PC as old as mine is bound to result in its death, I'm already facing various issues regularly.

6.1 had many graphical changes that 5.1 didn't, so I might try that... I'm currently playing Darth's mod, which runs very smooth. I guess if I tampered with it a bit, I might add the guild and trait/ancillary changes from SS6.3, which would be quite awesome...

Anyway, thanks for the help.

PS. Generally, I don't believe my comment was worth censoring, as I avoided using any curse words and insulted trolls in general rather than someone particular. Oh well, it doesn't matter much anyway.

did you turn off shadows, boats, and wagons on the campaign map?