Performance problems

**Excalibur Bane** · July 08, 2013, 12:51 PM

Hey guys,

I'm running into some serious slow downs in battles. My framerate is just diving whenever I have the entire army in the foreground, worse still if both my army and the enemy army are in view. Soon as I rotate everything out of view except a handful of units, it's fine again. I've had to disable shadows, vegetation and set trees to the lowest. Is this something hard coded or am I doing something wrong?

I'm running on a GTX 580, so I would assume that's more then enough to handle the game. Core i7-950 at 3.4 Ghz as well.

Any help would be appreciated.

**Brusilov** · July 08, 2013, 02:35 PM

You need to supply a bit more information on the graphic settings you are using.

Also - how much memory do you use?

Don't forget that the game engine dates from 2004 (or well before that) and it won't use more than one core and your GTX580 won't be used properly either.

Also - how far have you zoomed out before you suffer a slowdown?

**Excalibur Bane** · July 08, 2013, 09:19 PM

Well, there really isn't that much graphics settings to fiddle with. I have them all maxed out except for vegetation which is off, shadows which is off and trees which is low. No AA enabled either. Running at 1680 x 1050
And I don't understand what you mean about memory. Main system memory is 6 GB, and Rome doesn't even touch all that. Please clarify.

As to how far I've zoomed out, I get about halfway out and it starts to chug pretty hard.

I'm also using the latest Nvidia drivers.

Thanks for taking the time to help.

**Post Hoc** · July 08, 2013, 10:04 PM

Do you have high resolution models on?

Are you playing with huge unit size?

whats your "effects quality" set as?

**Excalibur Bane** · July 08, 2013, 10:28 PM

I have ultra unit detail and unit size is large. It was eminently worse with huge unit sizes. Effects quality is set to max.

**Post Hoc** · July 09, 2013, 12:08 AM

Fight a custom battle and save the army composition. Fight the battle over and over while tweaking your settings until you get that perfect ratio of performance vs quality. You can change some options in game while fighting as well.

For example, I would start by setting everything except for resolution on medium to low settings. Fight a battle and if there is no performance issues bump everything up a notch. I know vegetation is the biggest performance killer, unit detail is a close second. I remember reading somewhere in a guide that if you use the highest setting for unit detail it will disable sprites which kills performance.

Cheers and good luck.

**Brusilov** · July 09, 2013, 12:13 AM

Have you enabled the high-res units?

I'd suggest not doing that and also not high res vegetation as they can be killers.

With the zoom out mode - do you get the lag before or after you see the sprites (which replace the actual units when zoomed out).

Also, if you play at anything other than normal speed when zoomed out I think it will always lag.

I've got a GTX570 and don't use either of these settings - I play with huge unit size and at resolution 2560x1600. I prefer 'epic' to 'pretty'......

I have AA off in-game but use the nVidia control panel to 'enhance in-game settings'. There is a lot you can do with the nVidia control panel - way too much to explain. Each system is different so it's a matter of experimentation. I doubt it will allow you to play at the settings you want (again due to limitations of the game engine).

**Excalibur Bane** · July 09, 2013, 12:49 AM

Yeah, the settings now are fine. The trees and shadows are off. That brings it up to a reasonable level, I tend to use triple speed alot, but I guess the lag there is unavoidable due to the game engine limitations. And what are high res unit models? How do you enable them?

**Post Hoc** · July 09, 2013, 12:57 AM

In the launcher, its at the bottom.

**Excalibur Bane** · July 09, 2013, 01:35 AM

Hot diggity, I'll turn that on just to lag some more.

**NobleStef80** · July 09, 2013, 03:43 AM

Just keep in mind that Rome:Total War was made to run on "Single Core" only. Set it to run in one core and forget the lag, trust me. I have a really cruppy PC than your's and I play in 1080 with AA on, shadows on, units to high, unit detail in high with no lag!

This is how to do it:
-ctrl+alt+del while in game,
-click processes,
-right-click Rome exe,
-click Affinity,
-check the CPU(s) off by clicking the check box(es), it depends how many cores you have, live just one checked (usually the first).
Click OK and you are good to go!

Regards,
NobleStef80

**Brusilov** · July 09, 2013, 12:41 PM

I think if you play at 3x speed it's pretty much always going to lag unless you have your settings so low that it's almost unplayable at normal speed.

Just try and get the game to play smoothly at normal speed.

If you do what NobleStef80 has suggested it seems as if you need to do that each time you launch R:TW.

**Excalibur Bane** · July 09, 2013, 12:46 PM

I've reduced the shadows to off, turned vegetation to low, turned off AA and turned down a few other settings and I think it's smooth now. I'll play with the other settings later. Thanks for all the tips guys!