Hannibal Battle Lagging?

[Lortrano]

The first battle against Hannibal as rome lags so much. (Like 2-3 fps)

Here are my specs:
Core; Intel 2 Duo E4500 2.2 ghz
GPU; Radeon 6450
RAM; 4GB DDR2
OS; Windows Vista 32 bit
Resolution; 1280x768

I have no idea why it's lagging so much I can run Shogun 2 medium settings no problem and it didn't lag when I had a ATI 2400 and 2 gb of RAM

I have turned my antivirus software off and tried to play on the lowest settings and it still lags just as much. Does anyone know what I can do to stop this?

[Lortrano]

And the Campaign map doesn't lag just the battles

[Greymane]

I believe this has something to do with something to do with the fact that Rome TW only uses 1 core instead of mutiple (but my understanding of system specs ends here).
And off course the amount of trees in that map makes for a pretty laggy proposition. I am afraid there is not a whole lot to be done about it, but maybe someone more knowlegdeable than I will have some ideas.
In the meantime you can try googling your problem, as it's not exclusive to your pc.
That said, on my pc it doesn't usually lag that much.

[Lortrano]

Ok, thanks for the reply. I'll look into it some more

[ur-Lord Tedric]

Sadly I'm afraid the problem is almost definitely linked to the very low speed of your processor.

More modern games can take advantage of more than one core and offload much of the graphics processing to the dedicated GPU on our graphics card, but RTW does not/cannot.

Everything is handled in just one core and using only the main processor and thus only its speed.

Option 1 - reduce your graphics settings to their lowest possible/sensible; use maximum Large and possibly even Normal/Medium unit sizes; forget zooming in and reduce all background graphics (trees, grass, etc) to their minimum; cut the colour back to 16-bit. Then if that is acceptable, increase individual settings (can be done at any time) upwards to your priority and see where it starts to get worse

Option 2 (mine) - get an old PC (I have one of those little cubes on my (2nd) desk) and, if it doesn't have one, fit it with an (older?) single, or any number, core running at least at 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz is better and 3.3GHz is better still (probably an Intel one). Any old budget Graphics card will do, I suspect, (512Mb memory is enough), as long as it will keep up with the main processor and 2-3Gb of memory (again, matched and fast enough to keep up with the GPU). Perhaps get a budget PC-person to build it for you, test it, get WinXP SP3 loaded and registered before it's gone forever; the necessary drivers - and nothing else at all except disk versions of (RTW Gold) of RTW. It only needs a CD drive and a USB slot to get pre-screened updates in.

Never connect it to the internet - fit an older, but suitable screen - mouse and speakers - and it's yours forever. If you ever find it CTDs, note very carefully, for it's definitely a bug that dvk' wants to know about, unless you didn't run the script, in which case it's you!