Extreme lag when looking at certain parts of the battlefield

[XDeath007]

I'm currently playing 2.3 as Romani and am besieging Lilibayeum (city in western Sicily) but I get almost unplayable lag of maybe 1-3fps whenever my camera is facing one of the gates in the battle. Whenever I face away the game acts fine.

This has also happened in other battles in this campaign as Romani. They were usually coastal battles and the "lag locations" seem to be a random grassy area each time (never the actual beaches so far).

I noticed a similar issue playing as Epeiros in 2.2r but the issue was definitely rarer then. Whether the problem is version-based, geographical, or both IDK. In either versions, sometimes the game would crash if I kept the camera on the lag spot for too long. Other times the game just crashes during the loading of the battle or even after the battle when returning to the campaign screen.

[Cryoshakespeare]

Ah yes, I remember experiencing something similar in certain sieges of Greek factions I believe. Well, my only recommendation is to turn graphical options down, if you haven't already. Though I doubt it will fix the issue entirely

[XDeath007]

On my next attempt, most of the infantry units seems to be causing the lag during deployment when I have them in view. Doesn't matter if they had siege equipment or not. Cavalry units didn't give issue.

However, I tried playing with the graphics settings again before starting the battle. This time, it seems that unit detail was definitely the culprit. Specifically, lag would come in at different times depending on how far my camera was from certain units.

In the end, I tried varying levels of camera zoom on my army 5 units at a time (leaving the rest out of camera view in each instance). I crashed while viewing thureophoroi, polybian hastati, polybian principes, polybian velites, and scorpions.

I was starting to think this has to do with the order in which meshes/textures are loaded. So I tried to create the same conditions again. Wouldn't you know it, NO units caused lag in deployment this time! I then started the battle and re-checked my army. No issues.

Thinking that maybe the gate or the enemy army would cause lag, I sent an equites consulares to the enemy gate to get a good look. No issues. Thinking that the problem may finally have gone away on its own, I then pressed shift+f2 to turn off reshade to have the best shot at a stable battle. Near the end of the loading thing that reshade does, the game crashed.

[XDeath007]

I just tried playing that siege again and noticed some interesting things.

In deployment, I seem to get lag when 2/3 of my cavalry units (equites consulares, equites sabelli, kurepos) are in my cameraview. It doesn't matter where I place them in deployment. I tried isolating one and it seemed to alternate between the kurepos and sabelli.

On ending deployment, now the gate from before is causing the lag. Cavalry seem to no longer give lag. I then played around with in-game graphics settings and it turns out that got rid of the lag. I tried isolating which setting was causing the issue but in the end the problem did not arise again even back at my original settings.

However, I still crashed not long after despite the lag being gone. This was almost the exact same phase of the battle that I crashed in the first time I played this siege (first wave of siege towers unloading their troops). I was even looking at a similar portion of the wall (near the gate that was causing me lag).

I've been looking forward to finally kicking some Punic ass in my campaign but this is really being a buzzkill. I really don't want to auto-resolve the siege if I can help it. Unfortunately this issue seems to quite nebulous.

[XDeath007]

Next attempt, I turned off reshade filters in campaign map before going to battle. I then proceed to have a glorious and bloody siege without any technical issues. However, the game crashed as soon as I was loading the campaign map after the victory screen.

[Kull]

When you experience CTDs at different times and for different reasons, it's a pretty good indicator that your system is operating at the edge of some limit. Anything structural involving the units or the landscape or the city itself would have been reported long ago, especially in a Rome vs. Carthage situation (which is a fairly common game situation).

It's hard to say exactly what's driving your particular issue, but there's any number of possible culprits, ranging from video card drivers and RAM limits down to windows compatibility settings. There does seem to be a correlation between CTDs and "battlemap stuff", which is very likely to be RAM related. You could also try and repeat the situation with a custom battle in which you have the same city size and unit count/type on each side, and even alter things like unit sizes to see if that makes a difference.

[Ziltoid]

I used to have similar crashes BEFORE i researched some solutions to memory problems. So perhaps look into that if you haven't already.

[Cryoshakespeare]

Yes indeed, I believe the concept of doing your own research into the matter was covered in the stickied thread "A quick note on the stability of EB2 and other large mods" above us here in the forum. Well worth looking into.

[XDeath007]

Turns out I forgot to apply that memory fix after upgrading from 2.2r to 2.3! These problems appear to be significantly better now.