Some Tips on Better Performance

**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 03, 2018, 12:41 PM

Hello there,

In 2017 I've tried to reinstall the mod, without much success. Now however I formatted my desktop recently, cleaned it, and decided to give EB2 another try. So I got my M2TW install from Gamersgate, and did everything painstankingly according to the install instructions to Windows 10.

Now the problem is: I'm using an onboard graphics card on a Core i5 Computer. While M2TW plays relatively well, with EB2 I still get some CTD's when rendering battles - occasionally. I've got an unspecified Intel HD Graphics adapter, but would like to know if there's any cheap, low or medium end graphics card I could buy for my i5 CPU (which I use mostly for studying college stuff, Excel and the Internet) so I could run EB2 better?

But the thing is, with the new 2.3 release and probably me playing with a much cleaner system, the game is a lot more stable and enjoyable than before. In my Romani campaign I got perhaps 1 or maybe 2 CTD's during End Turn wait, whereas previously I would get a CTD every damn time.

This made EB2 playable for me, finally. EB2 is still one of the few enjoyable things out there in the TW world. I mean, I started playing TW with Rome in 2005, and got the original EB mod in 2008 (a decade ago basically) where I had tons of fun with. The only thing that held me from playing EB2 was the long wait for a release date and the lack of a stable version for my own subjective conditions, but these things seem to be solved now.

I can't think of not playing anything except realistic mods. I know DoTS failed back in the day, but since I made the switch to Paradox Games full time and due to life constraints, I haven't been playing a lot of Total War because Paradox Games are much more immersive, despite having an abstract battle environment, due to their concern about realistic conditions, depth of gameplay, etc... something which is sorely missing from the TW series these days. EB2 is really one of the few things that can make for an immersive, genuine and non-Hollywood environment in the TW world, I think.

But still, I would like to know if anybody has experienced the End Turn CTD and how can I effectively nix it, too. Thanks for the tips. It basically CTD's during the AI's turn.

**Baharr** · September 03, 2018, 12:55 PM

One thing that dramatically improved stability for me is running the game in a borderless window (the install instructions explain how you can do that).

Also worth checking out is manually modifying the .exe to use more of your available RAM - I can't recommend this, as it violates the terms & conditions of use, but if you want you can google how you can make a 32 bit application do this and then make your own decisions.

Some end turn crashes seem to be quite random - I've had one or two that resolved themselves after a few restarts, and some I had to fix myself by using the toggle_fow console command to lift the fog of war, set the game to show all AI moves, keep watching to see which character exactly triggered the crash, and then moving or killing them.

Apparently there are some typos in the current version of the campaign script that will also be fixed in 2.35. Dunno if these contribute to crashes, but you never know.

**Septentrionalis** · September 03, 2018, 12:58 PM

Hi Marie,

I have recently posted something like this to a few threads where people new to the mod have been asking questions, but I guess it is not flooding if one tries to help fellow gamers.

"Just be sure to allow it to use 4 gb of memory especially if you plan on playing with huge unit sizes, or you will be experiencing game-wrecking crashes to desktop. There might be a patch (albeit illegal) for that too, but I changed the memory use manually using CFF Explorer. It changed the game from I-am-giving-this-up into a flawless experience for me.

Edit: do not use a patch since modifying the executable is an infringement of CA's copyright."

How is your memory setup? It might not have to do with your graphics processor but a lack of RAM. My troubles occurred with whatever processing takes place after a battle, but it is possible that the end of turn is affected as well.

As for your graphics processing unit, anything low-end with 2GB of graphics memory should be enough to run a game like this even on more demanding settings (please correct me guys if I am wrong). The question may be more about what kind of GPU you should invest in right now to allow playing games for a few years to come, so that you do not waste money on something that you need to replace too soon.

**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 03, 2018, 01:08 PM

Very nice. I didn't manage to get the Launcher option for that. Maybe because I didn't reinstall Java yet in my new system. Am installing Java now.

So there's a 2.35 coming out with more fixes? Good to know. Also thanks, I got an x64 system with x64 Windows. It would be neat if M2TW could be brought to use all that extra RAM and power, but performance seems quite great on all fields - back when I installed EB on my old AMD computer in 2008, it would take forever to cycle turns. Now they cycle very fast. The only issue that remains are the CTD's.

I got 4GB of RAM, anyway. And now with a fresh install, the best it's gonna take away from that with sideline processes is like 1GB and that's all.

**Septentrionalis** · September 03, 2018, 01:11 PM

Thinking of it now, I am actually quite surprised if the issue is with the GPU, given that during the AI turn there are intensive calculations taking place that require CPU and memory resources, but there is next to nothing that requires graphical processing. Do you think you could post your processor and memory specs?

**Septentrionalis** · September 03, 2018, 01:20 PM

In case the system specs are good, like you now mentioned having 4GB of memory, another possible culprit is a malfunctioning device. I once had a broken GPU that would no longer run games for long before crashing and would fail only if I had too many browser windows open at the same time. On the other hand, that causes the blue screen of death rather than a CTD.

However, the game is not able to make use of more than 2GB of memory without the fix I mentioned, and I was unable to play without crashes even though I have 16GB of memory and an old but gold GPU that runs Skyrim and GTA V smoothly. Applying the 4GB fix seems like a must-have.

**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 03, 2018, 01:12 PM

See my edited reply just above. Thanks.

**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 03, 2018, 01:53 PM

Some of the battle CTD'S get an explicit vcard rendering error message. AI turn CTD's on the other hand don't. That's why I might be wondering about my GPU, yet it still works great for pretty much everything else - not that I still play very demanding games, anyway.

EDIT - I'm going to lunch, but I'll try posting my .cfg file after lunch, so you can check it out. I'll also try out the .exe editing thing, in order to get my RAM an extra use.

**Septentrionalis** · September 03, 2018, 02:21 PM

Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen

Some of the battle CTD'S get an explicit vcard rendering error message. AI turn CTD's on the other hand don't. That's why I might be wondering about my GPU, yet it still works great for pretty much everything else - not that I still play very demanding games, anyway.

That is curious indeed. Does anybody here know about specific errors with graphics cards while playing M2TW?

I have never had an onboard graphics card, but perhaps they can have some shortcomings that do not manifest themselves in poor visuals quality per se but still fail during a certain kind of processing load. Just guesswork, really, but getting even a low-end card might be in order.

Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen

EDIT - I'm going to lunch, but I'll try posting my .cfg file after lunch, so you can check it out. I'll also try out the .exe editing thing, in order to get the my RAM an extra use.

Lunch at this hour? Ha, you must be on the Pacific coast of the US and almost literally on the other end of the world

We should acknowledge that no ailment excludes another one. You may well experience the memory issue while having your vcard underperform at the same time. So yeah, please try the memory fix first and then we see if you need a GPU upgrade.

**Baharr** · September 03, 2018, 02:29 PM

Interesting. Integrated GPUs don't have their own memory at all and instead use your RAM. I agree with Septentrionalis - try a memory fix before upgrading. You may also want to close any extraneous programs before running the game - browsers in particular (Chrome is notoriously bad in this regard) can easily gobble up several gigabytes of RAM.

My Chrome is currently using over 2 gigs and I have about 20 tabs open, for reference. If you have something like that running in the background AND running Medieval 2 on an integrated GPU then you will simply run out of memory sooner or later and the game will crash.

**Frtigern** · September 03, 2018, 03:34 PM

How much RAM do you have installed and when running how much are you using and how much is left? May be beneficial to install more RAM if you dont already have 8GB. As Windows 10 and other processes can use a lot of that. When you do the 4GB mod you may not have the RAM necessary to utilize that if you dont have at least 8GB of RAM. What is the model of your CPU? Have you looked at upgrading the CPU? Older gen used i5s shouldn't be too expensive on eBay but what only matters is a higher clock speed and not number of cores as core counts dont really matter for M2TW. Also what are the temps of your CPU and motherboard when running M2TW?

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**Frtigern** · September 03, 2018, 03:37 PM

Jave you updated all drivers? Intel has it's own program for scanning and updating its drivers that Windows might not pick up. Also, have you considered a dedicated graphics card for your machine? You don't need the best card but a previous gen AMD or Nvidia one with at least 4GB of VRAM should be fine.

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**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 04, 2018, 09:58 AM

Here's my EB system log file for you technical folks to give a look.

https://www.4shared.com/s/fna_X-l2Dei

How much RAM do you have installed and when running how much are you using and how much is left? May be beneficial to install more RAM if you dont already have 8GB. As Windows 10 and other processes can use a lot of that. When you do the 4GB mod you may not have the RAM necessary to utilize that if you dont have at least 8GB of RAM. What is the model of your CPU? Have you looked at upgrading the CPU? Older gen used i5s shouldn't be too expensive on eBay but what only matters is a higher clock speed and not number of cores as core counts dont really matter for M2TW. Also what are the temps of your CPU and motherboard when running M2TW?

I'm using a relatively recent i5 gen build with high individual clock speed per core. I know it isn't the creme de la creme, but I've run many complex apps so far without any problem in here.

Jave you updated all drivers? Intel has it's own program for scanning and updating its drivers that Windows might not pick up. Also, have you considered a dedicated graphics card for your machine? You don't need the best card but a previous gen AMD or Nvidia one with at least 4GB of VRAM should be fine.

That sounds like a great idea. My drivers seem ok, but I'll try updating them.

Interesting. Integrated GPUs don't have their own memory at all and instead use your RAM. I agree with Septentrionalis - try a memory fix before upgrading. You may also want to close any extraneous programs before running the game - browsers in particular (Chrome is notoriously bad in this regard) can easily gobble up several gigabytes of RAM.

My Chrome is currently using over 2 gigs and I have about 20 tabs open, for reference. If you have something like that running in the background AND running Medieval 2 on an integrated GPU then you will simply run out of memory sooner or later and the game will crash.

I always close everything on the background before running EB, and I use Quantum not Chrome. Chrome eats up way too much memory.

Anyway more feedback is appreciated.

**Septentrionalis** · September 04, 2018, 03:31 PM

Originally Posted by Marie Louise von Preussen

Here's my EB system log file for you technical folks to give a look.

https://www.4shared.com/s/fna_X-l2Dei

That is about as suspicious a site as they come. I am not downloading anything from there, and I am not sure how to either.

**Baharr** · September 04, 2018, 02:43 PM

Another way to save memory use in battles is to lower texture quality, iirc that has the biggest impact and on lower settings will stop the game from running out of memory. EDIT: or at least delay it

Also the eternal classic, saving and restarting the game (by quitting completely and relaunching Medieval 2) every 2 hours or so

**Marie Louise von Preussen** · September 04, 2018, 03:45 PM

Hi there Septentrionalis, it's 4shared, a 100% reliable site. TWC won't allow me to upload the file since it's way too big. But it's just the log, and there's no virus or malware there.