Massive FPS drop when fighting inside cities/fortresses

[Omisan]

My system:

Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz
2gb of RAM memory
Geforce 7800 GS

I play M2:TW with everything on high settings, bloom, AAx4 and AFx8.

Everything is nice and smooth except battles that take place inside cities and fortresses, once the walls/gates are breached and armies start fighting inside, I get massive fps drop.

Anyone else experienced similar issues? I guess I will put buildings on medium to see if there is a difference.

[Quickening]

Yup. It's the exact same here. I thought it was just my system at first but I don't believe it is now. I think there is some issues with these battles causing the game to slowdown.

My specs:

3.6 Ghz Intel Dual Core
1GB of RAM
Geforce 7600 GT

I just don't think this game is as well optimised as Rome was (at least in the latter days). Let us hope this is resolved.

[FactionHeir]

I posted about that quite a long time ago already and various people of all kinds of rigs (mostly using GeForce) got the same issue with siege slowdowns up until unplayable.

It still won't get any fixes in 1.2 though as far as it seems because we are a minority...

[CountMRVHS]

I get that too, but I always attributed it to a 4-year old computer; I was just happy that the game ran in the first place. Had to buy a DVD rom for this game.

Anyway, I've noticed that things get much smoother if you aim the camera away from the walls. Say you're sallying out; once you chase down the routers and have the city walls behind you the game runs smooth, but if you pan around and get the city walls in your sights again it'll slow down again. I figured it was just the number of buildings that my video card couldn't take or something...

[holycow]

Hmmm, is anyone reporting this problem with a non-Geforce vcard??

[Werner]

GeForce 7800 BFG here. Having same problem.

I have my old ATI radeon 9800 laying around, it would be an interesting test...~:lightbulb:

[TevashSzat]

Omisan although your cpu and ram is good enough for full everything for M2TW, Geforce 7800 GS is about a year old now and that in the comp world doesn't cut it. It wouldn't surprise me to have laggy battles in areas where large number of details other than troops must be drawn such as fortresses/citadels.

[Forward Observer]

I too have an Nividia G7800GT with a P4 3.2 gig system with 1.5 gigs of Ram.
My card is also overclocked about 10%, and I have exactly the same slowdown issues, but I don't think the problem is limited to NVidia cards. It may be more a problem of the complexity of the game physics---especially the extra physics embedded in the structure of settlements

Think about it, in addition to numerous destructible towers and walls, most of the buildings also have destructible sections that will cave in and burn or smoke.

I have noticed that if I am able to simply enter a settlement without
destroying anything first, I may encounter slowdowns, but not nearly as pronounced as when I do so after taking out several wall sections and in doing so setting several interior buildings on fire from overshots.

I suspect there may also be some memory leaks associated with the activity in the settlements, and I have noticed that some settlements seem worse than others--mostly the larger the settlement the worse the issue.

If the problem is in fact simple memory leaks then this is something the developers may be able to address and fix in a patch.

Otherwise, i guess I will just have to wait until I can afford a new super system with quad FX8800 cards and a maybe a half terabyte of RAM

Cheers

[FactionHeir]

Only looking at a huge city when besieging it is bad enough to make me auto-resolve it really...

[Dave1984]

I've never seen this fps drop on sieges of this type, and my specs are similar to most people's on here. (2gb RAM, nvidia 6800 256mb video card, 3.0ghz processor) I've also never seen the severe lag that people complain about with ladders, although the other part of that problem, units of 150 men grouped around one ladder and only using one when there are 3 free ladders next to them. And that is the real problem I have with sieges. They don't work. You get hundreds of good infantry assaulting a wall with ladders and only climbing up one at a time, so they get slaughtered by the militia at the top. You get pathfinding in the streets which is an absolute joke. Pike units won't advance through the streets, or defend them, in close cohesion, even though let's be honest men trained like that should be a human barricade. You can't order a cavalry unit into a block of much more than 4 abreast when there's clearly room in the street for more. The game is very temperamental about deployment within the city/castle, so you can never quite get that perfect defensive formation there.
Added to this, sieges are dull. Dull as dishwater. In the early game they're practically all you do, and later on there's still way too many of them. Playing a basic capture the flag scenario doesn't cut it for me. Leave that to FPSs. I want an open field, rolling hills, room to maneuver, room for the enemy to maneuver, and I want somewhere where my men will deploy in the formation I want as and when I want. There's no joy in winning a siege in this game, whilst winning (or losing) a well fought open field battle can be exhilarating.
And that's why I auto resolve sieges.

[Lord Dazed & Confused]

My sys spec is 6800gt, 1g ram & amd 3.2, using shader2, with everything on medium to high using large unit sizes and I get a complete frame rate freeze for a split second about every 10 seconds but only once both armies are inside the city or castle and usually only in large / huge cities or castles but never to the extent that the game is unplayable ( except when three stacks of Mongols attack at once) and the only bad lag I get is when there are lots of units bunched together or sometimes when fighting in a blizzard. I just figured I needed more ram.

LDC

[Shaitan]

I have the same problem with a Radeon X850XT, Athlon64 3000+ and 1GB of RAM. So it's obviously not a GeForce problem.
It seem to me that the fps drops occur if too many unit are crowded on a small place. I can perfectly view all troops and the city/castle when they are in normal formation. But if they are all fighting around the gate I get a slide show. As CountMRVHS said the FPS goes only down if I look at the crowded units. There is also no change in frame rate if set all graphic detail to lowest.

After such a siege if return to the campaign map there is massive harddisk activity. So it may be a memory leak like Forward Observer mentioned.

Shaitan

[Lusted]

I've noticed that people with 2GB RAM don't seem to get this problem(i have 2gb in my comp and have no slowdown problems), whilst people with less than 2GB of RAM do get it.

[Agent Smith]

Oddly enough, I had the OPPOSITE problem when it comes to Geforce cards.

I had a Radeon 128 MB card when I started playing, and I had the same, horrible FPS slowdown during siege battles. I assumed, since I met the minimum requirements for the game, that I could at least play on the minimal settings of the game. I was ticked when the game wasn't playing right.

So, I figured my card was to blame and bought a new one. I got a 256 MB Geforce card. It works absolutely fine.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that I only have about 760 mb of RAM. Although I can't run the game on the highest graphics settings, it's still fine for me :)

[sapi]

@everyone

1. you don't need to be running over 2x aa, or over 4x af especially on older cards
2. Be realistic with your settings - something like the 7800gt can't handle things on all high settings
3. Turn bloom off - never seen teh point
4. don't compare cards by ram - it really is meaningless - it's the core that counts
5. nvidia/amd cards; it makes no difference

@lusted - i still get the lag with 2gb ram although admittedly i am running on 1680x1050 with textures on high. I still maintain it's a transparancy issue ala oblivion's grass though :beam:

[Tran]

My spec is ati P4 2.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, X800. Same problem, lag during siege. And I'd like to tell that reducing the graphical settings didn't improve anything.

[Werner]

...5. nvidia/amd cards; it makes no difference...

LOL Your a funny guy.

[sapi]

And how is that?

[Foz]

You put AMD instead of ATI. It really wasn't that funny though.

[John_Imperator]

I have the same problem when I play in a massive siege battles;even on low setting with buildings.

My Rig Intel core dual 6600
ATI x1950 PRO 256 mb pci-E
1 GB heat spreader
Mother board Evga
Sony Q17 18x DVD dual

I think the game is not really compatible with Intel core dual processor;thats why its causing lag in battles;or jest the graphics card.

hmm any one know what is causing the problem?

[John_Imperator]

I ment Intel core dual2.

[FactionHeir]

As a question of interest, does any of you guys who got the siege lag problem also got campaign map lag?
Trying to figure whether those two are actually related. I got both - on lowest settings.

[AussieGiant]

@everyone

1. you don't need to be running over 2x aa, or over 4x af especially on older cards
2. Be realistic with your settings - something like the 7800gt can't handle things on all high settings
3. Turn bloom off - never seen teh point
4. don't compare cards by ram - it really is meaningless - it's the core that counts
5. nvidia/amd cards; it makes no difference

@lusted - i still get the lag with 2gb ram although admittedly i am running on 1680x1050 with textures on high. I still maintain it's a transparancy issue ala oblivion's grass though :beam:

Hi Sapi,

Could you please help me?

You'll know why in a minute.

I've got fraps running so I see the numbers.

I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 3.4 GHz
8800GTX stock
2 Gigs of 800 Hz ram
150 Gig WD Raptor 10 000 rpm 16Mb Cache

I am having problems!!

I'm on a 21inch 1600 x 1200 4:3 screen.

AA:nothing
AF: x 4
Unit detail: Highest
Building Detail: Low
Vegetation: High
Effects: Medium
Grass: High
Textures: High
Shadows: High
Bloom: On
Reflections:On

I just sieged Bruges with 1500 guys against their 2300 and it was under 30 and 20 for most of the battle.

I'm just going nuts here!!

[Daykeras]

AMD and ATI have merged...

I'm experiencing the same issue, but I think it just has to do with having to render a lot of the objects. I'm going to tone down my settings. :)

[Forward Observer]

I have no perceptible lag in the campaign map--only settlement battles.

I am using shader 2, no AA, Bilinear filtering, shadows on low, no bloom, textures and unit detail on medium, vegetation and grass on high, buildings on high. I have the battle screen resolution set to 1280 X 960. This is my LCD monitor's native resolution and I find that games seem to perform better at this setting than any other.

I have tried shader 1 with no shadows, and got no FPS gain in either field battles or sieges---I also still got lags in siege assaults.

I just played 2 siege assaults last night. One in a in a level 5 city with a full stack defending, and one at a level 4 castle with only 4 units defending.

On the city fight, I knocked two sections of wall down, did damage to two interior buildings resulting in fire and smoke. Oddly, I got no lags from start to finish.

On the castle fight I had a spy who got the gates open for me. I did shoot a few flaming shots with my catapult to drive the defenders from the walls, but stopped after they retreated to the inner ring. Then I was able to march right in without destroying much of anything else

By the time I got my whole army in and started for the inner gate, I began to experience lag. I use Fraps as a frame rate counter, and normally get an acceptable 30FPS or better in field battles. It only slows to about 20fps when I have these siege slow downs, but the problem is that it is a pulsating slow down. It wasn't bad enough to stop me from finishing the battle, but it was irritating of course.

The above related anecdotal evidence seems to disprove my theory that the lags may have some relationship to damage of the buildings during a siege, but it does seem to lend credence to the fact that it varies with the size and/or style of said settlement.

It is an often stated fact that in most slowdown problems with games, the bottleneck is related to the GPU and not the CPU. Since the game makes no use of the advantages of multiple core processors, this is probably not a factor.

Since I only have AGP capabilities for a GPU, I will have to pony up for a new rig with PCI-e slots in the mobo to do any better, but I would be interested to hear from anybody who has one of the newer NVidia G8XXX series cards.

Cheers

PS. I was composing this as AussieGiant was posting, and I see even he has problems. I would suggest taking shadows down to medium or low and textures to medium. Changes to these two items seem to have the greatest effect on my game perforance

[Werner]

You put AMD instead of ATI. It really wasn't that funny though.

Nope thats not why. Someone saying theres no difference between the two. *sigh*

[Husar]

I've got fraps running so I see the numbers.

I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 3.4 GHz
8800GTX stock
2 Gigs of 800 Hz ram
150 Gig WD Raptor 10 000 rpm 16Mb Cache

I am having problems!!

I'm on a 21inch 1600 x 1200 4:3 screen.

I just sieged Bruges with 1500 guys against their 2300 and it was under 30 and 20 for most of the battle.

I'm just going nuts here!!
Well, I have the same processor and noticed that the game only partly uses both Cores of the CPU, I got a maximum total CPU usage of about 70% and the game still tells me that my CPU was insufficient for so many units and actually lags in big battles(huge unit sizes). Well, my graphicscard is just a 7950GT and I use mostly highest settings except 2xAA and 4xAF.
Well, there is either a problem with modern games not making full advantage of Dual Core CPUs(only one I know of is Gothic 3, many others don't even use the second core at all) or it's something with the amount of objects being too much for the graphicscard, I notice slowdowns in huge cities which are also dependant on lghting conditions(maybe lighting is calculated even for buildings omitted by others, so huge cities would cause more work?), then the aztec jungle likes to lag as well, can only be the number of trees there. And then of course huge armies make it lag a lot.

Maybe it's the amount of units overwhelming the Z-unit of the graphicscard?(IIRC even the 8800 has only one such unit, could be because the usual hyped shooters don't need more).

[The Spartan (Returns)]

i only get lag when the walls get destroyed.

you dont need AA with high res.

and whats the point with Anisotropic Filtering? is there really a diff?

[Foz]

i only get lag when the walls get destroyed.

you dont need AA with high res.

and whats the point with Anisotropic Filtering? is there really a diff?
Simple logic dictates that there must be SOME difference: the higher settings would not exist if they gave no difference. I'm not real up on this stuff atm though so I'm not sure what exactly that difference is.

[Discoman]

I get a massive FPS drop aswell, I have a 2.9 GHZ dual core proc, 1 gb ram and a ATI 128 x550. I think my problem is mainly from having a 128mb graphics card, I have buildings on low and took off bloom, but even with them on the situation is intirely the same.

[Carl]

I'm pretty sure graphics has NOTHING to do with these slowdowns, even with a Radeon 9800Pro (real old these days), i find my PC's proccessor is chugging along WELL before my graphics card is straining. In fact if the game actually just runs really slowly and dosen't jump thenm it is most defintlly proccessor related. i think it's a combination of keeping track of what units are where and what towers they activate, plus the sheer number of missiles fired means that their are a lot of processor intensive calculations going on. Add that to keeping track of all the hitpoints of all the wall sections and towers and gates and it's a nightmare. I suspect the values stored in memory are updated at least a few times a second, along with tower activation status and probably a few other things besides. thats probably a few tens ofMB worth of data every single second before we even think of all the arrow data and everything else. Moving that much data from Ram to processor and back is probably whats causing the slowdown here. Probably some don't suffer from it because they have a really efficent motherboard, or maybe the ones that do suffer hav really inneficent motherboards. But I suspect it's a data flow rate issue and their isn't much you can do about that kind of thing.

[FactionHeir]

Well, how do you explain then that facing away from the settlement decreases that "lag" dramatically? It kind of does sound graphics related.

What is processor related is the number of units alive (and to a small extent dead) on the battlefield. You can face away and not get any performance improvement for example.

[SnowlyWhite]

same prob.; tested with everything at minimal(playin' normally with high details) and still a siege is unplayable(autoresolving every siege battle after the 1st 30 or so turns - basically anything after "minor city" lvl gets autoresolved unless it's "the battle of the campaign"). All this would point out to mem./proc. bottleneck - 1gb here.

However, when you're not facing the city... though aint' much of tactics you can do without actually facing that bloody city, things are more or less ok.

However, a thing that DEFINITELLY makes me think it's a "graphical design problem" is the fact that lag occurs from the DEPLOYMENT phase of the battle. There are no arrows flying, there's nothing but looking at the city and deploying your troops.

[holycow]

I've thought of this as I've experienced the same fps drop when facing city/ and sometimes citadel. Could it be that the buildings are partway destructible and cpu or whatever has to keep a tab or re-checking all those buildings. I've tried turning down details and even at lowest setting, the drag still happens- so from this I'm guessing it's not the vid card. Anyone w/more hardware know how weigh in?:book:

[SnowlyWhite]

again, if it's not a vid card problem, how does it occur also in deployment phase? when there's nothin' to calculate.

[holycow]

re vid card - intuition, and honestly don't really know. When I turned down everything to the lowest setting, it makes zero difference in fps, I'm expecting that w/ lowest setting the units wouldn't all try to re-enact the Matrix - gravity defying casualty:laugh4:

ina campaign map, it doesnt matter #units, vid setting, I have no fps problems - only on seige maps. so why the difference?

[Boyar Karhunkynsi]

My system:

Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz
2gb of RAM memory
Geforce 7800 GS



I get that, sometimes. I think it's just the whole elevation bonuses for archers and stuff. It goes down to about 25-30 sometimes...

Sexy specs, too. :2thumbsup:

-Max

[AussieGiant]

Hi Forward Observer,

Thanks for the tips, I'll try those today.

I'd certainly like to hear with Sapi can suggest when he reads this.

My machine is brand new and purpose built by professionals for gaming. I did not build my machine myself.

My specs are high enough to pretty much ensure that this must be some kind of application side issue.

I'm up to date on all drivers, Windows XP is tweaked for optimum performance and I have only 5 other games installed on a standard clean build I received only two weeks ago.

FWIW the machine bench marks off the Richter scale. This is a 11 000 3dMark 06 machine.

It post 7030Mb per second on memory bandwidth!!

The Dhrystone and Whetstone processor numbers are sky high.

I can't believe this machine is not configured correctly.

BF 2142 runs in the 90's on FRAPs with everything on. I have even gone into the control panel and overridden everything and it still up there.

Rainbow Six: Las Vegas is also very similar. I'm around 50 fprs with everything forced in the control panel. For MIITW I go back and let the application decide and have to play around like I'm doing now.

I get the impression something is just not right with Dual processors and the latest hardware.

Ironically its interesting to note that Total War and RTS games like company of Hero's are more intensive than FPS right now.

Thanks to everyone for the information.

More advise would be greatly appreciated. I still want to get this game running smoothly!!:yes:

Cheers
AG

[sapi]

You put AMD instead of ATI. It really wasn't that funny though.
amd = ati as of late last year

I have the same problem when I play in a massive siege battles;even on low setting with buildings.

My Rig Intel core dual 6600
ATI x1950 PRO 256 mb pci-E
1 GB heat spreader
Mother board Evga
Sony Q17 18x DVD dual

I think the game is not really compatible with Intel core dual processor;thats why its causing lag in battles;or jest the graphics card.

hmm any one know what is causing the problem?It's not incompatibility with anything - in fact games don't have anything to do with compatibility - but it's a general engine problem


Hi Sapi,

Could you please help me?

You'll know why in a minute.

I've got fraps running so I see the numbers.

I have a Core 2 Duo E6600 running at 3.4 GHz
8800GTX stock
2 Gigs of 800 Hz ram
150 Gig WD Raptor 10 000 rpm 16Mb Cache

I am having problems!!

I'm on a 21inch 1600 x 1200 4:3 screen.

AA:nothing
AF: x 4
Unit detail: Highest
Building Detail: Low
Vegetation: High
Effects: Medium
Grass: High
Textures: High
Shadows: High
Bloom: On
Reflections:On

I just sieged Bruges with 1500 guys against their 2300 and it was under 30 and 20 for most of the battle.

I'm just going nuts here!!No way you should be lagging - this just emphasises that it's a problem with the game


Nope thats not why. Someone saying theres no difference between the two. *sigh*They're right. Read the news :idea2:


i only get lag when the walls get destroyed.

you dont need AA with high res.

and whats the point with Anisotropic Filtering? is there really a diff?2x aa makes a huge difference, even at high res, although you're right to say, as i did, that over that makes little.

af also makes a big difference - google for some comparison screenshots to see what i mean.

I'll always run af :yes:

[sapi]

I'm pretty sure graphics has NOTHING to do with these slowdowns, even with a Radeon 9800Pro (real old these days), i find my PC's proccessor is chugging along WELL before my graphics card is straining. In fact if the game actually just runs really slowly and dosen't jump thenm it is most defintlly proccessor related. i think it's a combination of keeping track of what units are where and what towers they activate, plus the sheer number of missiles fired means that their are a lot of processor intensive calculations going on. Add that to keeping track of all the hitpoints of all the wall sections and towers and gates and it's a nightmare. I suspect the values stored in memory are updated at least a few times a second, along with tower activation status and probably a few other things besides. thats probably a few tens ofMB worth of data every single second before we even think of all the arrow data and everything else. Moving that much data from Ram to processor and back is probably whats causing the slowdown here. Probably some don't suffer from it because they have a really efficent motherboard, or maybe the ones that do suffer hav really inneficent motherboards. But I suspect it's a data flow rate issue and their isn't much you can do about that kind of thing.I think the issue in TW games is and always will be the processor - try changing from high to highest unit graphics (increases sprite view distance) - there's no noticable change in fps.

change the unit scale and there is


Well, how do you explain then that facing away from the settlement decreases that "lag" dramatically? It kind of does sound graphics related.

What is processor related is the number of units alive (and to a small extent dead) on the battlefield. You can face away and not get any performance improvement for example.The smoke from the buildings, for example, puts a strain on not just the gfx but the cpu


same prob.; tested with everything at minimal(playin' normally with high details) and still a siege is unplayable(autoresolving every siege battle after the 1st 30 or so turns - basically anything after "minor city" lvl gets autoresolved unless it's "the battle of the campaign"). All this would point out to mem./proc. bottleneck - 1gb here.

However, when you're not facing the city... though aint' much of tactics you can do without actually facing that bloody city, things are more or less ok.

However, a thing that DEFINITELLY makes me think it's a "graphical design problem" is the fact that lag occurs from the DEPLOYMENT phase of the battle. There are no arrows flying, there's nothing but looking at the city and deploying your troops.Which is why i think the city graphics, and in particular the fireplaces, are the problem


I've thought of this as I've experienced the same fps drop when facing city/ and sometimes citadel. Could it be that the buildings are partway destructible and cpu or whatever has to keep a tab or re-checking all those buildings. I've tried turning down details and even at lowest setting, the drag still happens- so from this I'm guessing it's not the vid card. Anyone w/more hardware know how weigh in?:book:that could be it too :yes:


again, if it's not a vid card problem, how does it occur also in deployment phase? when there's nothin' to calculate.if there was nothing to calculate, you'd be seeing a black screen (or a bsod :laugh4: )

The game still has to display the city, hence my theories


re vid card - intuition, and honestly don't really know. When I turned down everything to the lowest setting, it makes zero difference in fps, I'm expecting that w/ lowest setting the units wouldn't all try to re-enact the Matrix - gravity defying casualty:laugh4:

ina campaign map, it doesnt matter #units, vid setting, I have no fps problems - only on seige maps. so why the difference?:yes:
I'd say you're on to something


I get that, sometimes. I think it's just the whole elevation bonuses for archers and stuff. It goes down to about 25-30 sometimes...

Sexy specs, too. :2thumbsup:

-Maxspecs seem to matter little, that's for sure


Hi Forward Observer,

Thanks for the tips, I'll try those today.

I'd certainly like to hear with Sapi can suggest when he reads this.

My machine is brand new and purpose built by professionals for gaming. I did not build my machine myself.

My specs are high enough to pretty much ensure that this must be some kind of application side issue.

I'm up to date on all drivers, Windows XP is tweaked for optimum performance and I have only 5 other games installed on a standard clean build I received only two weeks ago.

FWIW the machine bench marks off the Richter scale. This is a 11 000 3dMark 06 machine.

It post 7030Mb per second on memory bandwidth!!

The Dhrystone and Whetstone processor numbers are sky high.

I can't believe this machine is not configured correctly.

BF 2142 runs in the 90's on FRAPs with everything on. I have even gone into the control panel and overridden everything and it still up there.

Rainbow Six: Las Vegas is also very similar. I'm around 50 fprs with everything forced in the control panel. For MIITW I go back and let the application decide and have to play around like I'm doing now.

I get the impression something is just not right with Dual processors and the latest hardware.

Ironically its interesting to note that Total War and RTS games like company of Hero's are more intensive than FPS right now.

Thanks to everyone for the information.

More advise would be greatly appreciated. I still want to get this game running smoothly!!:yes:

Cheers
AG
Personally, i'm inclined to agree with you that it's an issue with the game engine regarding cities.

There have been a lot of interesting theories, and we just have to hope that CA are either reading this or already know the cause of this, because I think we've established that specs don't matter in the slightest with this problem.

I don't really believe it's to do with the type of hardware though; as other games run fine with the core 2 duos and the like...

[SnowlyWhite]

c'mon, they definitelly know... on the other hand, it's the type of bug that is awfully hard to fix:p

[sapi]

exactly :laugh4:

:yes:

[TevashSzat]

Lol this thread has turned into post your hardware specs and lagging troubles

[sapi]

That is true, and is to be discouraged :yes:

:focus:

[AussieGiant]

Hi Sapi,

Thanks for the feedback.


It is reassuring to come on the boards and see other people having the same issues.

At least I can just try my best rather than wondering if I have really screwed something up on my machine.

There are so many things to take into account you really need to be some what of a professional now days.

Cheers
AG

[Carl]

First, regarding the deployment phase, it probably comes from updating all the HP of buildings and it's probably running through a lot of calculations regarding arrows. In addittion, when you are looking at the walls the processor has to do a lot of work figuring out where everything should sit reletive to the way your looking at it, and then feed that data to the graphics card. Each wall/tower segmant probably needs at least 9 chunks of data assosiating with it. That 36 bytes of data, theirs over 500 buildings in the biggest citedals. and thats without including data relating to what visual effect the damage should have, some of that, (for the puroposes of smoke and the like), has to go through the CPU too. Also a lot of instructions relating to what to send to the craphics card do too. I think thats the problem, it can handle the visual data, OR the postional and damage and arrow data, but not both sets a once.

IMHO, considering people with all kinds of processors and memeory are sufffering issues. It isn't a processor issue or a memory storage area issue IMHO.

It's GOT to be down to the FBS, (or the AMD equivelent, i forget the name), being unable to handle the amount of data having to pass to and from the processor. It's probably down to motherboard chipsets. The best can hack it and the rest can't.


Also, bit off topic i know.

But intresting to hear about the AMD/ATI joining up. Although if you ask me i'm shocked the USA competition laws would allow it, and it's going to be hell for PC buyers. It's a given now that both Nividia and Intel will stop making AMD chipsets/buying ATI internal graphics chi[psets as soon as they possibly can within contract limitations. Add to that that Nividia is (or was last time i looked), the only company producing top of the range high performance AMD chipsets and that intel are probably going to tweak their chipsets to nerf ATI performance and buff Nividia performance and it's going to push people who buy intel to get a Nividia card and those who go AMD to get an ATI card.

Not to mention that AMD+ATI is going to lack as good a motherboard as the Intel+Nividia combo, or that AMD used to be cheaper than Intel for a given performance level, (thats probably going to change now).

It bothers me doubly because I allways loved my Nividia+AMD combination, whiklst i do use an ATI ATM, my old Nividia was much better drivers wise and less buggy. Not to mention other things i prefer about nividia cards.

Now i've got that off my chest. Good day~;p.

[Omisan]

Lol this thread has turned into post your hardware specs and lagging troubles

..and after reading about all the fps issues that other people have, I realise that my fps drop problem that sometimes happen inside cities and fortresses isn't too bad.

:2thumbsup:

[sapi]

@Carl - off topic, but the amd/ati merge will be great for the market - the GPGPU project might become a reality :o

[-Amon-]

Uhh,I have

pentium 930 D

1 gb ram

ati x1900gt bla bla...


And i have no problem with full detail,in battles,in sieges etc..


Are you sure that installed last drivers in your system?

[sapi]

Out of interst, what resolution are you running that on?

[crpcarrot]

i got

Intel C2D 6400
1 gig ram
8800gts

i have not yet experienced a lag in or out of seiges. yet to have experienced the "ladder bug" as someone called it.

graphics setting are not maxed out but set pretty high.

has anyone tried playing with shadows and refelections.

more building would mean more shadows maybe thats the problem

[sapi]

might be that, too

It's hard to say what the cause is; but it definitely shouldn't be happening

[dismal]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".

[Whacker]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".
Why state the obvious? For example in the famous First Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674 the Arab general Muawiyah I suffered several severe setbacks when his video card overheated and caused a major FPS drop. The drop caused his control interface to slow to a crawl, and his troops were promptly wtfbbqpwnt by the cities wall defenses. He was last seen/heard shouting "u sux n00b!!11oneone" at Constantine IV who famously responded with "pwnt lol".

Please get your historical facts right folks when posting. :book::smash: :grin: :balloon2:

:focus:

[Goofball]

Why state the obvious? For example in the famous First Arab Siege of Constantinople in 674 the Arab general Muawiyah I suffered several severe setbacks when his video card overheated and caused a major FPS drop. The drop caused his control interface to slow to a crawl, and his troops were promptly wtfbbqpwnt by the cities wall defenses. He was last seen/heard shouting "u sux n00b!!11oneone" at Constantine IV who famously responded with "pwnt lol".

Please get your historical facts right folks when posting. :book::smash: :grin: :balloon2:

:focus:

Siggied.

:laugh4:

[AussieGiant]

LMAO @ Whacker!!

[holycow]

I keep waiting for someone to point out that "FPS drops in sieges are historically accurate".

but it is historically accurate, or have you learned nothing from hollywood. when you get hit and are about to die, the whole world goes into sloooooooooooow motion and sounds are muffled and all you hear is Ruuuunn Forresssst Ruuuuuunnnn!:laugh4:

[Omisan]

Seems like setting shadow to medium solved the problem for me. I get smooth fps in big sieges now. Everything else is still high +AA, AF, bloom and reflections.

[sapi]

:focus:

There probably is some more constructive posts that may come out of this thread, but if it keeps being spammed up like this it won't be open to get them :beam:

Something like dismal/whacker's comments is fine; but remember, we're not here to discuss instances of video card overheating in history ;)

:bow:

[FactionHeir]

Considering I have everything on lowest with shadows off, I still get the major siege lags.

[Foz]

Seems like setting shadow to medium solved the problem for me. I get smooth fps in big sieges now. Everything else is still high +AA, AF, bloom and reflections.
This is worth quoting just to note the general trend. Many people have said that shadows in this game are quite resource intensive. It's possible the shadows are invoking a whole lot of dynamic lighting, which is traditionally a huge drain on resources. The reason I suggest this is that I was watching a unit of knights move through a city gate the other day, and the sun happened to be above and behind the gate. As the unit passed through, the effect of them marching from the light, into the shadow, and back into light on the other side was simply amazing. I'm not sure just how much of that is from the high-end shadows, but it's got to take some resources to constantly figure out which men, and which specific parts of those men, are casting shadows onto the ground, and to determine where exactly those shadows fall. It also seems worth noting that not only do men cast shadows, but buildings in the city seem to as well, which almost certainly accounts for a vastly larger amount of area than do all the men involved in the battle. The shadows from the walls alone are probably significantly more than all the men combined. This wouldn't seem problematic since the walls are stationary... except they're really not, for the purposes of shadows. The walls and buildings are all destructible, which means it's likely even the shadows for them would have to be dynamically calculated as opposed to being static, invoking more calculations. I haven't really watched closely to determine this, but it strikes me that the sun does seem to pour through gaps I've blasted in the walls. If anyone can comment on that further, one way or the other, it would be helpful - I have no clear memory, just a fleeting notion. If it turns out to be the case, this would be one major reason we might note big performance hits in larger settlements: the walls and buildings would be responsible for casting significantly larger amounts of shadows in those cases. Especially the walls getting a lot taller could have drastic effects: they have a huge amount of area to them.

I can also say for certain that campaign map shadows can be a cause of campaign map lag. I disabled campaign shadows, and suddenly my campaign map was right as rain. That would seem to say they could be problematic in battles too.

[Quickening]

I have shadows completely disabled in my game even though I can run them without worries. What upsets my PC is AA. I can't bear to switch it off totally so I have it at 2x but that definately affects performance seriously with my Geforce 7600 GT.

[AussieGiant]

I'm on medium settings for the most part and have a few things on high with x2 AA and x 4 AF.

No disrespect to anyone but my machine should be kicking the living crap out of this game and it isn't.

Something is not right IMO and it is not my machine.

Especially when you consider that the technical part of the game wuold have been basically finished by the beginnnig of 2005 and is based on the engine they were using for Rome. In effect this engine is 3 to 4 years old at the least.

As a counter point BF2142 is on FULL everything and the lowest FRAPS I get is in the 80's.

Rainbow Six Las Vegas is also in the mid 30's at the lowest.

Just a reminder.

E6600 2.4 OC'd to 3.4 by professionals see this link to get an idea of what I'm talking about. www.overdrivepc.com
8800GTX 768mb
2 Gigs of 800MHz Ram
WD 150 Gig 10 000rpm SATAII with 16mb of cache.

AND I'm only running a 21inch monitor @ 1600x1200

The 8800GTX destroys games using 24 and 30 inch screens on 1680x1050 and 1920x1200.

[sapi]

m2tw's lag is from the cpu, not the graphics card, imo

There's very little 'work' involved in displaying fps games such as 2142 but a whole lot in keeping track of thousands of troops at once.

[Omisan]

I also noticed that dawn and dusk battles where the shadows are very long and dramatic lowered my fps. One more points for shadows causing slowdowns. :smash:

[FactionHeir]

I investigated a bit further and noticed that if the camera is above or showing any gatehouse in at least a minor city (minor, large, huge) and fortress+ (fortress, citadel), the FPS goes down to around 1-4.

I could be slightly to the left or the right of a gatehouse and easily move my camera to show walls and towers with no noticeable decrease in fps at all.

Moving into the city didn't go too well on the other hand, possibly due to either large amounts of buildings and/or the emergence of the other 3 gatehouses in the field of vision.

[TB666]

I too suffer from this problem.
2.3 ghz
128mb ATI Radeon 9800pro
512 mb

Run things on medium, no shadows, AA or bloom.
Battles run smooth and so does castles(citadels there is a decrease in performance but still playable) however once I get to cities it is a nightmare.
Doesn't matter what settings I have nor how many troops I got, it still runs poorly, damn near unplayable.
I noticed that if I zoom all the way out my frame rate becomes better(because playable) however as soon as I get alittle bit closer the fps just drops to 1.

[The Spartan (Returns)]

af also makes a big difference - google for some comparison screenshots to see what i mean.
you were correct i saw comparison photos and objects from farther distances and it looked clearer. like putting on your glasses.

but it was comparison between no af and afx16.

is there a good difference at afx2 of afx4?

[John_Imperator]

As a question of interest, does any of you guys who got the siege lag problem also got campaign map lag?
Trying to figure whether those two are actually related. I got both - on lowest settings.


I have the same problem when I play in a massive siege battles;even on low setting with buildings.

My Rig Intel core dual 6600
ATI x1950 PRO 256 mb pci-E
1 GB heat spreader
Mother board Evga
Sony Q17 18x DVD dual

I think the game is not really compatible with Intel core dual processor;thats why its causing lag in battles;or jest the graphics card.

hmm any one know what is causing the problem?


Not me,at least.

[Whacker]

As Foz pointed out earlier, Shadows tend to suck the life and frames per second out of a game. :grin: This applies not just to M2TW but to the current crop of games in general, if you are having framerate issues on what should otherwise be a playable game, drop the shadows way down or turn them off, and you're almost guaranteed to make it fully playable.

Just say no to Shadows. :thumbsdown:

[Hollerbach]

Apologies if this has been raised already, but it's a long thread....

I've noticed the slowdown in cities as well, but I was seriously whacked with lag the other day in a field battle. It was fought in some mountains in Wales, my Scots v some very lost Spanish. The main feature on the map was the this enormous mountain with a lot of shear impassable cliffs with some very steep paths through them. There wasn't a really high number of troops in the battle but I got some serious slow down. I play with all GFX setting at the very lowest and anything that can be off is turned off (not that my system is that bad, I'm just happy to compromise the candy for maximum performance) so I don't think this one is from shadows. I assume drawing all the details of the cliffs must have done it??

[sapi]

Maybe it's a pathfinding issue then?

Now i think about it i recall getting lag on clifftop maps as well...

[Lusted]

Yeah with really steep cliff maps it looks it's a pathfinding issue. i've mad battles where the game was lagging until i got within a certain range of the enemy as the ai wasn't doing the best job at pathfinding and changed path once i moved to a certain spot.

[FactionHeir]

So noone has an explanation for my observation?

[TB666]

So noone has an explanation for my observation?
Can you try mine and see if you get the same results ??

[AussieGiant]

m2tw's lag is from the cpu, not the graphics card, imo

There's very little 'work' involved in displaying fps games such as 2142 but a whole lot in keeping track of thousands of troops at once.

I agree sapi,


but my OC'd Core 2 Duo is benchmaking numbers that you get with a stock Quad core. I have more than enough processing power in my opinion. I just don't think it is utilised correctly in the application.

[FactionHeir]

Can you try mine and see if you get the same results ??

I do, as I stated a few pages back.
Anything above minor city (and even that is a stretch) and larger than castle kills my fps if i have the town in view or a gatehouse.
Southern castles are as bad as fortresses too.

[Foz]

The huge mountains in question could again be playing with shadow calculations. Not only is it a huge surface area which could require massive shadow calculations as a result (it's likely to be casting complex shadows even onto itself in a lot of cases and could also play hell casting them onto troops), but it is also a fairly complex surface for shadows to be cast onto from units and other things as well. Either or both of those factors could significantly drive up the amount of computational power required to accomplish the dynamic shadow calculations. I haven't personally experienced any lag on mountain maps, though, so I can't really comment on whether it appears to be due to one thing or the other, and my comments here aren't trying to win an argument, merely present possible explanations.

Thinking more on that though... I imagine trees are casting shadows about everywhere too, though I can't remember ever seeing the specific effects of that. If they do cast shadows then one might expect forests to have as much impact as a mountain does (maybe not, their surface area is still probably a lot less), if shadows are a factor in this problem. If they don't, then it still could make sense for mountains affecting shadows to be a source of slowdown.

[TB666]

shadows are a drain indeed.
However they can't be the cause of the FPS drop in cities since atleast I have them turned off.

[Bobo]

IMHO it is at least path finding combined with a memory leak. When I sally from Jerusalem (Huge) against 3 full stacks of Mongols, it starts OK (2.9 GHz, 1gb RAM, old NVidia 4200 or something) on lowest settings. But when I tell one disposable unit to move outside the main gate (to lure the sieging stack of Mongols in range of my archers), the FPS drops instantly and dramatically. Once the unit reaches its destination, the FPS goes up again, but when the Mongols start moving, the FPS drops. And when the other stacks also start moving, the game almost freezes to 1 frame per 3 seconds... But when they reach their destination, FPS goes up again.

However, looking at the memory footprint of the game, it gradually goes up during the battle until all my pysical ram is taken up, and then the FPS drops permanently, probably because it is reverting to virtual memory. Killing some other processes to free up ram helps for a couple of minutes, until this ram is also taken up by M2TW.

So my simplistic assumption is: path finding plus a memory leak.
Hope this helps.

[Foz]

Just to explore how intense the shadows really are, I toyed with my settings for a while last night while replaying the same assault (on a fortress). It turns out that lowering shadows one level from high to medium made a bigger performance increase than putting 4x AA down to 2x and 16x AF down to 8x at the same time. It was a pretty decent gain. Shadows from medium to low also gained some significant extra performance. Not surprisingly, then, further switching to lowest gained me a very noticeable performance boost - this level disables unit shadows, but keeps those of buildings. Setting no shadows at all probably represented the best gain from the previous level, though, and I believe accounts for all shadows of anything that isn't a unit - trees, walls, buildings, mountains, etc.

While doing this I also noticed just how poor the unit shadows look when they're not set to high. They get all blocky and seem to jump around a lot on the ground, and it was actually bothering me a lot - they're poor enough that it was distracting me from the rest of the scene. It was like a breath of fresh air when I hit Lowest setting and they turned off - I enjoyed the high unit shadows immensely, but outside of that I prefer them off instead of lower quality, it's simply less distracting and easier to look at. The building/tree/etc shadows on the other hand look pretty decent at any setting, and one of the effects I really like is how the building shadows affect the way units are lit - just having the building shadows there makes the walls especially look much better, and the light effect on units basically made them easy to want around. So after seeing how much it killed my FPS I couldn't go with the high shadow setting - it's just way too demanding even though it looks stellar. After that the choice for me was down to Off for best performance, or Lowest which preserved the majority of what I liked about the shadows. I ended up going with Lowest, and would recommend it as a great compromise if your card can't whiz through high shadows - it gives a big performance boost knocking the setting down to Low, while keeping most of the best parts of the shadows around.

As for the particular quirk at hand, TB666 pretty much shows that it's not from shadows. Even so I wanted to get the shadow info out there, since some players may be needlessly suffering. :sweatdrop::whip:

I don't have any real further ideas about the problem, but I too have at least the gatehouse-related performance hit that has been mentioned on here a few times. It honestly may just be that the gatehouse designs are so much more complicated in construction than anything else. They have a lot more faces due to the towers there often trying to be round instead of square like the other locations, as well as arch construction, portculis... it's a lot more detail than you'd initially think. In any case, I don't have the severe 1-4 fps mentioned by someone here, more along the lines of 15 fps with a gatehouse nearby and in view, but it's still considerably worse than viewing other things...

[FactionHeir]

Actually fighting in a large town today I noticed a large amount of lag when facing the town, which usually does not happen for me at this level of settlement. Oddly enough, the only building that differed in this settlement from most other large towns I have been attacking was that it had a level 2 church (christian). Wonder whether churches are also quite intensive on the rig?

[Supervark]

Thought it was my system, 128 mb graphics card 1.5 gig ram 2.4 processer. Have experianced very bad frame rate drop sigeing cities and castles, but i do find if I face away from the place the frame rate picks up abi. Any fixes out there?

[Whacker]

It could also be a "map leak". I have no idea how CA handles or stores their map data, but in other games that use BSP based maps, if you leave open "holes" in the map and you don't close them out with brushes or whatnaught, the game can take a serious hit as it's trying to calculate the space beyond the hole, possibly texture leaks, etc etc, basically a slew of stuff. One of the old ways of catching it was by checking your r_speeds and watching for it to dip way more than normal in certain areas. Some of the old Action Quake 2 maps has this problem for awhile until they fixed them.

:bow:

[FactionHeir]

It could also be a "map leak". I have no idea how CA handles or stores their map data, but in other games that use BSP based maps, if you leave open "holes" in the map and you don't close them out with brushes or whatnaught, the game can take a serious hit as it's trying to calculate the space beyond the hole, possibly texture leaks, etc etc, basically a slew of stuff. One of the old ways of catching it was by checking your r_speeds and watching for it to dip way more than normal in certain areas. Some of the old Action Quake 2 maps has this problem for awhile until they fixed them.

:bow:

That would be the literal meaning of leak, no? :laugh4:

[FactionHeir]

This could be proof of a memory leak in general in M2TW:

Playing about 2-4 hours per session (accounts to about 2-4 turns) in late game, after closing down M2TW, my task manager will still show medieval2 being run, usually at 75-80 megs of memory.

Playing only 1 hour and closing down would show the program as taking up 50 megs.

Since I'm doing pretty much the same each turn (battle, economy, diplomac, agents), this seems to point to a rather serious issue.

[TB666]

Well minor memory leaks are pretty natural tho.
If you play for 2-4 hours, I'm pretty sure you can see that in all games they use up alittle more memory.
It is the big ones that are the trouble, the ones that suck up all your memory in less then 10 minutes, like in Vampires: Bloodlines.

[Forward Observer]

When Stronghold 2 (the first true 3D game in the series) was released, it had the same same slow down issues as the game progressed and the castles got more complex. The game would get almost unplayable in the later missions.

Saving, exiting, and re-starting the game would temporarily improve the situation but not for long.

It effected most players regardless of their system specs. After a while quite a few experienced players with technical backgrounds all agreed it was a memory leak issue and it appears that the developers either listened or were already aware of the problem. They eventually fixed it in a patch and the issue all but went away.

Let's hope that the CA boys can do the same.

Cheers

[TB666]

Well it all depends.
I have reported this on TWC twice when it was buglist time and it never once made it on the list and yet "give danes proper danish accent" did.
So I wouldn't be surprised if CA has no idea of the issue.

[Veresov]

A good video card is no guarrantee that you won't experience the FPS drop. I have a 8800 GEForce, 3 gigs of ram, and an Intel Dual CPU and MTW2 is still laggy. If I run the game full out with the highest settings and huge units the lag is insane.

[Bobo]

Try this: go into a full-stack defending siege battle, simply move one unit around a lot within your walls, and every once in a while check your memory footprint (Windows: Alt-tab and run the Task Manager). I see it growing steadily the more I move around (or the enemy moves around). IMHO, this points to either a leak or heavy fragmentation, possibly connected to pathfinding.

[Lusted]

I have reported this on TWC twice when it was buglist time and it never once made it on the list and yet "give danes proper danish accent" did.
So I wouldn't be surprised if CA has no idea of the issue.

It's on the TWC buglist:

# Large fps drop in large cities and castles.

[FactionHeir]

Which buglist do the devs actually read? All of them or just the TWC one? I noticed that the ORG buglist sapi sends off regularly seems largely ignored and only heated debates in the Citadel main forum get CA responses and pledges.

[Lusted]

Wel i pass the TWc one straight to the devs, and i know they read all the other ones. Just because they mgiht not respond in them doesn't mean they don't read them.

[FactionHeir]

Good to hear, although I didn't quite mean responsing in the buglist topic by the devs but rather addressing bugs reporting by the ORG buglist in patches.

[Lusted]

It's not exactly the easiest to read bug list i've ever seen. It doesn't really seem to be ordered at all. The TWc one i broke up into various categories, including a suggestions for improvements one, so that it was as easy to read as possible.

[FactionHeir]

Maybe you want to give sapi a hand? :)

[sapi]

:laugh4:

I'll definitely make an effort to sort the post-patch one properly (probably just as i originally did in terms of graphical/battlemap/campaign map or the like) but the current one just grew too much for me to do so :grin2:

I do understand that it isn't great for reading, and that will be something that i'll change when i get around to updating it (which will likely be after the patch is released, so that we can have a new one with bugs on the new patch)

:bow:

[FactionHeir]

Might be worth resending any old bugs from the lists you sent off before though if they haven't been patched yet I think. In case they discarded it due to structure :p

If you need help let me know

[sapi]

:grin2:

I think what i'll do is make an extra note of any bugs submitted after the patch which were still there before it :yes:

[Wodeson]

I run M2TW on a 'below-spec' machine:

1400+ GHz Processor
512 MB Main Memory
256 MB Graphics Card

By switching Shadows to 'None', and all other graphic factors to 'Medium' or 'Low' for Grass, I get a solid frame rate (15..30+ fps), playing with 'Huge' Unit sizes.

Sieges and Sallies generally play at a lower but acceptable frame rate (10..15 fps).

However, in some rare instances a Seige battle will drop to a staggering 1 frame per 5 seconds.

Interesting enough, pressing 'Pause' at these points causes the Frame Rate to jump back up to normal levels, and I can zoom around the frozen battle field to my heart's content.

All of which points to the issue being related to an 'AI' or 'Path-Finding' one.

[FactionHeir]

For me, even when paused the game is slow as ever.
But then I only have 64 mb of graphics (but 2.8 ghz)

[TevashSzat]

Factionheir your comp is pretty bad for playing M2TW, I have a better comp and the game starts getting laggy really bad in some of the bigger battles

[FactionHeir]

Its runs all fine except for large siege and campaign map really.
I can even get up to 3k units on the battlemap without noticing a change (small unit sizes)

[Tran]

Well, I hope the reason the devs delay patch release is because they're trying to fix this problem and include it in the 2nd patch...( I hope)

[Grand Duke Vytautas]

Hi tw players! :2thumbsup:

I too had this annoying issue of siege lag. In the settlement level of city/fortress siege and above the game was absolutely unplayable for me - medieval total slideshow :smash: (fraps showed 1 fps:furious3: ) when looking at the city side (esp where cathedral is), but I searched hard how to solve this annoying lag and now I finally can play normally again (15 fps average almost on higest settings, just shadows off)

Here's my main specs:
Athlon xp 2800+ 2.08 Ghz (weakest part considering cpu hungry M2TW)
1 Gb RAM
GeForce 7600 GS 256 Mb

Here's my solutions what I did to this problem:

1. Raise AGP aperture size to 1/4 or 1/2 of your RAM. I have mine set at 256 Mb (earlier it was just 64 Mb). You can do that in BIOS.

2. Raise your virtual memory 2x of your ram. You can do this in my computer-properties-advanced-performance settings

3. Turn shadows off - this is no1 fps killer in M2TW (certainly a bug or it isn't optimized for performance, didn't have this issue in RTW and besides I really like and miss shadows in M2TW)

4. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=68690
really boosted my fps greatly, very useful program for all games.

5. Lower your settings - esp shader version to 1, texture quality to medium, building detail to low, turning vertical sync sometimes helps

6. optimize your computer for gaming by creating seperate user account just for gaming, turning off all unnecessary processes and stuff in the background
you can find many guides on net just google for them
1 program that esp helps here is GAMEXP and similar

7. When your in game menu, hit alt-tab or alt-esc, then ctrl+alt+del and in processes tab fin medieval.exe, right mouse click, priority set to high, really helps sometimes improve the game

Well if all above didn't help you, as it was for me :smash: :wall:, then I have final 2 'solutions' to this issue:

8. Enable all above and enter siege battle, but then don't look at the city you attack but at the opposite direction all the battle (this way your fps are back to normal again). It can be annoing way of storming city, but still better than having 1 fps in 3 seconds lol

and the final thing that saved my day is

9. my computer-properties-advanced-performance settings-advanced-MEMORY USAGE select PROGRAMS
this one small fix just made my M2TW sieges very enjoyable

On the whole, I think M2TW sieges' performance wasn't optimized as well and are certainly performance buggy, ocassionally i get tiny lag once per 3 seconds on massive sieges, but nonetheless I found some ways how to deal with this situation and share my experience with you ~;)

Cheers and happy conquering :charge:

[Whacker]

5. Lower your settings - esp shader version to 1, texture quality to medium, building detail to low, turning vertical sync sometimes helps

One small point I'd like to add to the otherwise great guide, about the Shader Model usage. Most newer generation cards, the Nvidia 7x00, 8x00, and ATI 1x00 series cards as well as most of the higher end Nvidia 6x00 and ATI Xx00 series cards will benefit more from SM2.0 than 1.1, as there's been significantly more work put into the drivers for optimizing the SM2.0 and SM3.0 code paths in the drivers. Some people have differing experiences here, so try what's best, just keep in mind though that using the lower version may actually be slightly less performance depending on your hardware.

:bow:

[sapi]

That's true. I always use the highest SM setting avaliable, lowering other ones if necessary, as I find that that gives me the best graphics/performance ratio.

It all depends on your video card though