Campaign Map LAG

Hi all, this is my first post here, i am playing medieval 1 total war with the XL 3.0 mod.

The problem I am having is that i get bad lag on my campaign map. When moving the mouse around it takes more than double the time to get to the required destination, and the mouse's movement is a bit choppy. as a note, i dont believe the minimap is the problem, because when i open the unit or building queue, the cursor on the campaign map still lags. Ending the year lags very badly too, and takes an unbelievably long time.

QUICK AND CUSTOM BATTLES WORK 100% FINE.

The strange thing is, i have been playing a campaign as the english and everything has been perfectly fine up until yesterday. Two days ago the campaign worked perfectly.

I have tried many many solutions, none of which have worked. I have tried adding "-ian" to the end of the path and then minimizing the minimap, because i read that the minimap could have been the source of the lag. I have tried reducing all in game graphical and audio settings to the lowest possible, as well as muting in game sound. I have tried right clicking on my shortcut, and "running in window" which didnt even run the game in a window. I have added ' "C:/....medieval.exe" D' to the end of the path to run the game windowed, and a billion other things i cant remember, all to no avail. Any fix you can find by googling "medieval 1 campaign map lag" i have tried, and none of them have worked.

i have played from the year 1080 to the year 1220, about 3 weeks span of time with it working PERFECT

The game was working fine two nights ago, yesterday morning i played some custom battles, but no campaign, and then last night the campaign map had the horrible lag.
Another probably unrelated point is that while playing my campaign, i would press the escape button to save my game, and it would crash to desktop about 25% of the time. this wasnt a huge problem for me as i could usually revert to quick saves or autosaves, but i just wanted to mention it.

system info -
OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
Other OS Description Not Available
OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation
System Name *******-PC
System Manufacturer ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
System Model K53SD
System Type x64-based PC
Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2670QM CPU @ 2.20GHz, 2201 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. K53SD.204, 1/17/2012
SMBIOS Version 2.6
Windows Directory C:\Windows
System Directory C:\Windows\system32
Boot Device \Device\HarddiskVolume2
Locale United States
Hardware Abstraction Layer Version = "6.1.7601.17514"
User Name **************
Time Zone Eastern Daylight Time
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 6.00 GB
Total Physical Memory 5.78 GB
Available Physical Memory 3.17 GB
Total Virtual Memory 11.6 GB
Available Virtual Memory 8.76 GB
Page File Space 5.78 GB
Page File C:\pagefile.sys

Have you made any other changes to your system from the time it was working correctly to the time you noticed the lag? Anything heavy running in the background?

Welcome to the Org, abc123! :bow:

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Originally Posted by drone

Have you made any other changes to your system from the time it was working correctly to the time you noticed the lag? Anything heavy running in the background?

Welcome to the Org, abc123! :bow:

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Thank you for the welcome!!

I remember uninstalling java because it keeps asking for updates and i have no use for it anymore. i also downloaded a windows update that is a "cumulative update for windows explorer" which i doubt has anything to do with the lag, but i will try to remove the update to be sure. I have also reinstalled java to see if that somehow caused the problem, but the campaign map still lags. I also reinstalled MTW gold and the XL mod, i still have the campaign lag :(.

There is nothing heavy running in the background. one of the fixes i found online said to run a youtube video in the background (sounds strange i know), but the fix did not work for me.

edit: for clarity

I don't have Windows 7 so I am just guessing. Can you run it in 'Safe Mode'?

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

Do you mean running medieval in safe mode? how would i do that?

I should add that i tested when reinstalling the game, and in the non-XL, plain MTW VI 2.01 version, the campaign map lag is still there. I have also tried running the game as an administrator, and that also did not work.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by abc123

Do you mean running medieval in safe mode? how would i do that?

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I think he meant running Win7 in Safe Mode, and then trying MTW. Safe Mode boots with just the most basic of services, it's as bare bones as you can get.

Ok i will try that and get back to you.

In a wonderous development, i went back to school after easter yesterday, and the campaign map is working fine again. It seems the lag only happens at home.

Does anyone have ANY idea why this would happen? Very strange stuff

Curious. What sort of network set up do you have at home? That would be the only thing I could think of...

sorry im kind of a noob with this stuff, but by network i assume you mean internet? i use wifi at home and an ethernet cord at school

Quote:

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Originally Posted by abc123

In a wonderous development, i went back to school after easter yesterday, and the campaign map is working fine again. It seems the lag only happens at home.

Does anyone have ANY idea why this would happen? Very strange stuff

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If it is only a problem on your home computer, that means it is a problem with your home computer (rather than anything else in the world). It is either a software problem or a hardware problem. Use a process of elimnation to determine which. To eliminate most software (and some hardware that is dependent on software) start Win7 in 'safe mode' then run MTW. If you have a lag then it is probably a hardware problem, if not it is a problem with something that runs in normal mode but not in safe mode.

Don't worry about what kind of network you have until after this.

Druzhina
Illustrations of Costume & Soldiers

i use the same laptop at school and at home, but i see what youre talking about with the safe mode.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by abc123

sorry im kind of a noob with this stuff, but by network i assume you mean internet? i use wifi at home and an ethernet cord at school

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If you are using the same computer, then I would say there is either something wrong with your home wifi setup/network or your laptop's wifi when it's connected. Maybe take your laptop to a stop with free wifi and try MTW there, just to see if it's home specific.

Ok i will try that. How would internet connection cause single player offline campaign map lap though?

I also think that this relates to your LAN/wi-fi settings. Do you use any firewall?

MTW has been using GameSpy for multiplayer games. The GameSpy is dead now and (I suppose) that's the problem. MTW notoriously tries to contact a server and after a few minutes it somehow cripples the game itself. The only way to solve this is to kill the process causing it. It's named rundll32.exe. Recently, because of this, I have to start the game twice. First, I start the game, two prcesses appears - Medieval_TW.exe and rundll32.exe but the game fails to load. I kill the Madieval_TW.exe (but leave the rundll32.exe) and start the game again. It fully loads now so I Alt-Tab and kill rundll32.exe. Form that moment game runs nice and smooth. Hope it helps.

Regarding the rundll32 problem mentioned by Stazi, I've read speculations that it might be linked to Windows' "games explorer", but I failed to understand the specifics. A possible workaround is to create a copy of the exe-file (for example "Medieval_TW - Copy.exe") in the same folder and use that copy to start the game. It saves the trouble of having to kill the processes as described by Stazi.