Lag: unit scale and graphic settings etc

[CBR]

From what I have seen and heard from others so far, there are big lag issues in MP.

A 3v3 on large settings (a total of 8-9k men) gives horrible lag. Even a 2v2 that worked ok at first turned into a laggy and nearly unplayable experience near the end (memory leak?)

How much of this is caused by bugs/issues with the game? Are we to expect that normal unit size is the only setting that is playable? (normal size means 27 men cav and 40/60 men infantry units)

I have a 2400+ with 1 gig ram and a FX 5900XT graphic card. How many soldiers on lowest graphic settings can I expect to handle without lag?


CBR

[Sp00n]

CBR,

I have a P4 2.6 9800 Pro and 1024ram I can run 2v2 games ok but 3v3 is a waste of time, im running 750 cable internet, tryed lowering graphics settings made no difference at all.

You can all read about when I asked the Activision guy online today about 4v4 or 3v3s, dropping the unit max to the old standard 16 will make a massive difference but half the new community will complain no doubt if this happens.

4v4 games became the staple diet of us all on MTW and Shogun and its a real shame that the new engine is too cpu heavy for multiplayer.

Shocking but true

Sp00n

[FearZeus]

Just for the record...

Time of this report: 10/7/2004, 16:15:14
Machine name:
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_rtm.040803-2158)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: FearZeus
System Model: FearZeus
BIOS: BIOS Date: 07/21/03 14:19:48 Ver: 08.00.09
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz (2 CPUs)
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 273MB used, 2190MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
DxDiag Version: 5.03.2600.2180 32bit Unicode

Card name: HERCULES 3D PROPHET 9800 XT Classic 256MB
Manufacturer: ATI Technologies Inc.
Chip type: RADEON 9800 XT AGP (0x4E4A)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4E4A&SUBSYS_00021681&REV_00
Display Memory: 256.0 MB
Current Mode: 1024 x 768 (32 bit) (85Hz)
Monitor: Plug and Play Monitor
Monitor Max Res: 1600,1200
Driver Name: ati2dvag.dll
Driver Version: 6.14.0010.6476 (English)
DDI Version: 9 (or higher)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail

Description: SB Audigy 2 ZS Audio [DE80]
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: PCI\VEN_1102&DEV_0004&SUBSYS_20021102&REV_04
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: ctaud2k.sys
Driver Version: 5.12.0001.0441 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: No
Date and Size: 10/8/2003 10:06:04, 366160 bytes
Other Files:
Driver Provider: Creative

And I Also have ADSL 1 mb supplied by bt, I have the same problems as above but It does not seem to change wether it is 2 v 2 or 3 v 3?

[Puzz3D]

I'm using Win98se an AMD xp2400+ (2.0 GHz) cpu, 256 MB RAM, ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB (Catalyst 4.6 driver) with all graphics settings on minimum and 1024x768 screen size, cable modem internet connection, and 3v3 RTW multiplayer with large units (54 cav, 60 and 80 inf = about 1500 men per army) was very laggy (there were fire arrows in this battle). In a 2v2 with large units, and no fire arrows it started out with some lag, and got progressively worse until it was basically unplayable for the last half of the battle. A 3v3 with normal size units (27 cav, 40 and 60 inf) and no fire arrows, played out with a little lag. In all these battles, I was seeing pretty much all sprite figures because I keep the camera well back and high up.

All 4 online battles that I played went to the end, and remained in sync as far as I could tell. Communication with other players during the battle confirmed that we were seeing the same units in the same positions near the end. The double and triple speed options worked with all players having to activate a higher speed for the game to go faster, but any player able to force a slower speed. I didn't check to see if any player can force a pause. I watched the replay of the 2v2 battle, and it replayed with much less lag than the original online battle, but the replay didn't follow the original battle. The replay was definitely out of sync with the original by the midpoint of the battle.

For me, there is a big difference in unit control between MTW and RTW. In MTW, you can do a lot with groups of units, moving your whole army as a group or moving several lines as groups, but in RTW the gameplay seems shifted to more individual control of units. The only line control I could use with confidence was redrawing the line every time I wanted to move it, and this entailed individually selecting the units in the line or selecting the group and ungrouping them before redrawing the line. I had some success with just clicking ahead of a set of selected but ungrouped units, but I often got unwanted rotations when doing this. All this fighting with the interface takes time that you don't have because units run so fast. There is a lot less feeling of control, and a lot more units standing around doing nothing than I am used to in MTW. If you try to get all 20 units doing something active in RTW, you will basically loose control of the battle. The RPS is quite strong, spears work and archers are very effective and very inexpensive. The overall morale level seemed quite adequate at 8333 denari (25k for 3v3). Many of the better untis are not affordable at 8k. You'll have to go to more money to afford more than one or two of them. There is no tax on units of the same type, and I don't think it's required because the RPS does seem to be strong.

If multiplayer performance could be improved so that battles with large units didn't lag so much as to be practically unplayable, that would be a very nice enhancement to the game. The units fight longer, and you can deploy a longer battleline with some depth to each unit.

[Dionysus9]

I've also had very good 1v1's with larger units.

An individual player can NOT force a pause. The whole in-game time-compression system works surprisingly well.

If lag and control were fixed, the game would be far more playable.

[Puzz3D]

If lag and control were fixed, the game would be far more playable.

Right Dion, and when I look at the petition list I don't see these two things being emhasised. Let's face it, CA is dead set against slowing the game down, so better control is the only way to improve control, and lag is destructive of control because the mouse and camera movements overshoot when the lag is severe.

I can't believe that someone in charge at CA though toggle controls were "better" controls. Toggles completely fly in the face of the idea of using grouped units because all the units in the group are not necessarily in the same state. The gameplay seems greared to individual unit control. Something is going on at CA that has changed the direction of the gameplay from previous installments of the game. Some of the things on the petition list probably have absolutely no chance of being implimented because they are inconsistent with CA's current vision. CA declines to say specifically what their vision is. "Gameplay that makes you feel like you're in a movie like Gladiator or Braveheart" is a statement I've seen, and, if that's it, I can see how "toggle" controls came into being.

Also, you aren't going to need unit tax on more than 4 of one type especially if you intend to fix balance issues by modding. Unit tax is a deteriment in a balanced game, and was only put into MTW as a prophylactic against unbalanced units.

[Sp00n]

Quote

"Let's face it, CA is dead set against slowing the game down, so better control is the only way to improve control, and lag is destructive of control because the mouse and camera movements overshoot when the lag is severe"


We need to get some of these jokers to try and chase foot missiles down with cavalry they are barely catchable, I didnt know Maurice Green was rebreaking 100m records in Total War games these days.

The speed missiles is absolutely silly.

Sp00n

[d6veteran]

Once the missle troops start firing all goes to hell. Especially if they are using fire arrows. The fire arrows are great eye candy, but it would be nice if you could toggle them off for bigger battles.

I'm going to try some games tonight with some friends and agree to not use fire arrows and see if that really does make a difference.

[Puzz3D]

Well Spoon, I saw a post by a dev after my complaining about speed and he said, "We looked at speed and concluded it's not a problem.". You see my point about a new vision? They are seeing the game in a different way than in the past. At least, I don't think they can argue that lack of efficient army control and high lag are not important in the way they could say inability of cav to catch routing infantry isn't important.


d6veteran,

Not using fire arrows definitely helps, but so far I haven't been able to get a 3v3 with large units to really be playable even without fire arrows. That was something I was hoping would be playable without a lot of lag. That puts something like a total of 9000 men on the field.

[t1master]

i got some horrible lag in a 1v1 with large/huge units... granted my processor is at the low end of the minumum requirements, but it's still above. there was snow though and i had eight arrow units, so with all that stuff in the air it got really bad, but not unplayable.

i've noticed the same control frustration as yuuki has... i end up grouping units together by type and dragging out the lines and using the ghost shadow to see where they'll end up... i miss the old controls, but am getting used to the new.

i've taken proactive steps to upgrade this old crate of a pc, and hope that will pay off...

i wonder, it sounds like you guys all got decent setups, if the lag is coming from folks that don't have proper equipment like myself.

[ElmarkOFear]

The host can force a pause by alt-tab-ing to the desktop. I found this out in my very first night online. The game froze, and then started back up with the host stating he had to alt-tab out for a few seconds. I am not sure if any of the joiners can do that as well and have no way of testing it. I am playing another game instead.

[Dionysus9]

Right Dion, and when I look at the petition list I don't see these two things being emhasised.

Also, you aren't going to need unit tax on more than 4 of one type especially if you intend to fix balance issues by modding. Unit tax is a deteriment in a balanced game, and was only put into MTW as a prophylactic against unbalanced units.

With the de-synching receiving attention and the logon-CTD (seemingly) fixed, the top 2 problems on our old list have been addressed, at least partially.

Control is being moved to the top of the list (or very close), and unit tax is being omitted--since at least yourself and d6 feel it is unnecessary (and detrimental)--and I'm not including anything on the list that "reasonable" minds can differ over. Also, I'm omitting the prioritization in each section--there will be "critical" issues, "very important" "important" and "preferred."

Stuff like game-speed and kill rate, which are moddable and which are clearly a result of the new "vision" won't even be addressed as I feel they detract from our message and make us look "whiney".

I'm not going to give up on the control issue, however, since it is now a top problem in most peoples minds. I'm going back through the list and re-prioritizing the issues based in large part on some of the players' reservations in this thread (and other threads)

Other minor stuff like selectable faction colors (which I understand from the modders would be a major change) may have to wait for a later time, I think.

Right now I am fleshing out each major issue into a paragraph format where an executive could read it and understand why we feel so strongly about each issue.

more later the baby is crying.
*no rest for the wicked*

[Sp00n]

."

Stuff like game-speed and kill rate, which are moddable and which are clearly a result of the new "vision" won't even be addressed as I feel they detract from our message and make us look "whiney".

I'm not going to give up on the control issue, however, since it is now a top problem in most peoples minds. I'm going back through the list and re-prioritizing the issues based in large part on some of the players' reservations in this thread (and other threads)

*

Thanks for you effects :) Control is my major issue with the game online, if nothing can be done about speed at least can we ask them to just reduce the speed of foot missiles who run nearly was quickly as cav and are extremely hard to catch.


MizuSp00n

[cromwell]

If I may add my 2cents to this topic, I have hosted a couple of 3v3 and they went without lag, according to FearHector and the others who participated. Mind you,I have a fast connection 4mb down and 800kb up, I think it's all in the upload if your hosting. but I'm guessing there. My Cpu is a 2200+ AMD with a gig of Ram, Vid card is a Nvidia 6800.
The thing that bothers me the most, is the control of the units. It is way to individual and the group thing is highly aggravating. I usually group my archers together and move them around together as well. Now when I move them I'm lucky 2 of 3 units go where I ask them, so far every game has resulted in one of the units going off in some direction and me looking for them in the middle of a battle. It's much harder to control groups and units in RTW. The analogy I will use is, MTW felt like a sports car on a twisty road. RTW feels like a mushy,floating twenty year old cadillac on the twisting road. Your Clicking and grouping, and hoping like hell the units are going to do what you want. The speed issue would disappear if we just had better control of the units.
Why is it we have to fight with CA and Activision about issues such as these. Any other industry where there are developers/engineers, and users of a product the user gives feedback to the developers and they work together until the user is happy. The user is the expert at running the product and knows what he needs to get the job done. The developers/engineers are the builders and tweakers usually helping the user get to the point of execution. Take car racing,motorcycle racing, military development, anything interactive between man and a machine/device of somesort. Game developers need to get the two way info flowing or there games will quickly die The gaming companies who listen and work with their users will go on to be successful. It's funny, anytime anyone in the community has played anyone from CA we have killed them with little or no trouble, ie: last Christmass when Magy,Amp and a couple others ran CA off the map. So who are the experts at using this software, and why is no one listening ?

Cromwell

[Sp00n]

Nice post Cromwell read my recent post on the Activision Guy in the Forum thread similar thoughts as myself.

MizuSp00n

[CBR]

I have hosted a couple of 3v3 and they went without lag, according to FearHector and the others who participated

Was that on large unit settings?


CBR

[Puzz3D]

Any other industry where there are developers/engineers, and users of a product the user gives feedback to the developers and they work together until the user is happy. The user is the expert at running the product and knows what he needs to get the job done. The developers/engineers are the builders and tweakers usually helping the user get to the point of execution.

Well, that's is not the situation here. I'm not going to go find the thread which is in the colosseum forum, but it was stated by a high level dev replying to criticism of the demo that "We make the game the way we like it, and hope that the players will like it." That's it, and that is why we have what we have for a game now. They got paid for developing the game, and we pay to play it.

I wanted the game slowed down because I'm a bad player? Now look at all the people complaining about insufficient control. Are they all bad players?

[Chimpyang]

Has anyone had the problem of having the game CTD (after patch) just after the loading screen fills with red and you'rwe about to be put into the battle? I haven't been able to get into a single MP game because of this.....

[AMP]

but it was stated by a high level dev replying to criticism of the demo that "We make the game the way we like it, and hope that the players will like it."

- why would you wanna do that or even say anything like that to your customers? wouldn't it make sense to leave what works just fine alone and add much as possible to the game that your customers are asking for? wouldn't that help build a good reputation and increase sales?


am i missing something here?

[Sp00n]

I agree AMP :) if it was a massive online game with a subscription they would have to listen or the game would die, unfortunately they appear not to listen to the faithful community, many of us who have now been here for over 5 years.

MizuSp00n

[CBR]

Copied this from other thread in Colosseum:

Ok here is a replay of the battle that CrackedAxe and I was in. Its about 8800 men in total.

http://www.mizus.com/hosted/CBR/CBR_lag.rpy

I got about 5 fps most of the time (measured with Fraps) and even with my lowered settings it feels just like it was to play it.


CBR

[Dunhill]

I have played some 2v2 and 1v1 games online (postpatch) and the lag was aty times bad not as oppressive as the prepatch attempts. Obviously we won't be getting nearly the fluidity that we enjoyed in STW.

Can anyone provide a FAQ on the best option settings/internet settings (host upload download and graphics) that have resulted in games with framerates above 25 per sec (my gold standard for online play). Has anyone even seen framerates above 25 per sec?

I'd be interested to hear of the best framerates achieved in a 2v2 game (seemingly our max playable for MP at the moment).

Cheers,

[Puzz3D]

Has anyone even seen framerates above 25 per sec?

I can get 15 to 20 fps watching an MTW/VI v2.01 replay with 8 armies (about 8000 men). An RTW v1.1 replay with 6 armies (about 8000 men) gives me 5 to 6 fps. The best I do in RTW is 30+ fps with two units on the field (200 men). So much for the official claim that RTW is at least as fast as MTW. It's only about 1/3 as fast with 8000 men.

I have AMD xp2400+ (2.0 GHz) cpu, 256 MB pc133 SDRAM running at 266 MHz, ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB RAM, Win98se.

[cromwell]

Let me update my previous post. I 'm now experiencing some lag now as well. I guess I was just lucky before, mostly playing other vets, who know not to bog down their systems or whatever. I think the lag is 90% graphics related and 10% net congestions. The 10%, we have always had and dealt with before, it's no big deal. Run a tracert see where the ms times are high and there u have your bottleneck. The graphics problem we didn't have in previous TW offerings. Up until now the units were sprite based and most graphic cards have no problem rendering them, even in big 4v4 games. Now we have 3d polygon models and sprites( when you pull back with camera or units are far away it switches to sprites again) Now weak vid cards will have problems rendering large amounts of 3dunits, plus add the sprites to that equation and people systems will lag. I think this is one of the reasons for desync happening all the time. There needs to be a video setting for multi, or a utility that can simulate large battles and recommend what settings your video cards should have in order to play multi. In other words turn down the eye candy, if u cannot support it.

Anyways I could be talking out my A$$, just a few random thoughts.

Later, Cromwell

[CBR]

I really dont think its the graphic card that is the main problem. On :com we also talked a bit about it: http://p223.ezboard.com/fshoguntotal...icID=352.topic

One posted:

Ive noticed that RTW is incredibly CPU intensive. I checked this by swapping my old AMD Athlon XP1800+ into my PC (using a 2800+ atm) and got barely half the FPS I had before. Even with a radeon x800 pro. Compare that to swapping the x800 for an 9600pro. barely a quarter decrease.

I have tried lowering my graphic settings to absolutely minimum and there was no real difference when watching the replay I posted here. So far I still believe CPU is the main problem.


CBR

[Puzz3D]

The 1/3 slower speed I'm seeing in RTW vs MTW isn't due to the graphics in my case. I pull the camera back so all the men are sprites. It's RTW sprites vs MTW sprites that I'm comparing, and RTW is much less efficient at it. There is no network or AI involved when watching a replay. I've put all graphics setting on minimum, and it barely makes any difference in fps from high graphic settings since I have a good video card. It suggests either the cpu or the i/o is the bottleneck. It's hard to think of a reason RTW should be less efficient than MTW under these conditions except inefficient programming. For example, sequencing through a multi-dimension data array in memory can be very efficient or very inefficient depending on the order of the array indecies used. It's very easy to make a mistake when programming and use an inefficient addressing method. Another example could be floating point calculations being done in double precision when you could get by with single precision or even using floating point variables when interger would be sufficent. I suppose there could be more parameters associated with each man in RTW that have to be updated, but I doubt is 3 times as many as in MTW.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I have now played a few games....

I must be lucky; I host 2v2 games with large units, between 5000 to 10 000 denarii per army, and neither I nor my fellow opponent and allies faced any significant lag. At those denarri level, not all armies are fully manned (ie, with 20 units)
The only slow down is when I see flaming arrows. Also a lot of missile can be a problem (some slow down during a test with frobeastegg involving 20 archers units on each side ).
3v3 seems to be run OK too, although I have not tried a 3v3 10k large setting yet.

I got an Intel 3.0 Ghz, 1Gb RAM and a decent video card.

Louis,

[CBR]

And whats a decent graphics card to be more precise?

But you have a 3 ghz cpu and that might be whats needed to play without lag.


CBR

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

Video card is a ATI X800 SE 128Mb. Not the best ATI available...

The good and surprising news is that other players, with slightly older computers and slower CPU were also able to play the game without lag. I don't know on what Tempiic is playing, but she reported that it was going fine.

My conclusion is that I am a good host

Louis,

[CBR]

Well maybe host does need a good PC. I still like some info from CA but appears they have gone into hiding heh


CBR