6400 men limit, how to raise?

[sunsmountain]

Dear members of this forum,

As i customize my battles, i run into this 6400 men limit, on a reasonable system (P4 2.8 GHz, 1024 MB RAM, corsair CL2.5, Radeon 9700 Pro 128 MB).

in 1v1, this amounts to 3200 men a side, or 13 units on Huge setting.
That's not even the 10000 that were promised, let alone the 4800 times 8 is 38400 possible. (used to be 48000 even !)

Is there any way to raise this number?

[Kraxis]

Yes there are ways to raise it... Don't know how, but I have seen screenshots from 3v3 battles on Huge with full unit selection. So don't dispair that the game itself is wrong.

[lars573]

Do you mean when you try to select more men on screen than the game thinks your set yp can handle? Cuaes you can just ignore that warning and go ahead with the battle anyway.

[hoof]

I've definitely seen more than 6400 on the field at once. As an experiment, I had both sides field two armies of pikemen, on huge unit sizes. 40x240=9600 men at once. The game was close to a slideshow (except when paused). I suspect that you could set up a 6-way fight, 4800 men each, which would be 28,800 men. I suspect, even if you crank down all the visuals, no PC on the planet could run that battle without serious stutters.

[Siris]

What would be the best 128 MB video card that's a PCI to run RTW on Huge unit size, all details high? I can run it on my 64 MB Intel stock one Huge units, unit detail high, everything else the lowest it can be & my PC almost freezes but its still fun, so I can only imagine how fun it would be if it was smooth! So how much & what is the best 128 MB PCI slot card to run it?

[Sin Qua Non]

Has anyone tried maxing out in a custom battle? I've run the maximum 29006 units in a custom battle at about 6 FPS average. I'd love to see what rig can do that at 20-30. During combat, that is.

[magicalsteve]

"Epic battles between collosal armies. Over 10,000 fully polygonal, motion captured men can be displayed simultaneously with virtually no sacrifice of performance compared to Medieval: Total War."


Despite the fact that I never really believed this feature, I'm still not forgiving CA for this criminal quote.

That is of course assuming the quote originated from CA.

[jimmy]

Do you mean when you try to select more men on screen than the game thinks your set yp can handle? Cuaes you can just ignore that warning and go ahead with the battle anyway.

in custom battle yes. i have played SP and the computer has the other 5 slots as enemy.played defensive battle as the greeks turned everything down to min except unit size have played approx 8 battles max number approx 20,000 units stutters but no crash and playable. to play with max number of units it would basically be all the same type as the numbers vary from unit to unit.as for playing with everything on max and max units i agree i dont think there is a PC out there not what mere mortals can afford anyway?

[Spino]

I wouldn't be so quick to condemn CA for things that Activision's marketing dept. insisted on putting into print. You guys are quick to forget that Activision has final say on all things marketing oriented.

[Akka]

"Epic battles between collosal armies. Over 10,000 fully polygonal, motion captured men can be displayed simultaneously with virtually no sacrifice of performance compared to Medieval: Total War."


Despite the fact that I never really believed this feature, I'm still not forgiving CA for this criminal quote.

That is of course assuming the quote originated from CA.

Well, the quote is right.
If you put the detail to the minimum, a 5 000 men battle on RTW does not runs substancially slower than a 5 000 men battle on MTW.


For the original question, as it was said, there is a warning message telling you that you are above the recommanded number of men and that you risk to have slowdown, but you can ignore it and still plays.

If there is a hard limit, then I suppose you should go into "preferencex.txt", and look at the last line "UNLIMITED_MEN_ON_BATTLEFIELD:FALSE", and replace the "FALSE" with "TRUE".

[Siris]

But what about my question? What is the best 128 MB PCI slot video card that I can get that would run this game on everything Huge quite well if not smooth?

[rebelscum]

Any Radeon would do. Go here for prices. www.pcindex.co.uk
How about a nice RX700 Pro only £106 ex vat

[Oaty]

If you want the max men on the field in custom battle. No phalanx or missile units(includes Legionaire class units). Everyone knows that missiles(flaming esp) cause a slow down, so do javelins, don't know the exact reason phalanxes lag but they do. I can't have 10000 velites(lag lag lag) on the field but I can get up to 10,000 warbands on the field with minor lag.

1.49 ghz processor
512 MB RAM
256 MEG video card
And a very old 4 speed CD ROM. Anyone wanna buy an antique?
Thank god this game does'nt reference the CD too often

The A.I. thinks too much and where you get minor lag against the A.I. you should more than likely have less lag against a human with the same amount of troops. Also a good sound card will help reduce lag but not by a sinificant amount, the less your proceesor has to do the more it can put towards the main engine of the game itself

[sapi]

What would be the best 128 MB video card that's a PCI to run RTW on Huge unit size, all details high? I can run it on my 64 MB Intel stock one Huge units, unit detail high, everything else the lowest it can be & my PC almost freezes but its still fun, so I can only imagine how fun it would be if it was smooth! So how much & what is the best 128 MB PCI slot card to run it?

If you can afford it, get a radeon x800xt. It's about $999 (aud) over here, don't know what that is in american dollars and pounds...

Just go right ahead and exceed the reccomended limit, but expect a decrease in performance

[sunsmountain]

@Siris
PCI or PCI-express? PCI: dont bother, only very old cards like Geforce FX 5200 are available for that. PCI-e, I recommend the Geforce 6800 GT, being an ATi fan myself. That says something, though the X800XL is just as good.

Basically you want a graphics card with a 256-bit buswidth and 16 pixel pipelines, and these 2 cards are the cheapest cards who fullfill this. 256 MB of video memory is also nice for Rome:TW, since it doesnt compress textures much.

See the specs here:
http://graphics.tomshardware.com/gra...charts-01.html

A chipclock 50-100 MHz higher is also nice, but like the video memory, an extra (and you pay dearly for those right now).


As for the 6400 men limit, it still warns me no matter what i do, and turning down the video settings and choosing only warbands doesnt prevent slow-down. As soon as the majority of the troops (10000) is inside the Field Of View, no matter at what distance, the processor gets to 100% and slowdown occurs.
At lower graphics settings its not as bad as at higher settings, but still.

[Akka]

Just wait for the X800 XL to be available.
It's a bit slower than a X800 XT, but it's TWICE cheaper.

[sunsmountain]

Yeah, I am going to wait for a (dont laugh) 512 MB video card.

I grossly underestimated the full demand of Rome: Total War: Graphically you could say Rome asks more than Far Cry or Doom 3 does, if you set all the settings on Highest. On lowest or medium settings i still maintain Rome:TW is CPU intensive, not graphics intensive. At high detail, those texture memory accesses are a plenty on huge...

But by then its dual core upgrade time anyway, some new 2-2-2-5 DDR2 system memory, yummie... :) then Rome should be brought to her knees once more...

[Mikemyers64]

a couple of people have done tests. a mid range proc with a 6800gt and gig of ram could only handle 6.4k without being choppy. only with an fx-55 will the game slow down at 8k. its the game engines fault not your hardware. i noticed this too when i upgraded from a 9600xt to a 6800gt and i still got the same performence.

[AquaLurker]

Hi guys, is it possible to get the game run smoothly if I get myself a 256MB video card because I am thinking of upgrading my video card. My current PC spec would be P4 2.6Gig but only 512 MB ram. Some advice please.