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...

[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

[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

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.