Low FPS during siege assaults

**Richard The Tiger Heart** · 05-02-2007, 12:48

Hi everyone,

I play M2TW for a about a month now and it were not the bugs that disappointed me in this game, but the crippled siege assaults. The FPS is simply too low and I cant play like this.

My PC specs:

- AMD Athlon XP 2400 +
- 1024 MB DDR 400MHz
- GeForce 6600GT 128MB
- Windows XP Professional

Sure its not a great computer (the graphic card has only 128 mb of VRAM instead of 256 mb and my processor is getting a bit too old for today's standards) but giving that im using medium settings (even then i use texture on low and I dont use V-Sync for example) I cant get it why does the game get that slow. Im not talking about 15 FPS im talking about 9 FPS!!!

Its impossible to play like this.

But thats not all. I've decided to install the 1.2 (L) patch and went to play the tutorial to see how the game was. On the second siege tutorial of the Norman Conquest in which you assault the nottingham castle the game ran perfectly well, with an average of 30 FPS.

Indeed small settlements usually provide good FPS. A good example are the villages which have no walls and are quite small. However as you advance through the grand campaign your (and other factions of course) settlements will evolve and become larger (like citadels and cities) thus when you go to play on the Battle-Map you get very low FPS. You cant simply look at the city...and how can you assault a target if you cant see it?

It really sucks to have trebuchets and only be able to use em against armies and not walls!

I've read in the buglist something about this matter but it looked inconclusive when it came to the causes of this FPS drop as far as I can remember.

I'm currently investigating the subject, but I need YOUR help to do it. Please post your PC performance in siege assaults and post your hardware specs. If possible tell me about the different types of settlements, unit numbers and scale and respective performance.

PS - I really hope that to play a siege assault you dont have to buy a ultra-mega powerful PC.

PSS - Sorry if this subject has already been discussed.

**FactionHeir** · 05-02-2007, 12:50

Look at my sig.

**sapi** · 05-02-2007, 12:52

One thing worth trying is setting building detail to low - it seems to remove a lot of the useless graphical effects, such as smoke coming from chimneys...

**Richard The Tiger Heart** · 05-02-2007, 12:54

Originally Posted by sapi

One thing worth trying is setting building detail to low - it seems to remove a lot of the useless graphical effects, such as smoke coming from chimneys...

Yeah I did that but it didnt help much...

**FactionHeir** · 05-02-2007, 12:55

Details to low does not remove smoke from chimneys at all actually. Maybe lessens the amount. To really remove em, you gotta do what I outlined :D

**sapi** · 05-02-2007, 12:57

Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Details to low does not remove smoke from chimneys at all actually. Maybe lessens the amount. To really remove em, you gotta do what I outlined :D

Really?

Interesting - I haven't seen any since I changed that setting; guess I've just been playing the wrong size sieges

I stand corrected

**Matty** · 05-02-2007, 13:09

My computer is about the same spec as yours running a 128MB video card (Geoforce 7300), same processor, 2 meg RAM and its fine - I had exactly this lag problem before I upgraded the video card to what I have now, so maybe you need to increase the RAM? I have most of the graphic features on and it runs smoothly.