Is performance what's ruining it for anyone else?

**Graphic** · 04-26-2009, 02:31

Then that is weird. Must be some bug or some issue the game has with a specific piece of hardware...who knows. It's very frustrating nevertheless, when there's no performance issues with dozens of other games. Yes my drivers are up to date, and whoever asked, I'm on 32 bit Vista.

**Beskar** · 04-26-2009, 02:33

Originally Posted by Graphic

Then that is weird. Must be some bug or some issue the game has with a specific piece of hardware...who knows. It's very frustrating nevertheless, when there's no performance issues with dozens of other games. Yes my drivers are up to date, and whoever asked, I'm on 32 bit Vista.

It's that. Some people have had trouble for some reason with the newer patches. I haven't though, but it's rather hit or miss with Empire.

**Graphic** · 04-26-2009, 02:36

Then does anyone know which are the magical Nvidia drivers for ETW?

**Beskar** · 04-26-2009, 02:43

I can't remember which version it was now. However, there should be a new patch soon anyway and hopefully any problems would be fixed. So I would recommend waiting.

**Servius** · 04-26-2009, 04:32

I have XP and an nvidia 9800 GT. For those two variables, I found the 178.24 driver to be the most stable. As soon as I go higher, Fallout 3 starts having random CTDs that require a reboot.

Unfortunately, While ETW seems to work fine with 178.24 on lower video settings, DOW 2 doesn't like 178.24 at any video setting. It's only happy with newer drivers. Right now I'm running 182.50 and am not having graphical problems with ETW. My problem with ETW is the cursed unit bug (then one where clicking on a particular unit causes ETW to CTD).

**Lemur** · 04-26-2009, 05:56

I would love the game a lot more if those freakin' AI turns didn't take so long. Even with "follow AI moves" (or whatever it's called) turned off, you can still make a very nice sandwich on some turns. Time to brew coffee as well once it gets stuck on Sweden. Optimize, you silly coders, optimize!

**Graphic** · 04-26-2009, 07:17

Man I was playing a US campaign once, after a while the turns literally got to be about 4 or 5 minutes long. Insane.

**Didz** · 04-26-2009, 11:37

Originally Posted by Graphic

Then does anyone know which are the magical Nvidia drivers for ETW?

I'm on an Nvdia 8800 GTS with driver version 6.14.11.8250 dated 27/3/2009 and I have not problems.

Originally Posted by Lemur

I would love the game a lot more if those freakin' AI turns didn't take so long. Even with "follow AI moves" (or whatever it's called) turned off, you can still make a very nice sandwich on some turns. Time to brew coffee as well once it gets stuck on Sweden. Optimize, you silly coders, optimize!

Might be teaching granny to suck eggs here, but you do know that pressing the <space bar> increases the speed of the AI moves don't you.

**AussieGiant** · 04-26-2009, 12:57

Originally Posted by Didz

Might be teaching granny to suck eggs here, but you do know that pressing the <space bar> increases the speed of the AI moves don't you.

I pray to some higher being that everyone knows this. If not, then the Total War community has been wasting years of their respective lives since 2000 by

-EDIT-

I'm also getting a bit annoyed that people with similar systems as mine seem to be running at Ultra settings...and I'm not!! hmmpfff

**Servius** · 04-26-2009, 15:54

I too can hear my GPU card fan spinning up when I'm just looking at the campaign map and slow down when I'm fighting a battle... Perhaps it's the sea, all the actions associated with making the ripples in the sea, all the different flags flutter in the wind, and all the trees sway. Those things aren't as big an issue on the battle map. But yeah, still seems counter-intuitive.

I am also amazed at how long Sweden's turn sometimes takes. Perhaps they have gobs of fleets in treatcherous waters or something, but even when they only have 2-3 regions, they still take forever.

@ Lemur: I love the comparison of how long the AI takes measured by how nice a sandwich you can make in the mean time.

**Lemur** · 04-26-2009, 23:45

Originally Posted by Didz

Might be teaching granny to suck eggs here, but you do know that pressing the <space bar> increases the speed of the AI moves don't you.

Oh, the first thing I do when I start a game is press the spacebar. I really don't need to see how long it takes an army to march.

Also, I turn off the "Follow AI moves" or whatever it's called in the game options. Trust me, I'm all about speeding up those interminable AI turns.

Even given all of this, the AI turns can take far longer than they ought to. I'm on a mildly overclocked Core2Duo, 4 gigs of low-latency RAM, Windows XP Pro, 1 gig 4870; the only thing I could do to make my machine speedier would be to move to a quad-core. Trust me, if the game can't sing on my rig, it ain't speedy on anybody's rig.

Once they're done crushing game-killing bugs, I hope like hell they work on optimizing the AI turns. They're ... quite ... loooooooooong ....

-edit-

Oh, and to speed things up, I also dove into a clean install of Windows XP PRo SP3. Quickened everything on my 'puter except ETW.