TERRIBLE game performance

[Wehr Wulf]

So I dont know a lot about computers, but from what I do know I have a decent computer. However, whenever I am in a single player campaign battle it starts off fine but slowly as the battle progresses the lag becomes absolutely unbearable. It doesnt even get bad when tons of movement and action is taking place, it will just start slowing down and freezing even if everyone is standing still.
The recommended graphics settings are ultra and high everything, so I turned them all down to medium and even low to no avail so IDK what is causing this lag but its dissapointing a PC I just bought cant run a game from 10 years ago....
I did do all the basic stuff everyone always recommends already such as verify game files, check for driver updates, close programs running in background.

Here are my specs:
Processor: Intel i7-8700K 3.7 GHz 6 core
Graphics card: Nvidia 2080 RTX
Running Windows 10, I have 2TB SSD HD which is where Steam and games are installed on
16GB RAM; "Available physical memory" is 12GB
Windows 10

IDK what other specs are important, Im just posting what I think is important, I found this info in "System Info".
Is my computer just not powerful enough to run this game? :/

[Grumpy Old Vet]

No it is the game. When ever the computer gets confused it starts lagging. This game was released way to soon and never got fixed.

[Wehr Wulf]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

No it is the game. When ever the computer gets confused it starts lagging. This game was released way to soon and never got fixed.

This was my first TW game I bought so thats a bad first impression... wow. Are others like this? I wanted to try Napoleon as well...

As i mentioned, I dont know much about PCs, but is it possible that newer computers have trouble running older games simply because older games were designed for older systems? Maybe that causes performance issues on newer tech, but I know thats counter intuitive... I just have a hard time believing this game just doesnt work correctly..

That seems odd that this game is just broken and it still sold tons of copies. A ton of people have to own this game by now , right? I just bought this PC last month and I know its higher end, so I can assume most of the people who own or have owned this game in the last decade have a PC of equal or lesser quality. So if all these people own the game and nobody can finish a typical battle without atrocious lag and stuttering the game should have overwhelming negative reviews Id think... I mean, basically unless you just want to auto resolve each battle the game is worthless, thats just unacceptable!

[Inardesco]

The game is programmed for 32bit systems which means its limited in what it can use.

Use LargeAdressAware to tell the game it is allowed to use more.

[Grumpy Old Vet]

Originally posted by Xepheon <3:

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

No it is the game. When ever the computer gets confused it starts lagging. This game was released way to soon and never got fixed.

This was my first TW game I bought so thats a bad first impression... wow. Are others like this? I wanted to try Napoleon as well...

As i mentioned, I dont know much about PCs, but is it possible that newer computers have trouble running older games simply because older games were designed for older systems? Maybe that causes performance issues on newer tech, but I know thats counter intuitive... I just have a hard time believing this game just doesnt work correctly..

That seems odd that this game is just broken and it still sold tons of copies. A ton of people have to own this game by now , right? I just bought this PC last month and I know its higher end, so I can assume most of the people who own or have owned this game in the last decade have a PC of equal or lesser quality. So if all these people own the game and nobody can finish a typical battle without atrocious lag and stuttering the game should have overwhelming negative reviews Id think... I mean, basically unless you just want to auto resolve each battle the game is worthless, thats just unacceptable!

Well I preordered this game back when it first came out and it was worse in a lot of areas except fort lag which got worse with each patch. The positive ratings from this game come from fan boys and girls that desperately want CA to make another Empire game. Which I would like if it was a finished game, this game was released some where between 50-60% finished and then abandoned. Even the multiplayer campaign for this game just got dropped. Napoleon is just this game with lots of fixes, but with less content and a smaller map, no america or India. This game is the reason I no longer preorder CA games and never buy them at full price just not worth it. I do love the game just wished it was a fixed finished game.

[Inardesco]

You cant call Napoleon the "fixed" Empire. I've had more crashes to desktop in 30ish hours of Napoleon than I've had in 1k hours of Empire.

[Wehr Wulf]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

Originally posted by Xepheon <3:

This was my first TW game I bought so thats a bad first impression... wow. Are others like this? I wanted to try Napoleon as well...

As i mentioned, I dont know much about PCs, but is it possible that newer computers have trouble running older games simply because older games were designed for older systems? Maybe that causes performance issues on newer tech, but I know thats counter intuitive... I just have a hard time believing this game just doesnt work correctly..

That seems odd that this game is just broken and it still sold tons of copies. A ton of people have to own this game by now , right? I just bought this PC last month and I know its higher end, so I can assume most of the people who own or have owned this game in the last decade have a PC of equal or lesser quality. So if all these people own the game and nobody can finish a typical battle without atrocious lag and stuttering the game should have overwhelming negative reviews Id think... I mean, basically unless you just want to auto resolve each battle the game is worthless, thats just unacceptable!

Well I preordered this game back when it first came out and it was worse in a lot of areas except fort lag which got worse with each patch. The positive ratings from this game come from fan boys and girls that desperately want CA to make another Empire game. Which I would like if it was a finished game, this game was released some where between 50-60% finished and then abandoned. Even the multiplayer campaign for this game just got dropped. Napoleon is just this game with lots of fixes, but with less content and a smaller map, no america or India. This game is the reason I no longer preorder CA games and never buy them at full price just not worth it. I do love the game just wished it was a fixed finished game.

Originally posted by Inardesco:

The game is programmed for 32bit systems which means its limited in what it can use.

Use LargeAdressAware to tell the game it is allowed to use more.

So does everyone have laggy battles unless they do what you suggested?

[Grumpy Old Vet]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

You cant call Napoleon the "fixed" Empire. I've had more crashes to desktop in 30ish hours of Napoleon than I've had in 1k hours of Empire.

I said it had lots of fixes I did not say it was anymore stable then this game is.
Also I do not know if the LargeAdressAware is even legal to use on steam never seen anything regarding it.

[Inardesco]

Originally posted by Xepheon <3:

So does everyone have laggy battles unless they do what you suggested?

I personally only ever had lag during large battles with multiple armies. The first pc I played this on was pretty crap and I needex to run the game on 800x600 to get a decent fps.

With my current pc I only get drops in fps when I hit the speed up button, multiple armies (i've increased regiment size from 120 to 420) or a fort thats been breached, because that completely tanks fps the most.

All in all, before blaming the game, take a look at your settings.

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

I said it had lots of fixes I did not say it was anymore stable then this game is.
Also I do not know if the LargeAdressAware is even legal to use on steam never seen anything regarding it.

People tend to call it the "4gb patch" more often, which isnt technically a patch.

Steam also doesn't condone cheat engines or trainers, yet thousands, perhaps millions, use those day in day out. Its a user-risk and considering its a must for some Medieval 2 mods, I've used it for seversl years already, without issue.

[Grumpy Old Vet]

All in all, before blaming the game, take a look at your settings.

^and this is why this game has such a high rating, a typical microsoft reply.
Because that is the same thing microsoft said back in the day with the 32 bit systems only allowing so much ram.

[pgeerkens]

Originally posted by Inardesco:

The game is programmed for 32bit systems which means its limited in what it can use.

Use LargeAdressAware to tell the game it is allowed to use more.

My experience, playing only vanilla for both games ( > 2,000 hours in NTW, approaching 3,000 hrs Empire), is the exact opposite. I undoubtedly have encountered occasional crashes in NTW, but 40% of my ETW campaigns have ended prematurely with a corrupted game file. I have not yet lost an NTW campaign due to a corrupt save file.

I always click Ctrl-S before a battle (a decades-old habit from being a programmer) so an occasional CTD in a battle doesn't bother me - I just restart.

My system is a 3 year old Alienware-15 running 64-bit WIN-10 with an NVIDEA cardGeForce GTX 1060 on a 2560x1080 LG UltraWide monitor (second monitor set as extended desktop master screen) in full-screen mode - NOT windowed and NOT Big Picture mode.

[Inardesco]

Empire is notorious for corrupting save files but thats not the same as randomly crashing during both single and multiplayer.

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

All in all, before blaming the game, take a look at your settings.

^and this is why this game has such a high rating, a typical microsoft reply.
Because that is the same thing microsoft said back in the day with the 32 bit systems only allowing so much ram.

There are solutions to circumvent the 2gb ram limit, I even gave one.

OP already says he doesnt know much about pc's, he's using an RTX card. RTX is nit supported by Empire. Which means that if he has RTX turned on, that could cause his fps drops.

He's using an Nvidia driver, while Nvidia has solid hardware, they are also known to produce ♥♥♥♥♥♥ drivers that ruin the performance of many games.

So yes, I advice OP to take a look at his settings. Pc's arent consoles where everything works in one go and some games often require a tinkering with setting in order to run smoothly.

[DerDocher]

You could try this solution: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/215268/i-fixed-my-lag-spikes-and-stuttering
You could also try using darthmod - its supposed to fix various bugs/issues and add some new content to the game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/darthmod-empire

[Inardesco]

Yeap, it adds massive unbalance to the game.

[HazardHawk]

Originally posted by Creevy:

You could try this solution: https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/215268/i-fixed-my-lag-spikes-and-stuttering
You could also try using darthmod - its supposed to fix various bugs/issues and add some new content to the game. https://www.moddb.com/mods/darthmod-empire

Empire is not optimized for more than 2 GB of physical ram. The same is true of many programs and apps and that makes them all compete for that first 2 available GB of of ram with everything else. The two helpful suggestions are use an enabler to make the Empire exe large address aware and able to see and use the next 2 GB as well as the first 2 GB and to increase the size of your page file. Just to note, the page file has the same 2 GB limitation and this cannot be changed.

Hand in hand with this, Empire (just like many programs) can only use the first core of the CPU it can see again causing a competition for the use of the core with other running 32 bit programs. Pulling up task manager, go to details, right clicking empire, untick CPU0 so it cannot see it and will use CPU1.

Just to add in, the only people that like Darthmod are not wanting a challenge. It is not so obvious in beginning a game, but the more turns into a game the more it becomes like playing Tic Tac Toe with yourself.

["We're All Keynesians Now"]

Originally posted by Grumpy Old Vet:

No it is the game. When ever the computer gets confused it starts lagging. This game was released way to soon and never got fixed.

you are very correct, i consider the creative assembly very unprofessional. The A.I programmer for rome 2 total war was fired after the game was released due to very bad A.I i kinda feel bad for the guy. And another thing i find kinda stupid by the creative assembly is on the empire total war warpath campaign trailer the cursor was left on screen in one scene. And total war three kingdoms is not worth 40 bucks. or was it 70? screw it i can't remember all im saying is make sure you spend your money wisely if another game comes out in the creative assembly's name im most likely not gonna buy it.