Steam Deck and performance.

[Brother Severus]

I am trying this game on the Steam Deck,I know that it is tagged as playable and not fully Deck supported even so I tried to play AOW 4 on the handled machine from VALVE.
The normal setup is on medium and in battles it won't reach above 25ish FPS,if I set most settings on low the story won't change much.
To the people who tried this game on the Steam Deck do you have any good setup to have at least a steady 30fps in battles as well?

[No Leaf Clover]

Originally posted by Codyksp:

Playing a game released in 2023 on a glorified mobile phone is not a performance issue. it's a lack of understanding of hardware requirements and buying into Valve's advertising schemes.

The Steam Deck isn't made to run every single game in existence, it simply isn't powerful enough. You might want to check the verified games list and notice Age of Wonders isn't on it.

https://store.steampowered.com/greatondeck/

Do you realize the verified status doesn't deal with performance ? Do you really believe some guys at Valve test the whole games and go "ok, this one runs fine"? This is one of the biggest complaints among Deck users. Talk about lack of understanding.

Do you own a deck, how does aow4 run on it for you ? Because I'm more interested in facts than in your sad attempts to trigger me. So unless you have something relevant to add, I wish you a wonderful day mate.

[120 BPM]

Game runs fine on the lowest settings, max resolution (on deck), no vsync but system capped to 30 fps and 4x MSAA to remove the jaggyness.

30 fps stable at 90% of the time

[Codyksp]

Originally posted by No Leaf Clover:

Originally posted by Codyksp:

Playing a game released in 2023 on a glorified mobile phone is not a performance issue. it's a lack of understanding of hardware requirements and buying into Valve's advertising schemes.

The Steam Deck isn't made to run every single game in existence, it simply isn't powerful enough. You might want to check the verified games list and notice Age of Wonders isn't on it.

https://store.steampowered.com/greatondeck/

Do you realize the verified status doesn't deal with performance ? Do you really believe some guys at Valve test the whole games and go "ok, this one runs fine"? This is one of the biggest complaints among Deck users. Talk about lack of understanding.

Do you own a deck, how does aow4 run on it for you ? Because I'm more interested in facts than in your sad attempts to trigger me. So unless you have something relevant to add, I wish you a wonderful day mate.

That list literally exists to show which games can be guaranteed to run properly. At this point it isn't even worth discussing it anymore. Stop trying to game on the equivalent of a phone.

[No Leaf Clover]

Originally posted by Codyksp:

Originally posted by No Leaf Clover:

Do you realize the verified status doesn't deal with performance ? Do you really believe some guys at Valve test the whole games and go "ok, this one runs fine"? This is one of the biggest complaints among Deck users. Talk about lack of understanding.

Do you own a deck, how does aow4 run on it for you ? Because I'm more interested in facts than in your sad attempts to trigger me. So unless you have something relevant to add, I wish you a wonderful day mate.

That list literally exists to show which games can be guaranteed to run properly. At this point it isn't even worth discussing it anymore. Stop trying to game on the equivalent of a phone.

Again, I invite you to check the actual list of requirements to get the verified status.
Running properly isn't the only requirement, and in the end very few games have the "won't run on deck" equivalent that justify the non verified tag. You'd know if you had a deck, instead of trying to convince me it's a glorified phone.

Even then, I couldn't care less what your opinion on the matter is. STEAM DECK is on the title of the post mate, go play off somewhere else.

And you know I didn't exactly mean play, right ?

[Brother Severus]

Originally posted by No Leaf Clover:

You were writing about 40-60 FPS, which I just thought I'd mention is in fact to be divided by 2.

While 30 is nice, 20 is a no go, and it was the case on release.

If anything, game's performance have gotten worse update after update on my end, and I've come to realize that deck users tend to exagerate performance more often than not.

Your post gave me hope but alas ! Still bad performance. And I get a locked 30 FPS on elden ring for example, so my deck isn't faulty.

Last thing is I cant get the paradox launcher to work, so I can't try vulkan, which apparently works better (unless it runs by default ?).

Sorry for the long post, I am really disappointed that a fun looking game is unplayable.

I think you’re expecting to much from the Deck and for me it is better to have a 30 stable fps in a turn based game rather than an unstable performance.
Yes it is not 60fps but I think at this state AOW 4 is playable on our black portable console.
And fact is that there is an improvement with this patch for the SD.
I think in time the devs will fully optimize it.

[Brother Severus]

Originally posted by 120 BPM:

Game runs fine on the lowest settings, max resolution (on deck), no vsync but system capped to 30 fps and 4x MSAA to remove the jaggyness.

30 fps stable at 90% of the time

This,which is a great improvement compared to the 10-15 fps we had pre last patch.

[No Leaf Clover]

Ok guys, fair enough, I'll tweak it sope more I guess..

Originally posted by Brother Severus:

Originally posted by No Leaf Clover:

You were writing about 40-60 FPS, which I just thought I'd mention is in fact to be divided by 2.

While 30 is nice, 20 is a no go, and it was the case on release.

If anything, game's performance have gotten worse update after update on my end, and I've come to realize that deck users tend to exagerate performance more often than not.

Your post gave me hope but alas ! Still bad performance. And I get a locked 30 FPS on elden ring for example, so my deck isn't faulty.

Last thing is I cant get the paradox launcher to work, so I can't try vulkan, which apparently works better (unless it runs by default ?).

Sorry for the long post, I am really disappointed that a fun looking game is unplayable.

I think you’re expecting to much from the Deck and for me it is better to have a 30 stable fps in a turn based game rather than an unstable performance.
Yes it is not 60fps but I think at this state AOW 4 is playable on our black portable console.
And fact is that there is an improvement with this patch for the SD.
I think in time the devs will fully optimize it.

Oh, all I ask is a stable 30, it is indeed a turn based game!

[The Matho]

Hi. I'm trying to get some stable frame rate here, the in-game v-sync and the Steam deck overlay v-sync are messed up in this game.... And the reported frame rate is a mess as well... in some cases it reported 60 when it was clearly below 20 FPS... and Also the opposite.
In some cases even should show a higher framerate but it's evident visually that the reported Frame rate on the Steam deck overlay is not accurate...
I'm not able to hit stable 40 fps in battles. Also when zooming in very close the performance drops a lot... I guess is expected if I see a bunch of trees popping in..

I didn't care how it looked, as long as it was some what stable FPS, I even tried to put it to 20 FPS and low resolution %, but didn't help... Also I want to limit the TPD, mostly due to the fan noise. You can see screenshots on my profile with the settings and battle and world view comparison , notice the zoom ones are quite unstable frame rate

Anyways, what it's working for me, kind of right now.:

Some-what "reported" stable 40 FPS, dips low to 20s

In Game settings

• Borderless
  
• Resolution scale 100%.
  
• In-game V-sync: Half
  
• Texture quality: medium
  
• Anti-aliasing: no
  
• Terrain quality: low
  
• Ground quality: low
  
• Shadow Quality: low
  
• Ambient Occlusion quality: disabled
  
• Particles: disabled
  
• Reflex: disabled

Steam deck settings

• Framerate Limit: 40
  
• Refresh Rate: 40
  
• Allow tearing: disabled
  
• Half rate Shadow: enabled
  
• TDP Limit: 9 Watts
  
• GPU Clock Frequency: 1400
  
• Scaling filter: Linear

Expected battery:

• Around 2:10 hrs/min

I like the game a lot, and I'm not expecting this to run 144 FPS on Deck. But the settings and the Steam deck settings are very messed up.
If we can play this game at stable 25 FPS with relatedly low power draw in low settings it would be awesome. It's a turn base Strategy game, we do not need much more than that.
Lowering the resolution without implemented FSR is not a good experience neither, you can take all the nice effects and shadows away, but low resolution in a 800p screen makes the game un-playable, I have a hard time differentiating the units from each-other.

I hope my settings and test help someone...

[No Leaf Clover]

Originally posted by The Matho:

Hi. I'm trying to get some stable frame rate here, the in-game v-sync and the Steam deck overlay v-sync are messed up in this game.... And the reported frame rate is a mess as well... in some cases it reported 60 when it was clearly below 20 FPS... and Also the opposite.
In some cases even should show a higher framerate but it's evident visually that the reported Frame rate on the Steam deck overlay is not accurate...
I'm not able to hit stable 40 fps in battles. Also when zooming in very close the performance drops a lot... I guess is expected if I see a bunch of trees popping in..

I didn't care how it looked, as long as it was some what stable FPS, I even tried to put it to 20 FPS and low resolution %, but didn't help... Also I want to limit the TPD, mostly due to the fan noise. You can see screenshots on my profile with the settings and battle and world view comparison , notice the zoom ones are quite unstable frame rate

Anyways, what it's working for me, kind of right now.:

Some-what "reported" stable 40 FPS, dips low to 20s

In Game settings

• Borderless
  
• Resolution scale 100%.
  
• In-game V-sync: Half
  
• Texture quality: medium
  
• Anti-aliasing: no
  
• Terrain quality: low
  
• Ground quality: low
  
• Shadow Quality: low
  
• Ambient Occlusion quality: disabled
  
• Particles: disabled
  
• Reflex: disabled

Steam deck settings

• Framerate Limit: 40
  
• Refresh Rate: 40
  
• Allow tearing: disabled
  
• Half rate Shadow: enabled
  
• TDP Limit: 9 Watts
  
• GPU Clock Frequency: 1400
  
• Scaling filter: Linear

Expected battery:

• Around 2:10 hrs/min

I like the game a lot, and I'm not expecting this to run 144 FPS on Deck. But the settings and the Steam deck settings are very messed up.
If we can play this game at stable 25 FPS with relatedly low power draw in low settings it would be awesome. It's a turn base Strategy game, we do not need much more than that.
Lowering the resolution without implemented FSR is not a good experience neither, you can take all the nice effects and shadows away, but low resolution in a 800p screen makes the game un-playable, I have a hard time differentiating the units from each-other.

I hope my settings and test help someone...

Look, it's a really good breakdown, really.
But the game is beyond recovery on Deck. A few days before release, a dev assured me that the game would get the verified tag on Deck. It's not verified to this day.

Another dev (or the same, don't know) also told me afterwerds that the game runs fine on his Deck. Of course we should believe them, why wouldn't we.

I've been gaslit to oblivion here trying to find an answer. At some point I even wondered if my unit wasn't faulty. Spoiler : no, it's not.

The game is just a no-go on Deck. If you even mange to get stable FPS without the fan going haywire and the temps rising to hellish levels, the FRAMETIME is still horrendous.

Now of course not every game will run on the Steam Deck. But this one mate, it should without almost making the machine implode. I get an almost stable 40fps on Elden Ring with a slight undervolt, with way better temperatures. There's no reason this game should be so demanding. Plus on release those problems were also present on PC.

Bottomline : worst 30 euros I've ever spent, bad faith answers, white knights all over the place, non-existent optimization, FPS and frametime to joke level. Uninstalled, and never again a PDX or Triumph title will be bought from me.

[StockBreak]

I remember them saying that the game would be verified after launch.

It doesn't run that bad on my Deck but if you compare it, for example, with Jurassic Evolution 2 the difference is incredible.
Jurassic Park run very smoothly with no frame drops at all, has a very nice graphics and it's verified.

As a programmer I feel that Age of Wonders is not optimized and a lot could be done to improve the performances

I suppose that strict release times don't allow developers to fine tune the games and so the released product is lacking. If the game sells well anyway then a patch will be created.

Unfortunately Paradox is going for this patter more often than ever (see the City Skylines 2 case).

I don't regret my purchase but it's a shame because it could have been a new level for fantasy strategy games.

[Oaks]

My 20 so hours in the game so far have been all with the Steamdeck; my computer can't run the game.

So far, about 90 percent of the game seems to work fine. I had a battle last night with 3v3 army stacks at a city, and that slowed down the game to about 15fps. It was still playable, but of course it would be nicer to go about faster.

I do not think that performance is what keeps the game from getting Verified. There are plenty of games that (probably) have worse performance on the 'deck, but are nevertheless verified. Cyberpunk for example I can't imagine runs well, yet it's verified.

Meanwhile, games like Civilization 6 run great on the deck, yet only receive "Playable". It think it's due to the need to bring up the onscreen keyboard - all games I've played on the deck which require an onscreen keyboard end up with "playable".

I suspect if the devs eliminated the need to pull up the onscreen keyboard in AoW4, they'd probably find themselves very close to getting verified.

Tl,dr: AoW4 probably isn't not yet verified due to performance but due to the need for the onscreen pull up keyboard.

[TriumphJordi]

Originally posted by Oaks:

Tl,dr: AoW4 probably isn't not yet verified due to performance but due to the need for the onscreen pull up keyboard.

We're not verified due to some text somewhere being less than 10 pixels and not being told which text.

We also never said we'd be verified, we'd hoped to be verified by Launch but that didn't happen due to the above. Since we don't know where the insufficient text size is located we haven't tried to resubmit yet (and we've been waiting on a Steam Deck friendly version of the Paradox Launcher).

[Oaks]

Originally posted by TriumphJordi:

Originally posted by Oaks:

Tl,dr: AoW4 probably isn't not yet verified due to performance but due to the need for the onscreen pull up keyboard.

We're not verified due to some text somewhere being less than 10 pixels and not being told which text.

We also never said we'd be verified, we'd hoped to be verified by Launch but that didn't happen due to the above. Since we don't know where the insufficient text size is located we haven't tried to resubmit yet (and we've been waiting on a Steam Deck friendly version of the Paradox Launcher).

That's annoying for you all about the text, especially since they don't cue you in on where the problem text is.

Personally, I have no trouble reading any of the text in the game that I've come across.

Good luck getting that verified, it wouldn't change anything for the folks like myself already playing on SteamDeck, but it could probably pull in more 'Deck users. I have such a fun time with this game I'd like to see it super succeed.

[StockBreak]

Originally posted by TriumphJordi:

Originally posted by Oaks:

Tl,dr: AoW4 probably isn't not yet verified due to performance but due to the need for the onscreen pull up keyboard.

We're not verified due to some text somewhere being less than 10 pixels and not being told which text.

We also never said we'd be verified, we'd hoped to be verified by Launch but that didn't happen due to the above. Since we don't know where the insufficient text size is located we haven't tried to resubmit yet (and we've been waiting on a Steam Deck friendly version of the Paradox Launcher).

I think texts sizes are good enough, it would be good to have the game verified! Let's hope Valve review the request and allow it.

About the verified status you actually said that on April:

Originally posted by TriumphJordi:

Originally posted by Capypara:

Hi, is there an update on this? I don't have Windows, so I'll need to know if the game runs on Linux and/or the Deck before I can pre-order.

Hi, we're working on getting Steam Deck Verified. Currently we're rated Playable but we'll be looking to improve the remaining issues for a Verified status at launch.

[No Leaf Clover]

That's rather funny because text size is actually ok.
As for the rest, I'm too lazy to find the post I actually got those answer, but why I'd lie about this is beyond me.
I wish you good luck with your future games. I just won't buy any.