Beta 1.4 - Speaking of performance

[The Experior]

So... Paradox removed hourly ticks "for performance reasons". Then I would like to know why the game runs even worse now on an high-end system?

13.Gen i9-13900KF, GTX 4090 24GB, 64GB RAM.
The game is installed on a fast 2TB Kingston Fury Renegade M.2 SSD.

The days inbetween the month are running like crazy now, especially on speed 5. But what is it good for when it is followed by a ca. 3 seconds long lag at every last day of the month. That's a few seconds of an absolutely unresponsive game!
I know there is quite a bunch of people playing on constant speed 5 or former 7. Do you automate everything and let the game just run? How is this even fun?
Seems like most of the calculations done over the days are now done alltogether on the last of the month, but that's just me speculating.

P.S. I have local autosaves activated every month, btw.
Sure, saving needs a little time, but it was way better in previous versions.

Has anyone made similar experiences? Has anyone found a way to solve this or at least soothe it a bit?

[eaerion]

"Paradox removed hourly ticks "for performance reasons". " - false

https://www.reddit.com/r/EU5/comments/1x1kt48/140_beta_check_in_survey/

"This change was made with pacing and gameplay in mind, NOT performance. We talked about this topic in more depth in Tinto Talks 123. While there are certainly some measurable performance improvements with this change, those are considered a bonus, not the target."

"why the game runs even worse now on an high-end system?" - false

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/developer-diary/tinto-talks-123-1-4-performance-and-campaign-timeline.1941000/

Days are by average much much faster than in 1.3 and you can go through the campaign on max speed in about 50% time needed before.

"But what is it good for when it is followed by a ca. 3 seconds long lag at every last day of the month. That's a few seconds of an absolutely unresponsive game!" - finally true
but
it is not worse than in 1.3. First day of a month was always laggy. I suspect there is a lot of calculations made once per month and whole world does it at the same time.

[KroganCharr]

Originally posted by eaerion:

I suspect there is a lot of calculations made once per month and whole world does it at the same time.

Yes, that's always been a thing. If you boot up a game of EU4 and set it to max speed, you will also see that the days zoom through a month, and then at the 1st briefly stop before running again. The difference is that this delay obviously gets bigger with more stuff to calculate, and there are so many more active tags in EU5 than there are in EU4. Side note, this system is also one of the ways that make the AI weaker than a human player, because the AI makes many evaluations and decisions only once a month, that a human player can do every day, it's a necessary compromise to make the performance work. It's also historically shown that better hardware does not solve this, you can play a potato game like Crusader Kings 2 on a high end 2026 system and you will still be dealing with loading times and slowdowns for intense calculations.

[Krozan]

Speed 5 is "unlimited". It go as fast as your cpu can work. But you can play it speed 1 lag will still happen each month.

Originally posted by The Experior:

I know there is quite a bunch of people playing on constant speed 5 or former 7. Do you automate everything and let the game just run? How is this even fun?

I automate some part of the game while microing some others.
Fun is subjective, some people like to roleplaying in SP for one run in 400H. Others just sit in observer mod to see what happens, some automate everything in speed 5 and let the AI play apparently.

But what does it matter to you how other people play, as long as they enjoy it?

Originally posted by The Experior:

Has anyone made similar experiences? Has anyone found a way to solve this or at least soothe it a bit?

If you're windows user

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3600886296

If you consider going back to 1.3, or maybe it will be update for 1.4 soon

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3662193478

[The Experior]

I played EU 4 for over 4.200h now. I'm used to the monthly calculation lags, but it's not that bad. Maybe half of a second.
I have over 450h in EU 5. Mostly testing, never finished a campaign due to various reasons.
Just reverted back to 1.3.1 for comparison and it runs smoother.

"But what does it matter to you how other people play, as long as they enjoy it?" -
It doesn't matter to me how other people choose to play the game. To each their own. What does concern me, however, is the direction the game is heading—or being pushed in—and that direction is heavily influenced by all kinds of player opinions.

Tinto can only lose if they try to please everyone. I'd much rather see them stick to their vision and continue building on it, because that's ultimately what I paid a considerable amount of money for: the prospect of a new, ambitious title that builds on the foundations of its predecessors, not an EU4.5.

For me, the hourly ticks were, among other things, actually a reason to buy EU5, not against it.
And yes... pacing is a subjective thing, fun even more. Performance is not.
I do like to micromanage things from time to time so I rather play on lower speeds and pause a lot. But as Krozan wrote, there's allways the lag at the end of the month - no difference if speed 1 or 5 and, believe me or not, I don't have these problems with 1.3.

I just hope things work out with the next updates or I'll be stuck on 1.3.1 for the time being.