Unplayable post-1600 performance

[Adinda]

Am I the only one who literally cannot finish a campaign because of the performance wall after the 1600s?

In the early game, everything runs reasonably fine. But as soon as mid-game hits and your empire actually grows, the tick speed drops off a cliff. I rely heavily on automation just to avoid micromanaging every single province and trade route, but even with automation handling things, the simulation grinds to an unbearable crawl. The lag, stuttering, and slow ticks make playing past 1600 feel like a chore rather than a strategy game.

Honestly, why did Paradox even push the start date all the way back to the 1300s? EU4 starting at 1444 was already balanced and gave the simulation a solid 350-400 year window. Pushing the timeline back an extra 100 years just bloats the world with extra pops, deadweight historical tags, and calculation overhead before you even reach the age of exploration and colonial empires.

There is so much room for engine optimization here. If modern high-end rigs can’t run a mid-to late game empire at playable speeds, what’s the point of having 500 years of timeline if nobody can reasonably play the second half of it? Please prioritize late-game tick performance and AI pathing/market calculations over adding more flavor packs.

[ABoxFullOfKittens]

Specs?

[Adinda]

Originally posted by ABoxFullOfKittens:

Specs?

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D (8C/16T, 96MB 3D V-Cache)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 AIO
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (12GB GDDR7)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL DDR4
Storage: Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
PSU: Cooler Master MWE Gold 650 V2 (650W, 80+ Gold)
OS: Windows 11 (64-bit)

[tonypa]

It was a big problem with EU4 too. And for EU5 they stretched out timeline even more AND added thousands of new locations.

[ABoxFullOfKittens]

Originally posted by Adinda:

Originally posted by ABoxFullOfKittens:

Specs?

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D (8C/16T, 96MB 3D V-Cache)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 AIO
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 (12GB GDDR7)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK
RAM: 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB Pro SL DDR4
Storage: Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
PSU: Cooler Master MWE Gold 650 V2 (650W, 80+ Gold)
OS: Windows 11 (64-bit)

If I was a guessing man I'd put it on your CPU. I compared mine with yours, where I don't have those issues late game. Not drastically different, except your processor, and more RAM, and slightly better VC. CPU is my bet.

[Gilmer]

Yeah, I have a 7800X3d and a 7900XTX and I'm not having issues - I'm in about 1647.

[Xom]

I have Ryzen-3600 and see NO lags in EU5 up to 1700th; then I usually drop the game due to boring.
But I usually have a low start from the scratch - Ditmarchen, Vyatka, Tarusa and so on. It significally slows the progress. But the world is developing normally.

[Noname]

I'm running with a Ryzen 5 3600 + RX 5700XT + 32 GB RAM and never had massive problems with performance in game. In previous versions only slowdowns I had were happening when massive wars erupted after ~1700. With all those big armies running around and sieges happening all at once. But overall for the scale of this game, number of locations, etc. I never found it slow. Only other thing that was slowing game for me was 3D version of map that I turned off after 1 or 2 hours of playing.

But I didn't test it in 1.4 because around 1500 I gave up on this game for now with Paradox headless chicken type updates that break other stuff each time when they try to fix something.

[Xom]

...and maybe you call as "lag" the autosave process? It really can take a some time. :)