How to boost your FPS and remove input lag (Beyond 60FPS)

Learn how to expose hidden graphics settings to boost your FPS and remove input lag!

The Problem

Newer Civ games are known to be slight resource hogs due to all the prettiness on the screen. The latest installment is no different. Pleasing us with its luscious visuals the game sadly seems to eat away all those precious frames per second we as PC gamers oh so deserve. Not only that, but there seems to be noticable input lag associated with it.

Luckily, reader, in a few steps you will learn how to make a slight config tweak to improve your experience!

Understanding Graphics Profiles

Civilizations: Beyond Earth provides competent amount of configuration within the graphics options. However, not everything is exposed to us tweakers.

You see, the "Show Advanced Options" does not actually show quite everything, my friend! Not only that, but most of those settings, while do affect the visuals, have little effect on the performance of the game!

What I found, is that the seemingly predefined configurations known as "Graphics Profiles" actually change some settings which are not exposed ANYWHERE in the game's menus.


What we are going to do, is get the maximum possible quality without sacrificing much at all!

Making the tweak!

First off, launch the game and set your graphics settings to whatever you wish. The tweak will not override any individual settings, resolution, etc. After you have made your changes, apply them and exit the game.

Now, open your windows explorer, and copy/paste the following into the path bar and hit enter:

%USERPROFILE%\Documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth\

This will navigate to the game settings folder within your Documents folder:
Keep in mind, that the game keeps its configuration files specifically under

"C:\Users\__YOURUSERNAMEHERE__\Documents\my games\Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth"

It does not seem to store any game configuration files in the game folder under Steam.

Open GraphicsSettings.ini with your favourite text editor and make the following changes to the lines below:

Enable Bloom = 0

Enable UIBlur = 0

Enable DoF = 0

TerrainPageinSpeedStill = 1

TerrainPageinSpeedMoving = 0

That's it! Now save the file and you're ready to go!

Read on for some vague explanation and comparison screenshots.

Vague explanation of why this works

It would seem that the Graphics Profile hold predefined values for the afore-mentioned lines along with the exposed graphics settings. At the lowest quality setting, the unexposed settings match the ones you've just read about in the previous section. At highest (Ultra) graphics settings the lines look like this:

Enable Bloom = 1

Enable UIBlur = 1

Enable DoF = 1

TerrainPageinSpeedStill = 6

TerrainPageinSpeedMoving = 3

The TerrainPagein* lines seem to have the biggest effect, causing major FPS loss and great input lag. I assume it's got to do with how many frames the engine tries to pre-render or how much memory it allocates... I don't know. What I do know is the effect on the overall experience this causes is VERY noticable.

The Bloom, UIBlur and DoF settings have minor but still, slightly noticable impact. You may leave them at 1 if you don't mind losing a few frames.

Comparison screenies!

"Dummycat! But won't that change the visuals from crispy awesome to blurry sadness?!"

Well, see the below screenshots for your own satisfaction. The only setting I left disabled was Anti-Aliasing, otherwise everything is at max.

No Tweak:

With Tweak:

As you may notice (if you look hard enough), the Depth of Field and Bloom are gone. If you really like the effect, you can read the previous section on how to leave it enabled at the expense of a minor performance hit.

I hope you enjoyed this guide! Now go conquer the Universe!

[˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞]

Yeah, understandable take on things. Your guide is one of the ones that popped up on the front page when I was looking around to see if there was any more info that might help me in my own thing. Alas, no. But figured it would be a good spot to leave that info I left behind, just in case it helps anyone else.

As for being 10 years old as a guide, I post, because the guide still exists, and people are still reading it on and off over the years.

PS. I realize that if this were a typical forum board, some would call this necro posting. Personally, I think those people are up their own a-hole about 6 feet deep. Part of the reason why forums for fixes/tips/tweaks/etc become impossible to find anything useful on, is due to lack of coherence of issues brought up in said forums.I.E. They split the conversation up far too much due to avoiding necro posting. Thanks for understanding, hopefully. You have a great day.

[MrWildBunnycat]

˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞ , I appreciate the investigation, but I wrote this guide 10 years ago, when I was running a GTX670M on a laptop from 2012. I don't think this guide is that relevant anymore

[˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞]

Character limit reached in prior comment. This is the remainder:

Another way to 'fix' the problem, as dumb as this sounds, is to just alt-tab out of the game, the back in. Yeah, this for some reason fixes it as well. Or does for me at least? I'll use this method when the prior doesn't seem to want to work for my resolutions that can do 75hz. They'll stick to 60hz instead, which is the only other refresh rate available for those resolutions that do 75hz. (Which is part of why how I know the reason why it displays 24fps@24hz for my 1080p option, as it's the lowest for it despite defaulting the option to 60hz version.)

[˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞˞]

Framerate issue seems to be due to a misunderstanding in the game engines logic in regards to desktop resolution settings, and the minimum refresh rate available for that resolution out of the range of refresh rates that ones monitor or tv screen might support. Mine does a range from 24-60hz for 1080p for example, so it likes to try to default to 24hz, even though the default chosen in the options is the 60hz version of 1080p. It has absolutely nothing to do with the settings of your setup. It's just the game being -1 IQ.

Simply change that resolution to something like 59hz instead and apply it. Then change it back to 60hz. It should be fixed now, at least until you restart the game. Maybe. I've noticed it's a bit touch and go in that regards.

[clop1000]

Does someone have such issues? https://steamcommunity.com/app/65980/discussions/0/3194740972119986913/

[clop1000]

Sometimes I can see the semitranslucent menu, although I have closed it. What option can cause this bug?

[Apple Aliance]

For Linux users: /home/<user_name>/.local/share/aspyr-media/Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth

[EvilPolygons]

The comment from 12/2016 is correct. 15 fps and massive input lag w/ RTX 2080. Opened the graphics options and switched MSAA from On to Off, then back On again. Instantly fixed the low fps and input lag. Have to do it every time you launch the game, but it's quick & easy, and not a big deal.

[pow virtualviper]

This game has a known bug, as Battle Bass says! You only have to change some graphics settings back and forth, and then you get your normal framerate back. I play this game on my laptop with integrated graphics and have a pretty decent 40+ FPS on high settings.

[Capt Oombof]

I was having massive input lag in every part of the game (even the main menu) and found a weird fix. All I do is change the Anti Alising setting in the main menu to something different and press accept. After doing this my mouse instantly begins to scroll smoothly and any fps issues clear up as well. Then i can set my AA back to were it was and still everything is smooth. After this I can load saves or start a game with no fps or input issues. The only downside is that I have to do this everytime I start the game. Hope this helps