Bad Performance on Steam Version

[CanOmer]

I usually play Non-Steam version but recently I'm trying Steam version. I noticed bad performance in battles and tried to fix it by adjusting affinity in task manager but didn't help much. Then I decided to compare same custom battle between Steam version and non-Steam version:

20 x 241 = 4820 men phalanx on each side, total of 9640 phalanx.
(Note that phalanx are more performance heavy than other infantry units.)


Result is 11FPS.


Non-Steam version gives 36 fps in same battle.

Is there a way to fix this problem?

I also wish to know that is Steam Medieval II TW version worse than Non-Steam Medieval II TW version in performance?

[20ninescene]

There are several things you can do, I can't discuss them all here because of TWC's TOS, but the things I can discuss here are:

-Run vanilla through Alexander, I recommend Ahowl11's Vanilla Enhancement Mod, it ports vanilla to the alex engine and fixes 90% of RTW's bugs and balance. Alexander has much better performance than 1.5.1 http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...ment-Mod-(AVE)

-Use nvidia inspector to set up the optimal graphics settings for RTW, it will hugely increase your FPS. I do not recommend the overclocking feature unless you know what you're doing.

-Buy process lasso and set up a custom power plan for RTW and it's expansions that puts your CPU clock speed on 100% all the time when the game is running. Also If you have multiple cores, run the game on your second core only (core 1, as your first core is core 0) and set the game to run always on high priority. (only do this if your RTW has at least 2 cores!!) Put all processes you have, except your antivirus, programs that you won't run simultaneously with RTW and the most important system processes to run on all cores except core 1. (not recommended if you have less than 4 cores)

-turn off hyper threading, it will vastly increase your FPS.

-exclude the folder of RTW + the process from your antivirus (do this at your own risk).

-RTW is limited to 2GB of ram, I can't fully discuss this here because of TWC's TOS. If you want to you should do your own research and make your own decisions.

-Turn all anti-aliasing off and use FXAA instead through you NVIDIA control panel.

-Use 2x or 4x anisotropic filtering on RTW via your NVIDIA control panel, doesn't seem to affect my FPS at all because RTW uses very low resolution textures. And not having it makes RTW's texures all bery blurry. You can have better performance and graphics with this setting on and medium graphic settings than without this setting and high graphic settings.

-Make sure RTW is using your NVIDIA graphics card and not your integrated intel GPU.

-Set your vsync in rtw to adaptive and half the refresh rate.

-Set your maximum pre rendered frames to 1 on RTW and 2 for BI and Alex

-Turn on triple buffering

-Set your GPU energy management to maximum performance for RTW.

-Turn off thread optimizing in your NVIDIA settings for RTW.

-Run RTW in compatibility mode with windows XP service pack 2.

-Run RTW as admin by default.

-Install your steam outside your program files. I have installed it in a folder called games on my C drive. Install your steam on an SSD if you have one, my C drive happens to be a 512GB SSD.

-Always set your unit detail no higher than medium (never high or highest). Higher settings will not give you any additional detail, instead they only increase the LOD distances of units.

-Buy a second hand 4:3 screen, for some reason RTW has better performance on those old screens than on modern HD or 4K monitors. All the aspect ratios in red are good for RTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displa...Standards8.svg

-Get a CPU with good single thread performance: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

-Here are some additional things you could try: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4760/...5877097056456/

[Spartan 666]

There are several things you can do, I can't discuss them all here because of TWC's TOS, but the things I can discuss here are:

-Run vanilla through Alexander, I recommend Ahowl11's Vanilla Enhancement Mod, it ports vanilla to the alex engine and fixes 90% of RTW's bugs and balance. Alexander has much better performance than 1.5.1 http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forum...ment-Mod-(AVE)

-Use nvidia inspector to set up the optimal graphics settings for RTW, it will hugely increase your FPS. I do not recommend the overclocking feature unless you know what you're doing.

-Buy process lasso and set up a custom power plan for RTW and it's expansions that puts your CPU clock speed on 100% all the time when the game is running. Also If you have multiple cores, run the game on your second core only (core 1, as your first core is core 0) and set the game to run always on high priority. (only do this if your RTW has at least 2 cores!!) Put all processes you have, except your antivirus, programs that you won't run simultaneously with RTW and the most important system processes to run on all cores except core 1. (not recommended if you have less than 4 cores)

-turn off hyper threading, it will vastly increase your FPS.

-exclude the folder of RTW + the process from your antivirus (do this at your own risk).

-RTW is limited to 2GB of ram, I can't fully discuss this here because of TWC's TOS. If you want to you should do your own research and make your own decisions.

-Turn all anti-aliasing off and use FXAA instead through you NVIDIA control panel.

-Use 2x or 4x anisotropic filtering on RTW via your NVIDIA control panel, doesn't seem to affect my FPS at all because RTW uses very low resolution textures. And not having it makes RTW's texures all bery blurry. You can have better performance and graphics with this setting on and medium graphic settings than without this setting and high graphic settings.

-Make sure RTW is using your NVIDIA graphics card and not your integrated intel GPU.

-Set your vsync in rtw to adaptive and half the refresh rate.

-Set your maximum pre rendered frames to 1 on RTW and 2 for BI and Alex

-Turn on triple buffering

-Set your GPU energy management to maximum performance for RTW.

-Turn off thread optimizing in your NVIDIA settings for RTW.

-Run RTW in compatibility mode with windows XP service pack 2.

-Run RTW as admin by default.

-Install your steam outside your program files. I have installed it in a folder called games on my C drive. Install your steam on an SSD if you have one, my C drive happens to be a 512GB SSD.

-Always set your unit detail no higher than medium (never high or highest). Higher settings will not give you any additional detail, instead they only increase the LOD distances of units.

-Buy a second hand 4:3 screen, for some reason RTW has better performance on those old screens than on modern HD or 4K monitors. All the aspect ratios in red are good for RTW: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Displa...Standards8.svg

-Get a CPU with good single thread performance: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/singleThread.html

-Here are some additional things you could try: https://steamcommunity.com/app/4760/...5877097056456/

Hi, sorry for necromancing this thread but I am currently fighting against performance, instability and CTDs.

Most, if not all, the fixes you recommend in the Nvidia control panel, the core affinity fix, and setting the game to run as administrator in compatibilty mode makes my game terribly unstable, to the point of crashing right after or during savegame loading, or in the middle of battles. Even setting the affinity manually in task manager breaks things up, sometimes the game freezes right after I alt-tab back to windows, or right after I go back to the game.

I am running a Steam version on an Acer Nitro 5, with a i7-9750 CPU, Geforce GTX 1660 Ti, 16gb ram.

[Imperator Caesarian]

I downloaded something for M2TW that made the game higher than 2gb. And my frames were normal. Imma try that for Rome 1.

[Gigantus]

For those that don't want to re-install Steam - move RTW's library to another drive, that will dramatically shorten the path (long paths can cause issues) plus it will also eliminate the Virtual Store issue.

[G. Ward]

On the subject of performance, ppl. have often found that the game doesn't recognise their discrete GPU (thus, seriously hampering performance).

For a long time, it was suggested that people download a d3d8.dll file. This enabled the game to utlise the GPU, but, at the cost of preventing the rendering of flaming projectiles.


But, I seem to have found a version of the .dll file that does *not* will allow the game to use your dedicated graphics card (thus increasing performance massively), *without* getting rid of flaming projectiles.


Download the file here: https://github.com/crosire/d3d8to9/releases


I should just add that I've only tested this with the retail version(s) of Rome & Barbarian Invasion (i.e. 1.5 , & 1.6) not the Steam version(s) (1.5.1) of either. So, mileage may vary. But, this is, to this day, the best fix I've found.


Another thing ppl. could try to do is disable their integrated graphics in the BIOS. This might force the game to use your graphics card.


-V

[Gigantus]

I downloaded something for M2TW that made the game higher than 2gb. And my frames were normal. Imma try that for Rome 1.

The approach regarding this fix (the so called 4GB patch) have been relaxing over the last years, hence here the link for it.

[sim2er]

On the subject of performance, ppl. have often found that the game doesn't recognise their discrete GPU (thus, seriously hampering performance).

For a long time, it was suggested that people download a d3d8.dll file. This enabled the game to utlise the GPU, but, at the cost of preventing the rendering of flaming projectiles.

... [See quoted post] ...

Another thing ppl. could try to do is disable their integrated graphics in the BIOS. This might force the game to use your graphics card.


-V

All of that should not necessary, if the issue is only which GPU is being used.

On newer versions of windows (11, 10 [after update 20H2]), under advanced display & graphics settings there is an option to manually specify the GPU used with each app.

On previous versions of windows, this setting was controlled by the graphics driver (Nvidia control panel -> manage 3D -> preferred graphics adapter, AMD Radeon settings -> system -> switchable graphics {if you have an older AMD driver called catalyst control center, you may have to poke around the advanced settings to find it}).

While I have not specifically tested this game, it is an issue many people have experienced within gaming laptops. A separate issue is that many classic games were hard-profiled so the game doesn't know what to do with more modern graphics chips. In which case, more modification becomes necessary (usually to the profile database). As far as memory, most 32 bit processes can be safely modified to use the "Large address aware" flag on a 64 bit operating system. This mod became commonplace in 2010 as 4gb+ ram started to become common, and many games received it in an official patch. Games that don't receive patches anymore may still benefit from it.

[Gigantus]

As to Nvidia control, panel - I recently came across this video which did help myself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eFnUQFFcXo