Older Games microstuttering after every single ingame day

[A-Dash]

Hi, I currently have a problem that so far is the same for CK2, EU4, and HOI4 where whenever an in game day (or hour in HOI4s case) passes the game has a small but noticable pause/stutter. It becomes very noticeable whenever I move the camera around and makes the games unplayable in my opinion given how often one moves the camera and needs it to move smoothly and without lag/stuttering. The problem does not persist whenever the games are paused though.

The only major difference in my setup before and after the problem started was that a changed my 1080p 25inch monitor with a 1440p 27inch monitor with a 280hz refresh rate. I have played around with the settings, setting refresh rates for the games to 60hz, changing from fullscreen to borderless to windowed yet nothing fixes the problem.

Anyone please tell me how can I fix this? Is it a setting I need to change or something or do these games just hate 1440p monitors? These games are unplayable to unless the problem is fixed.

 

[AndrewT]

This is not a problem with the forums, so moved to the Tech Suport forum of one of the affected games.

 

[AndrewT]

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-EU4
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Europa Universalis IV AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add EU4.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam EU4 or Documents EU4 locations, before installing again.


IF that doesn't help, Right click on eu4.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Edit that settings.txt to say:

refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=no

vsync=no

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.


IF that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

 

[A-Dash]

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-EU4
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Europa Universalis IV AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add EU4.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam EU4 or Documents EU4 locations, before installing again.


IF that doesn't help, Right click on eu4.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Edit that settings.txt to say:


Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.


IF that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

Thanks for the response, I'll try those and see if it works

 

[A-Dash]

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-EU4
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Europa Universalis IV AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add EU4.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam EU4 or Documents EU4 locations, before installing again.


IF that doesn't help, Right click on eu4.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Edit that settings.txt to say:


Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.


IF that doesn't help:
DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

Ok so I did a clean reinstall and put eu4.exe on an exception list and it didn't help with the problem. Then I tried the other option that disables fullscreen optimization and has me change the settings test and that just made the game run much worse.

So I guess all thats left is to provide all of the files you requested and see if that helps. Here you are, I hope this problem will be fixed.

 

[AndrewT]

From those files, you haven't made the settings changes I posted above:

refreshRate=280
fullScreen=no
borderless=yes

vsync=yes

Edit that settings.txt to say:

refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=no

vsync=no

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.

 

[A-Dash]

From those files, you haven't made the settings changes I posted above:




Edit that settings.txt to say:


Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.

I told you that I did that, that settings was after I tried your suggestion word for word and reverted to how it used to be after changing it to those settings didn't fix anything. I said that it didn't work and made the games performance worse.

 

[AndrewT]

It's hard to see how a lower refresh rate could possibly make the games stutter more. Did you try the same thing with the other affected games? What actual fps are you getting in the games when my suggested settings are in use?

Then, make a new Windows user on this machine and log into that. Disable everything you can in the Windows Startup settings and reboot. Is it any better?

If not, install and run the free utility Speccy. Send its output to a text file and attach that here please.

Speccy - Free Download

Download Speccy - the System Information tool

www.ccleaner.com

 

[A-Dash]

I'll try that

 

[A-Dash]

It's hard to see how a lower refresh rate could possibly make the games stutter more. Did you try the same thing with the other affected games? What actual fps are you getting in the games when my suggested settings are in use?

Then, make a new Windows user on this machine and log into that. Disable everything you can in the Windows Startup settings and reboot. Is it any better?

If not, install and run the free utility Speccy. Send its output to a text file and attach that here please.

Speccy - Free Download

Download Speccy - the System Information tool

www.ccleaner.com

Sorry for the wait, I did what you asked by making a new user and disabled everything in the Windows Startup settings and reboot and it did not help at all (was a pain I hope to never do something like that again). So now I have run the speecy and posting its text file.

Honestly I don't know why things are like this, all I did was a get a new monitor. Are these games I've sent hundreds on really not going to function properly because of that?

 

[AndrewT]

It is hard to see how this has anything to do with your new monitor. But if you swap the old one in again does it come good for you?

You have 2 Windows updates stuck "In Progress" for over a month. If you run the Windows Update app manually does it find anything to do? If so apply that and reboot.

I see OneDrive is running. Your Windows user Documents folder is not on OneDrive, I hope - it's local?

 

[A-Dash]

It is hard to see how this has anything to do with your new monitor. But if you swap the old one in again does it come good for you?

You have 2 Windows updates stuck "In Progress" for over a month. If you run the Windows Update app manually does it find anything to do? If so apply that and reboot.

I see OneDrive is running. Your Windows user Documents folder is not on OneDrive, I hope - it's local?

Really? I just did a windows update today and my computers everything is updated, thats odd.

Also I dont know if my windows user documents folder is on OneDrive or not, how do I check?

 

[AndrewT]

Really? I just did a windows update today and my computers everything is updated, thats odd.

If you search that output for Not Installed you'll see it.

Also I dont know if my windows user documents folder is on OneDrive or not, how do I check?

Right click on Documents in the left column of File Explorer, just under This PC there. Go to properties, location. What do you see in there?

 

[A-Dash]

It says my Documents are located in C:\Users\(My User Name)\Documents

Which seems normal right?

OneDrive-Personal has its own documents folder but it is completely empty btw

 

[AndrewT]

That is normal, yes. So your problem is elsewhere.

You only mentioned CK2, EU4, and HOI4 above. Does this affect any non-PDS game such as PA, Surviving Mars, that i se you have?

Or newer PDs games like I:R and CK3?

 

[A-Dash]

That is normal, yes. So your problem is elsewhere.

You only mentioned CK2, EU4, and HOI4 above. Does this affect any non-PDS game such as PA, Surviving Mars, that i se you have?

Or newer PDs games like I:R and CK3?

I have been meaning to experiment with those games as well to see if they suffer the same problem but haven't found to time to redownload them. But that is a good idea, whenever I have time I will check and see if other PDS games suffer from it.

I will say that besides CK2, EU4, and HOI4 no other games on my PC suffer from this kind of problem, in fact after getting my new monitor most games seem to run more smoothly given alot of them were designed more for 1440p and above in mind. I don't think I have mentioned it before but around the same time I replaced my monitor I had to do a reset on my PC (forgot what it was specifically called) to fix corrupted data caused because of a power outage while using my PC preventing it from starting up normally. I basically had to redownload everything that wasn't on my D: drive like Steam and my paradox games. Still I dont see why that would cause any disturbances or problems to how my paradox games function. All I can understand is that all of these games are cut from the same cloth, and that my computer does not get along with the games engine when it comes days ticking as it is exactly that that causes a stutter.

Also if you are curious, I have done a clean reinstall, verifying of game files, and tried what you suggest with EU4 with CK2 and HOI4 with no results.

 

[AndrewT]

I think that reset, or the problem that caused it, is more likely to be a cause of this problem than your monitor. If you swap the old monitor in again does it come good for you?

Please let me know how the tests with other games pans out, thanks.

 

[A-Dash]

I think that reset, or the problem that caused it, is more likely to be a cause of this problem than your monitor. If you swap the old monitor in again does it come good for you?

Please let me know how the tests with other games pans out, thanks.

I am probably going to be unable to test the other games at the moment because I am going to be on vacation tomorrow so you're gonna have to wait a bit on that. Also I cant really swap back to my old monitor cause it's broken (the reason why I got a bigger and better monitor).

But thank you for the fast responses and trying to help me with this ridiculous problem. Also I dont know if this helps but it seems someone else had a similar problem to what I had 3 years ago, you were even the guy that was trying to help them https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...d-frame-skips-on-really-beefy-pc-eu4.1392215/

Did you ever find out what the problem was for that one or no?

 

[AndrewT]

There's only what you see in that thread. At least two unrelated workarounds/fixes mentioned in it, and as you see we haven't had a continuous stream of such reports across all those games since then (some on particular games, of course). Most likely those reports were unrelated causes to each other.

I'll be here when you get back.

 

[A-Dash]

Ok so I reinstalled CK3 and Vic2 to see if those two games (a much newer and much older game) suffer from the same problem as CK2, EU4, and HOI4 and unfortunately they do. This is honestly awful as honestly all of the games are annoyingly unplayable because of this issue. How can I navigate the map whenever these annoying stutters happen. It seems that something happened that caused my PC to not run the games on the Clausewitz Engine properly, that is the only thing that I can safely deduce at this point cause no other games have had problems after changing my monitor and reseting my PC. I dunno if its because of a specific setting combination or just some unseen bug but I just really want this problem to be fixed so I can actually play these games again.