CK3 Single Session Length Causing Save Game Load Time Bloat, Scale of issue is magnified when using mods

[sawwhet]

Information​

I have verifed my game files (Steam only)​

Yes

I have disabled all mods​

Yes

I am running the latest game update​

Yes

Required​

Summary​

CK3 Single Session Length Causing Save Game Load Time Bloat, Scale of issue is magnified significantly when using

Description​

Since the T&T DLC launched I've been noticing that the longer that CK3 is open in a single session, the longer that it takes to load save games, and by significant amounts. Since the recent 1.9.2.1 update, it has become even more noticeable to me, and after some investigation I've been able to draw a clear connection on my end between the number of mods active in a loadout, and the degree to which save game load time bloats.

The following details my personal investigation and my personal findings. I can also produce detailed time-series data and mod loadout information to back these findings up if needed.

I followed the following procedure:

1. Start a brand new game

2. Pick the exact same character each time

3. Tick ~5+ years by of in game time

4. Pause the game, and let CK3 sit still for ~15 minutes

5. Save the game again, then load the save

6. Track how much time goes by

7. Close game and tweak mod list and load order

8. Repeat

Note: No other computer processes were being operated at the same time, so little outside influence on variability in the CPU load.

-----

What I am seeing:

1. In general, when I've been trying to actually play the game with my ideal mod loadout, I've been seeing that the longer CK3 is open, the longer load times become, regardless of doing anything in game or not. After 15 mins or so, if you try to load a save game, it takes 5+ minutes for it to load, if it loads at all.

2. I tried numerous mod combinations, ranging from my ideal mod list, to removing all of the more "extensive" mods one-by-one, to removing all but super-lite mods, to gradually adding mods back on one-by-one, starting with "lite" and simple mods like Dynamic Lifestyle XP Redux. I was still struggling to fix the load time issue.

3. I couldn't track down any "specific" mods as creating the issue, and just found that adding more mods to the load order causes the mid-play load time to increase exponentially/logarithmically with each additional mod.

4. Even with my full "ideal" mod-list running, if I try loading a save game mid-play soon after first loading it, such as like 2 mins after, it takes a "normal-ish" amount of time to load. After 15+ minutes or so of the game being open though, that load time balloons massively to 5+ minutes, if it's even loadable at all.

5. It's specifically the amount of time that CK3 is open that is impacting the load time bloat. The amount of time that ticks by in-game doesn't matter in an abnormal way, or how far along in the game you are. If you attempt to mid-play load the same save game 2 minutes after opening it the first time, it takes significantly less time than if the game is sitting there 15+ minutes, even without in-game time ticking by.

5A. Example: A particular save that I tracked (had 5 lite mods active) takes 0:20 (20 seconds) to load after the save game is opened and let sit (no in game time ticking) for 3 minutes. When proceeding to do the same thing again at the 6 minute mark, loading the exact same save took 0:40. Doing so again at the 9 minute mark resulted in a load time of 0:59. The 15 minute mark had a load time of 3:12.

6. It seems like the ballooning of load time occurs in Vanilla CK3 too, but isn't as noticeable as it is with many mods running.

7. Mods being removed from the mod loadout instead of being in an inactive state doesn't noticeably change this experience.

8. I was able to reproduce results adhering to these findings consistently.

9. I've also found that you dont even need to be loaded into a save game to experience the load time bloat. If you quite simply just launch CK3, and do nothing but sit on the home screen for 15 minutes, you experience the same load time bloat when you go to load your save as you would without any mods loaded.

Steps to reproduce​

Detailed in Description section.

Can be experienced by simply letting the game run for 15+ minutes and then trying to load a save game.

The issue gets massively worse and more noticeable when running mods, and it doesn't matter what mods you are running. Each additional mod run seems to cause an exponential or logarithmic increase in the load time bloat over time of the game running.

Game Version​

1.9.2.1

Platform​

Windows

Additional Information​

Affected Feature​

• Gameplay
• Modding

Save Game​

Other Attachments​

 

[blazeknave]

Thanks for writing this up. Similar experience here.

 

[Anthalas]

I have had similar issues. Moving old save files out of the 'save games' folder seemed to help somewhat.

 

[blazeknave]

I have had similar issues. Moving old save files out of the 'save games' folder seemed to help somewhat.

that's definitely helped me when waiting for the load/save screens to come up - it seems to be parsing all the files for the info to pull out for the UI

 

[FunGaming]

Yeah I definitely experience this too

 

[Sarsante]

I'm experiencing the same problem since T&T, it's super annoying.

edit: I'm literally loading a save game for over 10 minutes which before T&T wouldnt take more than 30s and I'm running the absurd amount of 5 mods.

I also noticed that when the issue is present when I overwrite a save I get an instant save time (the loading icon doesnt even appear) however when I go back to the game takes forever to be able to unpause it, although everything else is responsive. I can click on the map and check counties, I can use character filter, everything works "normally" only exception is takes a very long time to be able to unpause the game. It's like it's saving in the background.

Few days ago I could bypass the slow loading by quitting the game and click resume from the launcher, which was taking 35s to load the game and the save. However after more time into the same save that no longer works, yesterday was taking around 3:30-4 minutes to load and today well it just took 14 minutes to load from the main screen.

And yes the game and the save folder in my documents are both in SSD, windows is running in a different SSD so any temporary files in AppData are also in SSD. I've 32GB RAM and the game is using 9-12GB RAM.

Edit2: I did a bit of testing, if I load a save from 1102, takes 7 minutes. Most recent one from 1104 takes 14.

If I try to load without mods (unofficial patch, better barbershop, CFP, Rice and Viet) it crashes the game so I can't test how fast the same save would load without mods. I unsubscribed from all mods and resub to only those 5 that are in my playlist, didn't notice any change.

ATM I'm speculating that size of mods play a role, I noticed slow loading before but never that bad and well it's the first time after T&T that Ive CFP (2gb) running.

Also it's very curious how much the loading time increases after not very long in-game time where there wasn't a conquest or anything, same realm size on both saves I just did some building.

 

[nyayr]

Maybe an old thread, but it helps deleting saves that had previous mods on it you removed/added, they slow the load menu access.

Even then at a certain point you run out of memory, cannot save anymore and the game closes for me, especially with character searcher mod and 10 years in over 50k characters (no diplomatic range shows that).

 

[tilly]

yeah, i have to move old campaigns into their own separate folder and delete them out of the main folder, only keep one campaign in there at a time, or trying to load a save grinds the whole thing to a halt so bad it sometimes crashes. definitely has something to do with mod mismatches or saves from previous versions bc it works fine otherwise, if theres a little missing mod or previous version exclaimation mark there thats usually the indicator your save folder is about to go to hell

 

[GemAye]

Same problem, I have 22 mods installed, some made for version 1.9 though.
What I notice besides long loading times and eventual crashes as loading takes too long, is that autosaves are five or six times larger than manual saves in size.
So a manual save is about 8mb in size while an autosave can be of the size of 42-48mb.

 

[Emperor 1997]

Same problem, I have 22 mods installed, some made for version 1.9 though.
What I notice besides long loading times and eventual crashes as loading takes too long, is that autosaves are five or six times larger than manual saves in size.
So a manual save is about 8mb in size while an autosave can be of the size of 42-48mb.

But only, if you have unpause the Game, if you save an fresh Campaign(without letting Time pass) with an Autosave_Exit, it has around the same size as an Manual Save.

But I also, want to say, that the Game does not save Mods perfectly in Save FIles, because for a very strange Reason, in my Save File, there is around 2000 Mod-Data and I have only around 34 Mods active.

 

[Misha02]

I have experienced this issue three times; all starting in 867, all lasted till around 950-1050 until the game takes 4s to 40s and then literally hung up when saving (and since I play it in ironman, it does that every three months). In the debug log, one and the biggest entry in "gamestate_persistence" used for saving, explodes from dozens of MBs to 1.5GB at the end, and exacerbated every time a game is saved and loaded to play again.

I also did some extensive research on this issue across the internet, and it does not seem to be isolated to any mod in particular, but a general issue on the saving/loading mechanism interacting with mods. Hence it should qualify for a bug report despite modded since it is the base game's handling of mods, rather than specific mods' issues.

 

[cybrxkhan]

I've had gotten reports over the past months of people encountering a similar save bloat issue with my mod RICE. Since it's a mod, I assume the devs won't be interested in looking at the data, but I think some findings I've had might be of use and possibly serve as a point for looking into this further, thanks to a couple users of my mods provided me some data.

First, I stumbled on this earlier bug report on the forums for a non-RICE game, which had a similar duplicate traits issue. This bug report is based on some personal changes, and not pure vanilla, but it did give me a nugget of info in that the problem of duplicate traits is the cause, and seems to get worse every time the game is saved.

A specific character spawned by RICE appeared to be subject to this duplicate traits, so I did some testing by taking the decision that spawns her, and then saving the game, then loading into that save, then saving a new save on top of that, etc. Every time I saved, it duplicated the same traits over and over to her in the save file, regardless of when the saves were done (i.e. if I did one save a year later, it would duplicate once, but if I did, say, 5 saves in the span of that one in-game year, it would duplicate 5 times).

In the screenshot below you can see the effects of this constant saving and loading.

At this point, I unfortunately can't tell why this issue is happening (doesn't seem to happen with most of my other spawned characters), nor if it is something I can rectify or if it's a vanilla issue (if the forum post above is true, then it might be something general to how save games are ), but it does indicate there is something going on duplicating traits when game saving happens. Since the bloat happens even without my mod based on other bug reports, I'm inclined to believe there might be something going on with how saves happen.

TLDR: As mentioned, since this is based off a modded game, I don't expect the devs or anyone else to look into my case specifically, but it appears the save bloat issue might have to do with traits (or other kinds of data) getting duplicated every time a save is made under certain circumstances.