Daily Freezing with specific save

[Venatorae]

Hello, I have a save file that, upon loading and unpausing, freezes with every daily tick. If I load the Rev. France timestamp (where a similarly sized war is occuring) this does not cause the issue. Perhaps this save will be useful for AI optimization.

Things I have tried to remediate the issue:
- Return CPU and memory to base clock
- Force max clock on GPU to prevent throttling (usage is only ~5%)
- vsync on/ off (both in eu4 settings and forced through nvidia, all combinations)
- refresh rates from 60 to 165hz
- DPI scaling in windows from 100 to 125
- running in 1080p
- turning off all graphics settings
- fast universalis mod
- closing all other programs (razer synapse, afterburner, RTSS, NZXT CAM) except windows services
- turning off antivirus
- adding the /steamapps/common/ dir to the active scanning and HIPS exceptions
- adding eu4.exe to the scanning/ HIPS exceptions
- verify files through steam
- clean install, remove /documents/paradoxinteractive/eu4 folder
- disable cloud saves use steam offline mode
- set core affinity to a single core
- set process priority to high
- update GPU drivers (clean install with DDU)
- fullscreen mode, windowed borderless mode

No mods that alter the checksum were used (a water texture and ui size mod were used up until this point) and the save was loaded as vanilla and re-saved, the stutter occurs with and without the mods present, original save or this vanilla-loaded save. There is no thermal throttling, CPU is ~40*C. One interesting thing to note is that the game appears to be using CPU core 7 as its primary core - it sits around 75% usage while others are around 20% or below 5%. Also interesting is that the system.log file in the eu4 documents folder appears to identify the CPU clock as 0Mhz. No dumps or crashes are present in the respective folders. Nvidia GeForce experience is not installed on this computer. I would attempt to downgrade to the previous patch but obviously the save would not load and it seems there is something going on with this specific gamestate.

Furthermore, the documents folder (where saves and logs etc. are saved) on this computer is on a RAID0 SSD with greater than 200GB free. The system partition (HDD) also has ~70GB free, and the game itself is installed to the SSD array where the documents folder is located.

"save.eu4" is the save file opened in vanilla and resaved - the other is the original file that won't show up unless "show incompatible saves" is checked, though both use the checksum ac5e (from the ingame menu, not the launcher).

 

[AndrewT]

If you load this save on any other machine you might have access to, do you get the same problem?

If so probably best to post that save in Bug Reports here, for QA to look into.

 

[Venatorae]

It's.. steam. Worked fine on another computer, manually purged all apps and services with task manager, worked fine on original computer. Tried one by one and it's actually steam that tanks the fps down to ~5. For your reference, I am using:

API: v020
Package Version: 1668645629

I will attempt an update and see if it resolves the issue. Hopefully it is an issue with that specific build.

 

[Venatorae]

Truly bizarre, latest steam update still causes the issue, and it still works perfectly when steam is closed and eu4 is launched directly from the executable. I would obviously reinstall steam at this point - however before I do so would you like me to collect any data, in case there is some unintended interaction with any of my Steam settings with the game client?

Settings I think might be relevant are:
- Steam overlay is off
- Cloud saves are off
- Friends list is set to invisible (and ingame rich presence is off)
- New version after update, still presenting the issue is package version: 166865464

Edit: After more testing and wondering why the AI was behaving differently when launched through steam or not, turns out the executable bypasses the launcher and disables all DLC. This fixes the issue but obviously all DLC no longer works. I cannot launch the game through the launcher without Steam enabled.

Edit2: Running through steam and the launcher and manually disabling all DLC does not work, so I don't believe it has to do with the DLC.

Edit3: Took a full backup of all steam (the application, not the games) folders and reinstalled, which included the steam redistributables - no effect.

When you launch the game without Steam it indicates with an error message that some code hooks into steamworks - If after the troubleshooting I have done above you believe it is a bug with the EU4 <-> steam hooks as I do, can you please move the thread to the appropriate forum category. If QA is interested in identifying the issue, if any, please let them know to reach out to me.

Additionally:
- Launching the game from steam with the internet adapter disabled does not help.
- Closing steam while the game is running closes the game as well.
- Force-closing steam with the task manager crashes the game instead

edit4: to be clear, I don't believe the issue is actually with this save; as similar but not as bad stutters occurred during the league war, and I'm pretty sure the colonial nations in this save have many more army units than they would in the Rev. France bookmark, as the colonizers have pretty much already taken all the land. Seems to me something with the steam integration is hogging cpu cycles, or something similar.

 

[grotaclas]

When you launch the game without Steam it indicates with an error message that some code hooks into steamworks

One thing which you could try would be to create the file steam_appid.txt in the eu4 installation folder and put "236850" in that file(without quotes). Then you can try to start eu4.exe while steam is running in the background. I think this fixes the error message which you get. It still bypasses the launcher ,but allows eu4 to verify DLCs with steam, so that they should work. But some other steam features like the steam overlay won't work. This could help you to narrow down the problem.

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Paradox. I'm just trying to help people.

 

[Venatorae]

That fixes it.. thank you very much - I'm still open to providing data for a fix to the issue

 

[AndrewT]

If it is a Steam glitch, as I think you are saying, then we won't be looking into it further.

FYI we don't have other such reports so it's very likely a Steam installation issue on your machine. A clean Steam reinstall (delete everything in the Steam folder except steam.exe and the /SteamApps/ folder) will probably fix it.

When you launch the game without Steam it indicates with an error message that some code hooks into steamworks - If after the troubleshooting I have done above you believe it is a bug with the EU4 <-> steam hooks as I do, can you please move the thread to the appropriate forum category. If QA is interested in identifying the issue, if any, please let them know to reach out to me.

This is WaD for EU4, it's not a bug.

 

[grotaclas]

That fixes it.. thank you very much

That's good to hear. But starting from steam still leads to the problem, right? For how long does it freeze and does it make a difference if you use different speeds? Some people have reported what they described as "stuttering" and I think speed 5 makes it worse. Maybe that's the same issue which you are seeing. I partially agree with AndrewT that it is not a general eu4 issue. But it could be a bad interaction between eu4, steam and something else which is specific to your system. I think some external programs try to hook into steam to for example display an additional overlay or get information about the running game(e.g. discord can display what you are currently playing). Maybe one of these is causing the issue. That program doesn't necessarily have to run to cause problems, because it could have installed a library or some other hook in steam.

This is WaD for EU4, it's not a bug.

Do you have confirmation about this from the developers? A correct steam_appid.txt is needed for eu4 to verify the DLCs with steam. Till 1.30 it had the correct id "236850" most of the time, but occasionally it had "222260" which is the steam id of the eu4 beta. AFAIK eu4 then tries to verify if you own DLCs for the eu4 beta and this fails if you are not a beta tester. If I see it correctly, it was "222260" in all versions from 1.31.0 till 1.33.3, but since 1.34 the file doesn't exist anymore which leads to the same problem. That it was occasionally wrong in the past, indicates that there is no automated process to change the id when creating a release for the public and that doing it manually is sometimes forgotten. Since 1.31, a new team took over which might not have been aware that this needs to be done and the empty file in 1.34 might indicate that somebody brought it to their attention, but they might have wrongly thought that removing the file would help.

 

[grotaclas]

I just noticed that your error.log is quite short and has the message "Failed to backup error log" at the top. Did you actually let the game run for a while before copying that log? It should have a few more error messages. Failing to backup the old error log might mean that there is something which prevents eu4 from writing to error_old.log. Maybe an antivirus or ransomware protection software interferes here. But this probably is not the reason of the daily freezing.

 

[AndrewT]

Do you have confirmation about this from the developers?

I was referring to the dialog that comes up when you run the game from eu4.exe , saying some features may not work properly when the game runs that way (eg mods, sometimes DLCs). I'm sure that's WaD, yes, as no doubt they wrote it deliberately!

I wasn't aware of the two different Steam IDs thing, no.

 

[Venatorae]

Launching normally through steam still causes the issue yes, the stutter is entirely unrelated to the speed, and occurs on speed 1 and same as speed 5. I have already performed a full clean re-install of steam.

Edit: well my issue is resolved, but I reiterate that I'm keen to work with pdx if they would like to investigate the steam integration issue

edit2: perhaps complaints of poor performance post 1600 might be relevant - I did not notice it until after the league war