Eu4 Lagging and Stuttering Despite a Good and Beefy PC

[epicness7131]

Hello, I recently built a PC a few weeks ago. (Ryzen 5600 Rx 6700xt 16 gigs of ddr4 3200 ram 1TB Samsung 980 Pro) One of the first things I did was get eu4 and other pdx games however when I launched and started playing eu4 the game was stuttering and laggy. Everything is fine when the game is paused yet when I unpause that's when it gets laggy and stuttery. The game speed is going pretty fast at speed 5 yet everything feels slow laggy and stuttering I never had this issue on my old PC despite it being worse (Intel Integrated Graphics) this stuff is also happening in ck2 and to a lesser extent hoi4

 

[AndrewT]

Does this also affect CK2, Stellaris, and HOI4? Or just EU4?

Does this happen right from the start in 1444? Or only in mid or late game play, or only after playing for a while?

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/EU4/settings.txt and pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/EU4/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

The game speed is going pretty fast at speed 5 yet everything feels slow laggy and stuttering

Speed 5 is different to the others; essentially you are saying "run the game as fast as the hardware allows, regardless of the effect on the visuals". What happens on Speed 4?

 

[epicness7131]

This effects Ck2,Hoi4 and Eu4
this happens right at 1444 when I unpause the game, however it does not stutter when the game is paused. this happens at speed 1 2 3 4 and 5 the stuttering gets worse for every speed up. I tried turning settings down using the mod toaster universalis but nothing changes. the game time goes fast but whenever I click or move around the map it stutters.

Edit: This Does Not Effect Newer Paradox Games Such as Imperator,CK3,Stellaris and VIC 3

 

[AndrewT]

Please disable ALL mods while we work on this, and only on a new campaign that's never been modded, thanks.

From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/EU4/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log .

 

[epicness7131]

All mods are disabled even the ones that do not change the checksum.

 

[AndrewT]

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

vsync=no

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

Is that any better?

 

[epicness7131]

No it does not improve anything its weird I got monitor software the FPS drops like 20 and frame times jump to 60. do you need me to send the metrics?

 

[AndrewT]

No, I believe you.

But at this point I have no idea why this game is behaving like this on this hardware. Given it is across several games it must be something in Windows or the hardware that is affecting our games, but I can't see what as yet. I take it you don't see this on other games? How about I:R and Vic2?

Please install and run the free utility Speccy. Send its output to a text file and attach that here, thanks.

 

[epicness7131]

I:R Runs Amazingly Max Settings Buttery Smooth. Victoria 2 is pretty much unplayable because of the issue. ck2 has the issue though not as severe. hoi4 also has the issue but stellaris does not also ck3 and vic 3 run buttery smooth and really fast on ultra settings no issues with them.

 

[AndrewT]

Can you try disabling the Discord overlay, or even unloading that app altogether?

And unload this before starting the game
C:\Program Files\AMD\CNext\CNext\RadeonSoftware.exe

If that doesn't help, I have no idea why our older games have this issue on this hardware, but our newer ones don't. I guess there is some issues between it and the older Clausewitz versions perhaps? CK3, Vic3 and I:R all use similar and newer Clausewitz versions and the new Jomini framework. Which I am sure will not be back-ported to those older games!

 

[Tiquerzius]

@epicness7131 Did you find a solution? I am facing similar issues with a machine thats basically another update on yours....

 

[epicness7131]

@epicness7131 Did you find a solution? I am facing similar issues with a machine thats basically another update on yours....

No I just have learned to deal with it. It is very annoying but I tried turning settings down using certian mods downgrading to diff amd software but no fix. The issue occurs on VIC 2, CK2, EU4 and HOI4 though does not occur on stellaris or ck3, vic3 or imperator I would check if it occurs on those game and does not on the ones I mentioned. I have no idea if this is a hardware issue or a software issue but I assume it is likely a software issue with the aging clausewitz engine but it could very well for some strange odd reason be a hardware issue. However if it was there would likley be more complaints about this issue. when I get home I will attach a video of what I mean by stuttering/lagging. The stuttering also never occurred on my old PC despite it being so much worse and not even having a Dedicated GPU

 

[eddyr]

Sorry to piggyback, but I, like the OP, have a beefy PC and have been experiencing similar issues. The game becomes unplayable 1550+. Speed 4 and above and the fps is horrible. I, like the OP, have no issues with ck3, although there was a bug depending on whether I launched the game from steam or directly the game would stutter and have low framerate. I don't know if OP tried 1.30 because I had better performance pre-leviathan, but I know that's not a solution as the game has developed so much since then. I wonder whether it's the ageing game or an issue that is yet to surface.

 

[AndrewT]

Sorry to piggyback, but I, like the OP, have a beefy PC and have been experiencing similar issues. The game becomes unplayable 1550+. Speed 4 and above and the fps is horrible. I, like the OP, have no issues with ck3, although there was a bug depending on whether I launched the game from steam or directly the game would stutter and have low framerate. I don't know if OP tried 1.30 because I had better performance pre-leviathan, but I know that's not a solution as the game has developed so much since then. I wonder whether it's the ageing game or an issue that is yet to surface.

Did you try post #6 above?

If that doesn't help can we get the text files I've asked for above please?

 

[Tiquerzius]

@AndrewT I did try the solutions presented in this thread, amongst other things.
I do have issues from 11.11.1444 onwards immidiatly.
And to top it all off I do run an even stronger system (Ryzen 7 5800X; 32 GB RAM; EU4 on an M2 SSD (WDS100T3X0C); Radeon RX 6800) than OP.
My Vic3 runs smooth as it goes (I even do have the finish the game archievement ).

The requested files below.

 

[AndrewT]

The common thread with you and the OP is AMD CPU and GPU. Shouldn't be an issue of course, and I'm sure QA do test this game on AMD gear, but whether those exact items I can't say.

Do you also get this with some of our other games, like the OP does?

 

[Tiquerzius]

The common thread with you and the OP is AMD CPU and GPU. Shouldn't be an issue of course, and I'm sure QA do test this game on AMD gear, but whether those exact items I can't say.

Do you also get this with some of our other games, like the OP does?

From short testing:
Both Vic2 and Vic3 work fine.
CKII and CKIII seem to be running smooth aswell.
I do recall having issues with a modded HoI during MP in later stages, but nothing compared to the Eu4 issues.
Stellaris runs fine.

 

[epicness7131]

From short testing:
Both Vic2 and Vic3 work fine.
CKII and CKIII seem to be running smooth aswell.
I do recall having issues with a modded HoI during MP in later stages, but nothing compared to the Eu4 issues.
Stellaris runs fine.

Weird for me that Vic 2 runs not that good especially with it being a very very old game. Vic 3 runs fine just like Imperator and CK3 probably because it is modern though not that big of a fan of Vic 3. Hoi4 runs at like 30 fps a lot lower than it reasonably should. ck2 works quite fine at 1-4 speed but at 5 speed it is where the lag is noticeable though game-speed moves just fine. Another thing I have tried is changing the graphics renderer for hoi4 and Stellaris for Stellaris nothing changed and it runs normally. hoi4 I see no difference either on dx9 dx11 or openGL still lags. I even tried DXVK on eu4 and still to no avail. Stellaris is the outlier since it is not using the updated engine like ck3, imperator, and VIC 3 yet runs perfectly normal and solid smooth 144 fps on DX9 and DX11. I will test eu3 and hoi3 just to see if it happens in those games as well but I do think this is just a software issue with clausewitz engine/pdx since most other games run fine max settings with my PC there is no reason it should be a hardware issue. The issue is not in game performance since the in game dates move very very fast but the actual game is running at a low fps. I also tried tweaking settings in my UEFI BIOS yet did not change anything either. I tried Compatibility mode as well with the game exe changed nothing and disabling steam overlay also changed nothing.

 

[AndrewT]

I do think this is just a software issue with clausewitz engine/pdx

In your case I agree, it does seem like that, as all your problems are on games before Stellaris (so older Clausewitz versions). Why on this computer but not your older weaker one is also a mystery. Was it AMD CPU and GPU also?


However

Both Vic2 and Vic3 work fine.
CKII and CKIII seem to be running smooth aswell.

this seems to be a completely different situation! If this was a general issue between all older Clausewitz games and AMD gear, say, you'd both get it on CK2 for instance.

I'm frankly stumped as to how to help either of you at this point, none of the usual things seem to have had any effect whatsoever.

@jpd @grotaclas I wonder if you good folks might have any further ideas for us please?

 

[grotaclas]

It might be helpful if you describe your lag better. How many FPS do you get when paused, and on speed 3, 4 and 5 in 1445(the first few months of the game have a lot more calculations, so letting it run till the middle of 1445 is a better test than 1444)?
I think it is important to note that a lag on speed 5 could have very different reasons than a lag on other speeds. On speed 5, the game tries to let the time pass as fast as your CPU allows and this might not leave enough CPU resources for a high FPS. I don't know how the eu4/clausewitz programmers implemented this, but I think there is a trade-off between FPS and how fast a day can pass and they might have opted to prioritize day passing above everything else.

@eddyr do you also have it in 1444/1445? Lag in 1550+ could be caused by other game bugs(e.g., there is a bug in the current version which causes several second freezes during AI colonial wars, but a mild version of that bug could manifest itself as more of a lag on fast systems).

I don't have any good ideas, but there are a few things you could try which might have an impact:

• switch between borderless fullscreen, normal fullscreen and windowed mode
• try borderless fullscreen with different refresh rate settings in the display settings of your OS(e.g. 60Hz, and whichever maximum your monitor supports). Unfortunately you can't really do this test with normal fullscreen, because then eu4 sets the refresh rate and always uses 60Hz no matter what you configure in the settings.txt
• look in the radeon software for settings which you can configure per game and test if they have an impact. For example radeon chill, radeon anti-lag and Surface Format Optimization.
• set multi-sampling to 0 in the eu4 video settings
• dismiss all notifications at the top of the screen
• deactivate the steam overlay and any other overlay which could be active(e.g. from the radeon software)
• try to start eu4.exe directly (will probably deactivate DLCs)

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