I'm trying to find out what you actually want so that I can help you if I can
Well. I have bought all DLC up to RB.
Since then the game wasnt playable for me. Now it has become better again. But i did not want to shell out 80 bucks in one go.
So i thought id give 5 a try for a month.
What i did not expect was the game to go into nuclear meltdown while ignoring Steam and its own Launcher by doing that.
What i want is simple.
I want the game to launch with only the gameplay relevant DLC. No cosmetics, no music, no models.
With the launcher thats easy. Even for the stuff that was included in packs like "Third Rome".
While i think its a joke that customers are expected to fiddle with files, personaly i dont mind doing so assuming it works. Which it does not.
full contents of your dlc_load.json
{"enabled_mods":["mod/ugc_173103497.mod","mod/ugc_782012869.mod","mod/ugc_788906833.mod"],"disabled_dlcs":["cache/dlc/dlc110_origins/dlc110.dlc"]}
The first part is autogenerated for the steam mods. For the second part Origins is easy to verify so i choose that for testing.
\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Europa Universalis IV\cache\dlc
is the path to the folder on my PC.
"subscription_dlc/dlc110_origins/dlc110.dlc"
"/dlc110_origins/dlc110.dlc"
"cache/dlc/dlc110_origins/dlc110.dlc"
"dlc/dlc110_origins/dlc110.dlc"
putting any of these into the jason does not work.
The games sub gizmo telling me that some of the DLC files are missing and can be downloaded is nice.
Whats not nice is that it, without asking for permission, alters the games launch.
I know the files are missing, i deleted them. Just launch with what you have.
the game can't prevent you from doing whatever you want(although some games certainly try).
That joke did not age well. We had a full internet failure for half a day today but i thought:
"Pffh, i just downloaded all seasons of EU4 thats no big deal."
Turns out nowadays if the launcher cant connect to the internet and thus cant validate that the stuff on your PC is allowed to be there you just dont get to use any of the DLC.
The game launches but without loading them in.
And the performance impact on the game is probably negligible if you don't zoom in to see the models.
I dont exactly have much to compare with. But people have been complaining about bad perfomance in 1.31.
My game did not run noticably worse there but i didnt play much.
However now in 1.32 with the Sub (and thus all cosmetics) active the game runs like ass even at the start. It feels choppy and less responsive than 1.31 was.
I can however not confirm that because of the music or models since i cant get them to turn off.