Has anyone seen a performance increase with the new update?

[Ainz_Ooal_Gown?]

Just curious to see if anyone got noticeable improvements. I personally did not get any but my config is different (always have slowdown start at around 30 years, 100 years is too slow to enjoy for me). I know with increasing the fleet sizes performance was supposed to get better, along with calculation improvements.

 

[Perimal]

The silence is telling.

 

[Dallium]

I have, but 1) I haven't played since Galactic Paragons came out, 2) I only ever play GA with no crisis scaling, and generally abandon saves about the time I eclipse the FE's and/or finish the origin event chain, and 3) the average planet count for my last saves of any given >50 y.o. empire is ~19.

 

[Drachasor]

Do you mean the beta or the last non-beta patch or what?

 

[Exasperation]

Do you mean the beta or the last non-beta patch or what?

Since they referenced fleet sizes, it's a pretty safe bet they meant the latest beta where fleet sizes were changed. I haven't really gotten a chance to try it (been a little busy since it came out), so I can't personally say anything about its performance.

 

[Grief Bacon]

Yes, but nothing I'd write home about. Though one thing I've noticed that I don't remember from 3.14 is that when it spawns a new system, like for the rubricator or a precursor homeward, it locks up for a few seconds. Other than that things seemed to have been noticeably but not significantly better. Then again the end game lag was never bad enough in my opinion to cause an annoyance, unless I tried using system view while there was a large fleet engaged in combat, then it slows to a crawl. My hardware is also somewhere between 3 and 5 years old at this point, so I wasn't cpu bound. It's my understanding that a large chunk of the player base has older machines.

 

[Abdulijubjub]

I've seen plenty of performance increases in specific areas: enormous planets, especially with lots of unemployed, no longer drop the game to 1 FPS, for instance. But I haven't noticed general late game lag getting much better or worse (after the initial 4.0 launch, at least, when it was noticeably worse).

 

[GuardianGI]

Even 50 years into the game fleet battles cause the game to slow to a crawl (like 1000% slowdown of daily ticks for a month or two). Something gets excessively calculated during fleet battles causing 4.0 to completely shit itself.

 

[GnoSIS]

No, the game is still too slow, especially if you have an older rig.

Play on smaller maps, use gestalts, and play to clean out everything else and their pops.

 

[AnCi420]

Beta is so far better, but a large galaxy with a lot of fighting still is laggy, unfortunately (has improved for me from terrible, almost unplayable to gruesome but tolerable). Upgrading your cpu with 3D-Cache also helps a lot, ime.

Squashing syndicates/megacorps also helps

 

[Chrisrous]

For me, performance in 4.0.x is actually a bit better than before
I’m not seeing major gains, but early- and mid-game feels smoother, fewer stutters, UI a bit snappier, monthly tick slightly faster

That said, I don’t run massive pop mods or super-heavy event chains, which probably helps
If you’re running stuff like Gigastructural, Expanded Events, or big trait overhauls, it might cancel out the gains

 

[Nakkivene]

For me it's playable for around 80-100 years on a small galaxy and then lags constantly. In 3.x it was huge galaxy and 200 or so years maybe.

 

[Grief Bacon]

Honestly, I think the next logical question is what hardware is everyone using. The vibe I'm getting from all the threads regarding performance is just that it's CPU heavy. Not only is the game extremely complicated in terms of how many calculations it runs at any given time, but I'm also sure that most if not all of those calculations can be optimized much better than they currently are. If you want to get a real gauge for baselines we should be noting specs as well as if the game has leeway in terms of how much system resources are allocated to it or if its sharing them with the operating system and whatever else you may have running in the background. Now I'm not gonna deny it doesn't need improvements, but I also know with most games, especially ones that have been around this long, the minimum requirements might not be updated on its store page despite the game becoming more complicated with each patch. Also keep in mind this is far from the first time there have been issues following a major release. In my personal experience, the game has gotten better in some areas and worse in others. Overall I'd say late game the performance is better, but not perfect. As for my specs, they aren't what I'd call CPU bound. I have two machines with the game installed. First, and this is where I have logged the most hours, is a 2020 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro cpu and 16GB of RAM(base model). Important to note, the game does not have an ARM native version. In order to run it on apple silicon, I use Rosetta II, a translation layer made by apple so people can run their older software during the transition period. It translates code from x86 to ARM. (If the devs read this please work on an arm native version. I would be very sad if I can no longer use the game to procrastinate.) Thats not only going to eat up some cpu cycles as it translates every intel native program I have running, but I wouldn't be surprised if theres an inherent performance hit just from translation alone. Given all that, I would say it runs in a performant enough manner for my admittedly low standards. The other machine is a gaming desktop I built during the pandemic. It has an i7 12700K (8 performance cores and 4 efficient cores for 20 threads total) and 32 gb RAM. If you care about graphics it has a 3070, but really the game is nowhere near as gpu heavy as it is on the cpu. Again, not laggy enough to bother me. Going on personal experience, and again please don't yell at me because I know it can absolutely be better optimized and in fact want it to be better optimized, but I would assume that it struggles more on older and/or lower end hardware. I would be willing to run some tests on both machines and compare results with everyone, but I can't do that right now because I have work to do.
EDIT: forgot ram

 

[HFY]

It feels about the same to me.

That said, I am usually using different empire and galaxy configurations from game to game, so my impression isn't very scientific.

 

[Adaman5280]

the mid-late game is unbearably laggy. I can play comfortably for maybe 70 years before the playthrough gets shelved thanks to lag. I haven't gotten to the end game crisis since 4.0 dropped. 3.14 performance for me would slow down right around 2300 but it would still be playable, 4.0 I don't actually think I've pushed a game past 2300, its just laggy to the point where it degrades the experience significantly.


So yeah from my perspective there was little to no improvement. I can agree with those saying that the early game feels better especially in terms of the planet ui, but honestly that was never a problem in 3.14 anyways. idk about you guys but i don't mess with my planets while the game is running anyways, i usually pause first.


I think the part that really sucks is that performance late game (80+ years) has seen a pretty significant decrease. Its worse than 3.14 for me, way worse.


Edit: full disclaimer my settings arent performance optimal by any means, I play without the growth curve on, largest galaxy, and around 20 empires. Thing is though this is how i played in 3.14 as well and it was totally manageable then.

 

[The Mead Mage]

Can anybody who claims to see performance improvements relative to earlier patches post evidence of it? I ask because since 4.0 and now with this beta I've seen a handful of people trying to claim performance is better, but it's all anecdotal. Any people who have posted side by side comparisons or talked about their performance benchmarking as I have have all shown performance to be worse. I've just tested 4.0.22 and not only is it performing worse than 4.0.21, it's almost as bad as 4.0.1.

Also worth noting is that fleet lag in the late game is unbearable. I was trying a max merc enclave run and by the time I was starting to kill the fallen empires just selecting my fleets and giving them orders caused massive lag spikes, and any time a battle was happening anywhere in the galaxy the game slowed from days per second to seconds per day.

As for hardware I'm using a 5800x3d, 32gb 3200MHz RAM, 6800XT and my OS and game are installed on SSDs (OS on an M.2, Steam and the game on a separate 2.5 inch SSD). Though frankly I don't see why hardware is relevant. We're comparing against our old performance, so unless you upgraded your CPU between updates, why does it matter?

 

[hart30]

Fleet (combat) lag got worse with 4.0. Most other sources of lag got better. Because of this the game feels smoother at first - before feeling worse from late midgame onwards.

 

[Ainz_Ooal_Gown?]

lots of responses, I'm feeling that it's mostly the same-ish from before. I really had hoped the fleet cap would see an decrease in slowdown, but I don't feel it. It's always around 30 to 35 years in for me that slowdown occurs. This is on a huge galaxy and 30 AIs, however I did a test on a standard huge galaxy and slowdown still started then, slowed down too. This is with 0.25 habitable worlds

Honestly, I think the next logical question is what hardware is everyone using. The vibe I'm getting from all the threads regarding performance is just that it's CPU heavy. Not only is the game extremely complicated in terms of how many calculations it runs at any given time, but I'm also sure that most if not all of those calculations can be optimized much better than they currently are. If you want to get a real gauge for baselines we should be noting specs as well as if the game has leeway in terms of how much system resources are allocated to it or if its sharing them with the operating system and whatever else you may have running in the background. Now I'm not gonna deny it doesn't need improvements, but I also know with most games, especially ones that have been around this long, the minimum requirements might not be updated on its store page despite the game becoming more complicated with each patch. Also keep in mind this is far from the first time there have been issues following a major release. In my personal experience, the game has gotten better in some areas and worse in others. Overall I'd say late game the performance is better, but not perfect. As for my specs, they aren't what I'd call CPU bound. I have two machines with the game installed. First, and this is where I have logged the most hours, is a 2020 MacBook Pro with an M1 Pro cpu and 16GB of RAM(base model). Important to note, the game does not have an ARM native version. In order to run it on apple silicon, I use Rosetta II, a translation layer made by apple so people can run their older software during the transition period. It translates code from x86 to ARM. (If the devs read this please work on an arm native version. I would be very sad if I can no longer use the game to procrastinate.) Thats not only going to eat up some cpu cycles as it translates every intel native program I have running, but I wouldn't be surprised if theres an inherent performance hit just from translation alone. Given all that, I would say it runs in a performant enough manner for my admittedly low standards. The other machine is a gaming desktop I built during the pandemic. It has an i7 12700K (8 performance cores and 4 efficient cores for 20 threads total) and 32 gb RAM. If you care about graphics it has a 3070, but really the game is nowhere near as gpu heavy as it is on the cpu. Again, not laggy enough to bother me. Going on personal experience, and again please don't yell at me because I know it can absolutely be better optimized and in fact want it to be better optimized, but I would assume that it struggles more on older and/or lower end hardware. I would be willing to run some tests on both machines and compare results with everyone, but I can't do that right now because I have work to do.
EDIT: forgot ram

I have a 9950x3d, 5090, 64gb. I should've clarified in my post but I was more so talking about slowdown than performance jumps. However I do notice lag when zooming all the out, though it's not all the time. Part of my frustration is the settings I'm running are vanilla, and this game is almost 10 years old. Yet even with hardware that's high end today the game still has slowdown issues and lag. Like... what more does paradox want lol. I simply feel that it's unacceptable for the game to be in this state after all this time, DLCs or not. The game should be stable, even on budget hardware (granted not crazy settings). Probably boils down to rushed development, I'm guessing leading to unoptimized systems as that's a common issue in gaming. I hope that Paradox learns from this and doesn't push stuff out of the door that's half baked, but idk if that's asking for a lot. Though, EUV does look promising.

 

[Grief Bacon]

lots of responses, I'm feeling that it's mostly the same-ish from before. I really had hoped the fleet cap would see an decrease in slowdown, but I don't feel it. It's always around 30 to 35 years in for me that slowdown occurs. This is on a huge galaxy and 30 AIs, however I did a test on a standard huge galaxy and slowdown still started then, slowed down too. This is with 0.25 habitable worlds


I have a 9950x3d, 5090, 64gb. I should've clarified in my post but I was more so talking about slowdown than performance jumps. However I do notice lag when zooming all the out, though it's not all the time. Part of my frustration is the settings I'm running are vanilla, and this game is almost 10 years old. Yet even with hardware that's high end today the game still has slowdown issues and lag. Like... what more does paradox want lol. I simply feel that it's unacceptable for the game to be in this state after all this time, DLCs or not. The game should be stable, even on budget hardware (granted not crazy settings). Probably boils down to rushed development, I'm guessing leading to unoptimized systems as that's a common issue in gaming. I hope that Paradox learns from this and doesn't push stuff out of the door that's half baked, but idk if that's asking for a lot. Though, EUV does look promising.

I play with the default growth curve with a victory year of 3200. I'm not denying the game isn't optimized. I just rarely see the endgame lag as something annoying. That and it doesn't stutter randomly like it used to in 3.14. It can def be improved and it should be. Will never deny that lol I'm not that dense. Though if you think this was half baked you should see what's going on with Cities Skylines 2. The devs aren't even on the forum anymore. Paradox banished them to the basement after they called us salty for not liking the fact that we payed $70 for something that released in a state that was barely worthy of being considered in the alpha phase.

The game I'm playing right now has 5x habitatable worlds and 5x primitives. I have no real reason for doing that other than "I wanted to see how annoying it would become". Give me a week or so and I'll tell you if the lag is any different than what I've typically seen. Though I can tell you right now that colonization is starting to get old. And I haven't checked if they fixed spy networks but not being able to discredit myself or integrate the primitives was really not fun. But I'm doing a genesis guides build so I'm getting an absurd amount of influence and unity. Although in retrospect that might be asking a lot in terms of computing power.