macOS 10.15.7 - Slow performance

[Willem IV]

I did a clean install of macOS 10.15.7 on my supported* iMac.
After I installed Steam, I did install Steam and EUIV.
The performance of the game is still very poor. (I complained earlier, since 1.29)

It takes the game 7m48s from 11 nov 1444 to 1 jan 1450.

What is the acceptable time according to PDX, and which settings are the best to enhance the performance, without looking too bad?

*) NVIDIA GeForce GT 755M 1 GB is comparable with the recommend NVIDIA GPU's, and I have 32 GB RAM.

**) Fixed important typo

 

[AndrewT]

Your iMac hardware may be supported but your MacOS version is not:

Europa Universalis IV on Steam

Rule your land and dominate the world with unparalleled freedom, depth and historical accuracy. Write a new history of the world and build an empire for the ages.

store.steampowered.com

But let's look in more detail.

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 .

Also in Steam please click on Steam-Help-System Info, and paste everything there into a text file and attach that here.

 

[Willem IV]

Hi AndrewT,

Thanks for the quick response, I made a Typo with the version of macOS, it's 10.15.7 'Catalina'.
I have attached the five files you requested, and I hope you can guide me in getting an acceptable performance.

 

[AndrewT]

It takes the game 7m48s from 11 nov 1444 to 1 jan 1450.

I ran an Ottoman game in Observe mode, speed 5, on my 2017 iMac. It does that same period in 4'35". Given that my CPU is ~20% faster than yours, as is my GPU, that seems about right.

So I don't think there's going to be anything dramatic we can do for you here. You can try turning off some graphical elements such as trees, shadows, city sprawl, and ambient objects - does that make any difference?

 

[Willem IV]

The changes to the settings didn't help at all. It now took 8'10" for the Ottoman game in Observer mode.
So more or less the same result. It seems that the end-of-month tick is too much.

Before 1.29 (pre 64-bit) the game was running well on this iMac.
I did run the game in Windows 10 (Bootcamp) and it was running twice as fast on the same hardware.

It really makes my sad and disappointed in PDX, that I spend enough money (all DLC, except last two) on the game, and I can't play it properly anymore.

 

[AndrewT]

The game will always be slower on Macs than on Windows, due to differences between OpenGL and DirectX.

Also, the 1.31.x patches were slower than 1.30.x on all platforms, not just Macs - the developers realised they added too many new provinces. That was improved somewhat in the 1.32 patches, but I think they essentially ran into limits as to how much they could optimise to compensate for the extra provinces. I don't think 1.33.x are particularly different than 1.32.x in that respect.

I am sorry for the effect this has on you! At least you can play it via Bootcamp now.

 

[Blackwolf14]

The game will always be slower on Macs than on Windows, due to differences between OpenGL and DirectX.

Also, the 1.31.x patches were slower than 1.30.x on all platforms, not just Macs - the developers realised they added too many new provinces. That was improved somewhat in the 1.32 patches, but I think they essentially ran into limits as to how much they could optimise to compensate for the extra provinces. I don't think 1.33.x are particularly different than 1.32.x in that respect.

I am sorry for the effect this has on you! At least you can play it via Bootcamp now.

The 1.33.2 patches slower than 1.32.2 on Windows. I don't know why. May be caused by siege tick/combat changes, amount of forts on 1.33.2.