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While working IT for 30 years I had ample opportunity to work with Microsoft support and I gotta say that my sympathies are with Paradox and not Microsoft. Working with Microsoft is usually like trying to talk to a blank wall. Usually it takes months to even get an acknowledgement from MS that the problem exists. Good luck, Paradox.

EDIT: Counted again and used my toes this time as well. I was mistaken. It was closer to 40 years. Sheesh!
 
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We're still working with Microsoft to resolve the issue players are experiencing with the latest Windows 11 update. Aside from that, we have identified an issue resulting in CK3 consuming more RAM than it's supposed to, and we're working on getting a hotfix out for that issue as soon as we can.
 
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Just wanting to add my two cents that, as a software engineer in a professional capacity (working at a deliberately unspecified company), the Windows issue is 100% on Microsoft. They should not be releasing updates that break their developers and 24H2 is completely unacceptable. Yet another sign that Microsoft is ruining Windows.

PDX can be criticized for a lot of technical issues, and this memory leak in the new patch is a prime example of PDX engineering failure, but the Windows issue is all Microsoft, and any other narrative is woefully misinformed. If you find yourself contributing to it you should really take some time to reflect on if you know anything about the subject at hand.
 
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This could be the reason yes. If CK3 the game has a memory leak then this would mean you wouldn't be able to run the game on the Steam deck 100%.
We're still working with Microsoft to resolve the issue players are experiencing with the latest Windows 11 update. Aside from that, we have identified an issue resulting in CK3 consuming more RAM than it's supposed to, and we're working on getting a hotfix out for that issue as soon as we can.

Thanks to both Phuizour_ and the PDX team. I feel bad if there's any hard feelings, but I've been a fan of the games for over a decade now and I really just want to enjoy CK3, it's a good game. The latest updates been a blast, but I can definitely tell there's a memory issue. I keep crashing, but if that's what it takes I'll stick with it. My general philosophy with PDX games is to just let the devs and the fans cook
 
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Yet you just said it's not a CK3 issue and it's a Windows 11 issue without any research or evidence.
Path of Exile (1 and 2) has the same issue, which caused a lot of pain to a lot of players, and they still don't have a real fix - they added an internal workaround in the 0.2 patch, but according to them it is quite difficult to work with Microsoft on that and it's still not really fixed
 
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Fix the massive memory leak with or related to your game Crusader Kings 3.

It's all well and good getting players to buy more DLC but if the game doesn't work as intended for majority of players your just slowly killing the community.
you announced you have a "Team" dedicated to fixing issues like this well if it's such a big issue that it's still not fixed I would suggest you allocate 99.99% of man power to fixing this issue and the 1% can update the community.
The answer is simply no. You can throw skilled workers at a problem. But the problem regarding crashes on Windows 11's 24H2 update won't be solved any faster if Paradox throws its content creators, graphic designers, and accountant at it.
 
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Another issue that can help performance and excessive computing is the Refresh Rate limit. Currently, if you turn off VSync and set a limit below your monitor's max, it will not save and the next time you launch, it will default to the biggest. This has not been fixed.

I got confirmation from a PDX QA, got it send to the team around half a year ago, and still nothing is fixed. This is also what causing the game heats up due to the unnecessary amount of Refresh Rate puts into it. It also frustrates me seeing some mods suggesting users set Refresh Rate limit when I know that issue of saving Refresh Rate doesn't work. You can even see it being deleted from the settings file in Document after you exit the game.

Also, please don't ask us to set Refresh Rate in Control Panel as a 'fix', CK3 will override that setting from my tests.

Just thought I throw this out there as another issue PDX needs to resolve to help potential future issues.
 
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We're still working with Microsoft to resolve the issue players are experiencing with the latest Windows 11 update. Aside from that, we have identified an issue resulting in CK3 consuming more RAM than it's supposed to, and we're working on getting a hotfix out for that issue as soon as we can.​

Update - 1.0

So after a few more days of troubleshooting and funnily enough watching a Streamer Lionheartx10 playing CK3 and asking if he had any trouble with the game crashing.
He advised me this specific issue I was facing where the game would launch at 20GB ram usage and then eventually crash an hour or so into the game with the "Drunk Mouse" and then locking the whole system and me having to force restart the whole system.

Now the really short version of this is that it's an issue with CPU's and the Microcode for me specifically it was a 14th Gen Intel issue and to be honest is way out of my wheel house when it comes to trying to pin point the blame between CPU's / Motherboards.

So these are the specs I specifically have and the fix that (has worked so far 4 hours playtime and still at 6-7GB Ram usage)
i7 14700K
32GB DDR5 Ram
RTX 4070
Picture #1


I have attached 2 screenshots of the Bios settings I changed. 1st image is setting the power settings to whatever the grey numbers below the box are, this is from what I understand means instead of it having it on Auto and the ck3.exe going outside these exceptions to manually set them to the exact same number you already have.
This will vary from computer system to computer system so setting them to my numbers won't do you any good and may ruin your system.
I am only showing you this so when you do go into the Bios it SHOULD already show you the value it's set you just need to copy those.

Picture #2


The 2nd image is my P Cores and E Core ratio limits my max P Core is actually 55 and E Core max is 43. What I did was remove 2-3 p and e cores from the system and to set them to "Sync all Cores" this will give more system stability.
XMP Profile (Disclaimer)

So as the title says I was also advised by the streamer that he was recommended to disable XMP on the RAM so that's what I did.

THIS WHOLE PROCESS IS BASED ON MY SYSTEM AND STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU FOLLOW YOUR MOTHERBOARDS AND CPU GUIDES
Going forward I will continue to monitor this "Fix" and will leave the game running overnight to full test it as it seems to only happen with CK3....
Also quick note - The Motherboard and CPU makers really really really need to make the wording for important settings the same across all systems and across all series of CPU's and Motherboards. Because Lionheartx10 just happened to have my CPU and a newer Motherboard and was able to help me with the terminology for Asus.
Sources also used:
 

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The Motherboard and CPU makers really really really need to make the wording for important settings the same across all systems and across all series of CPU's and Motherboards.
That would be great, but where's the commercial advantage for them in doing so?
 
I think people are talking about (at least) two seperate issues here. If the problem you're getting is that CK3 freezes your entire machine and you have to hard power down, then check if you're on Win11 24H2. If you are then launch the game and switch it to Vulkan.

Incidentally I got the same problem with Helldivers 2 and solved it by forcing a DX version change at launch.

On some level, if a publisher is selling a game as "compatible with Windows", it's the publisher's responsibility to write code that works on Windows, not Microsoft's responsibility to modify Windows until it's compatible with the publisher's code. I'm willing to believe Microsoft capable of any degree of programming incompetence, but if other companies are producing software that doesn't suffer from this crash, then it looks like a Paradox issue.

I get what you're saying, but it's not as simple as that. The game worked fine on Windows and was then negatively affected by a Windows update.

I do agree though that I would like to see more from Paradox on this, it's nice to see them mention working with MS in this thread. They aren't the only game studio affected. As I mention above I had the exact same behavior leading to a crash in Helldivers 2, and both Helldivers and CK the fix was changing the renderer. It's baffling to me that this has still not been resolved.
 
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I'm not sure if it's related to this issue at all.

I started playing this patch, sometimes the game would load easily, sometimes sound would stop, then I'd realize my mouse was lagging a little bit, tried to ctrl alt del and either nothing happened, or I had a total PC freeze. This happened more often than not.

I had this happen once while in the game when I tried to load an earlier autosave too.

So I downloaded the latest Nvidia drivers, tried to allow the dev branch thingie on windows update (didn't change my version, it just downloaded some new version of .Net) and even installed the latest MOBO bios, just in case (mine wasn't outdate, it was from november last year anyway).

For some reason it stopped doing that, game was running fine, I've played for many, many hours.

Then one day, I think a couple of days ago, it froze like usual, I thought that wasn't happening anymore.

So I restarted, have played since without any freezing/crashes.

But I did notice yesterday the game, while running, bugged out my sound and I felt my mouse stuttering for a moment during the gameplay, I'm not sure if it was autosaving or what, but it was brief and then everything returned to normal, I've also noticed that the game can simply crash, sometimes, when loading a save file and while saving sometimes sound goes mute for a second, I don't know if it's related to the issue at all, but it's weird, other games don't do this.

I've also played Stellaris all day yesterday, zero problems.

My config, if it helps
i9 14900k
3080 ti
64gb ddr5 6400
Game's installed on an SSD.

And yes, i'm aware of the intel issues, I had an i9 13900k with those issues, contacted them, got it replaced with an 14900k that quite literally blew up and took out my PSU and mobo, they replaced it again, now I'm on my third one that's supposed to be new and free from any issues.
Just to add to this, I was opening Stellaris a few minutes ago, same thing happened, mouse started getting slower, nothing was responding, no sound, ctrl alt del froze the entire system, had to reset.

Weird, I've never seen these kinds of crashes before.
 
Update - 1.0

So after a few more days of troubleshooting and funnily enough watching a Streamer Lionheartx10 playing CK3 and asking if he had any trouble with the game crashing.
He advised me this specific issue I was facing where the game would launch at 20GB ram usage and then eventually crash an hour or so into the game with the "Drunk Mouse" and then locking the whole system and me having to force restart the whole system.

Now the really short version of this is that it's an issue with CPU's and the Microcode for me specifically it was a 14th Gen Intel issue and to be honest is way out of my wheel house when it comes to trying to pin point the blame between CPU's / Motherboards.

So these are the specs I specifically have and the fix that (has worked so far 4 hours playtime and still at 6-7GB Ram usage)

Picture #1


I have attached 2 screenshots of the Bios settings I changed. 1st image is setting the power settings to whatever the grey numbers below the box are, this is from what I understand means instead of it having it on Auto and the ck3.exe going outside these exceptions to manually set them to the exact same number you already have.
This will vary from computer system to computer system so setting them to my numbers won't do you any good and may ruin your system.
I am only showing you this so when you do go into the Bios it SHOULD already show you the value it's set you just need to copy those.

Picture #2


The 2nd image is my P Cores and E Core ratio limits my max P Core is actually 55 and E Core max is 43. What I did was remove 2-3 p and e cores from the system and to set them to "Sync all Cores" this will give more system stability.
XMP Profile (Disclaimer)

So as the title says I was also advised by the streamer that he was recommended to disable XMP on the RAM so that's what I did.

THIS WHOLE PROCESS IS BASED ON MY SYSTEM AND STRONGLY RECOMMEND YOU FOLLOW YOUR MOTHERBOARDS AND CPU GUIDES
Going forward I will continue to monitor this "Fix" and will leave the game running overnight to full test it as it seems to only happen with CK3....
Also quick note - The Motherboard and CPU makers really really really need to make the wording for important settings the same across all systems and across all series of CPU's and Motherboards. Because Lionheartx10 just happened to have my CPU and a newer Motherboard and was able to help me with the terminology for Asus.
Sources also used:

After a full say 6-12 hours of the game running over night I can confirm this fix has currently completely fixed the issue for me. game has not gone over 9GB and some times drops down to 4GB-5GB for an hour or two. This has been a massive win for myself and I really want to thank the Streamer Lionheartx10 because without him mentioning it and taking time to explain the fix he used it seemed like in this case it was the fix.
 
I would also like to report that as a Windows 11 user, I am also experiencing MUCH better stability on the hotfix patch. I have had ZERO crashes since the update, including when I tab out to check the wiki.
 
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Sorry if this isn't organized, but if OP or PDX sees this, the recent hotfix stopped my stuttering lag and I haven't experienced any crashes so far. Something's happening with the updates, they're working for me at least.

Again I'm running a factory setting Steam Deck, OLED.
 
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While working IT for 30 years I had ample opportunity to work with Microsoft support and I gotta say that my sympathies are with Paradox and not Microsoft. Working with Microsoft is usually like trying to talk to a blank wall. Usually it takes months to even get an acknowledgement from MS that the problem exists. Good luck, Paradox.

EDIT: Counted again and used my toes this time as well. I was mistaken. It was closer to 40 years. Sheesh!
You are probably the only one in the forum that is older than me... but my original account was registered earlier than yours. I am a Svea Rike player! ;)
 
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You are probably the only one in the forum that is older than me... but my original account was registered earlier than yours. I am a Svea Rike player! ;)
Don't be silly. There are folks here older than me. They are just ... quieter. And don't post pictures to convey communication nuance the way that I do.
:p
 
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