lag investigation thread

[Seleucids]

It's very strange that some civs consistently lag more than others. 

• Ptolemies lag very little - very playable. Ptolemies stutter a tolerable amount even in large fights. 
• Mauryas, Britons and Gauls lag similar amounts, more than Ptolemies but somewhat playable. 
• Persians, Athenians, Romans, Spartans are completely unplayable. You can't see anything in lategame; it's just frozen screenshots of nowhere when you try to pan. You don't even need a fight to start stuttering. They stutter out and lower to 3fps even when booming. 

I have noticed this pattern previously and Ptolemies stays as the least lagger. This might point us towards something: what's so special about Ptolemies that saved it from lag? What did we do wrong about Romans and Persians that caused such huge lag? 

I have tried to remove animations from units but it didn't seem to explain, as Ptols were unaffected and Romans + Persians had the most animations removed already. 

[Seleucids]

Just looking at this list, the least laggers are all 5 house civs

Laggers are 10 house civs. Could this be relevant? 

The least laggers feature mostly infantry; in the case of Ptol I never make significant number of cav. Brits and Gauls are also biased towards infantry when they are in my hands.

The top 4 laggers are the civs where I play significant numbers of cav, except Spartans. 

 

So: 

Small house = less lag

Jav Cav = more lag

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Is this single player, multiplayer? In TGs? How are you controlling for different variables?

[Seleucids]

On 07/03/2025 at 6:33 PM, real_tabasco_sauce said:

Is this single player, multiplayer? In TGs? How are you controlling for different variables?

Lag is only observable in 3v3 and 4v4 TGs. 

 

Today I made a mod which removes the walking and attacking animation of the jav cav. I limited the animation to A23-style low arm javelin throws of the rider and completely removed the walking and idle animation of the horse. That instantly reduced a lot of GUI lag for the Carthaginians. It would seem that cavalry model and animations are a major source of GUI lag. Interestingly, camels lag less than horses because they have less attachment points. 

 

I will update you on lag after I remove all cavalry animations. 

 

Some experiments showed that having too many objects in your selection group can also be a source of stutters. Today I took over the base of a player who makes less barracks than me and I also experienced shorter durations of stutter when accessing barracks. Huge GUI crashes happen when I am trying to select a large group of units. 

Again, strangely, in 1v1, selecting the same group doesn't crash the GUI as much. The total number of visible units on the screen are the same in 1v1 and 4v4 situations. 

Edited 21 hours ago by Seleucids