Rome: Total War Survival KitPerformance SolutionsIn this section we look at any kind of performance related problem. Thisincludes slow performance, choppy performance, crashes to desktops, blue screensof death, mouse lag, mouse trails, sound problems and more of the kindWe do not look at crashes that happen when you keep crashing when trying toopen a saved campaign game. This is most likely due to a corruption in the savedgame for which I have no solution. Latest news is that the developers arelooking into that.But first, a little checkBefore I take you on a journey into pc and driver maintenance, let's firstfigure out whether you have a hardware related problem, or whether the problemis caused by asking too much of your hardware.Some settings in the game are not to be played with unless you have top ofthe line hardware. If you use these settings with anything but the latesthardware you may experience problems no matter what you try.

1. Rome Total War Laggy Campaign Map

Let's have a lookat these first. To do that we'll use the preferences.txt file that you find inthe folder where you installed the game.

If you installed to the defaultlocation, you should find it in C:Program FilesActivisionRome - Total War.Open that file now and compare my recommendations with your current settings.Below my list you will get the option to download some custom preferences.txtfiles you could try.Preferences Settings. SAFEREFRESH:TRUESetting this value to TRUE ensures that the game selects a safe refreshrate. This can solve problems when going into a different mode and you endup with a black screen. This is a safe option to use. DESYNC:FALSEThis is one of the settings that require a high end video card.

I recommendsetting this to FALSE. REFLECTIONS:FALSERendering reflections is a graphics intensive process. I recommend settingthis to FALSE. SHADOWS:FALSENot the most intensive process, but should be used on GeForce 4 and Radeon9200 and up only.

Below that this is software rendered and eats upresources. DETAILEDUNITSHADOWS:FALSESame here.

Leave this at FALSE to free up resources. AAQUALITY:AAOFFOne of the bigger culprits. Leave this at AAOFF unless you have a recentvideo card. GeForce FX5200 and ATI 9700 and up can handle AntiAliasingsettings better, but anything older than that, I recommend turning it off.

UNITDETAIL:NORMALThis is a good setting to start with, and once you got your game running youcan easily set this a bit higher, but let's leave it at normal for now. BUILDINGDETAIL:NORMALThis is a good setting as well. Testing has shown that setting this highermay lead to slowdown on anything less than a gaming beast pc. UNITSIZE:40This is the normal setting. Using 80 is only recommended with GeForce 5600and Radeon 9800 and up, and using 160 (the HUGE setting) should really onlybe used with high end pc's with the latest video cards, so P4 3 Ghz minimumand a Geforce 6800 or ATI 800.

AUDIO3DPROVIDER:Miles Fast 2D Positional AudioDecent audio quality at low performance cost. No real 3D effects, but goodenough for a good gaming experience.To determine whether the ingame settings are the cause of your problems, Isuggest you download this zipfile.

It contains the preferences files that aregenerated by the game when using the three in-built default settings:(right click- Save as) SpeedLow Quality, High PerformanceBalancedBalance between Quality and PerformanceQualityHigh Quality, Low PerformanceMake a backup of your current preferences.txt file. Then take the SPeedPreferences.txt from the zip file, rename that to preferences.txt, put that inyour game folder and start a new campaign. Don't continue an old campaign, thatwill reset some values. If you can play your campaign with those preferences, itappears that your problems before were caused by using settings that strainedyour hardware too much. In that case you can of course change some settings tohigher values again, but keep the notes above in mind. Especially the AA settingand the Unit Size are better left at AAOFF and 40 max.

Hi, I used to own Rome Total war on CD and it worked wonderously, on a far older computer than I own now. I now own the gold verison on steam, and the online and battles are perfectly smooth, yet the campaign map will lag like no tommorow.I have tried every imaginable solution.

My computer isn't the issue here, I know that from multiplayer.I have read several theories. Believe me I have tried everything. I have everything set to run as administrator, I have tried running in XP mode, everything.I did not have this issue till I bought Rome total war for steam.On a side note, this game won't let me launch it from the game folder directly using the.exe. File it forces me to use the steam library or desktop shortcut. I have tried using the 4gb RAM patch to fix my.exe. File but this doesn't work as I can't even launch the.exe file directly from the folder. Trying my hardest not come off as unappreciative for your effort, but as a future reference to everybody:If somebody says they've tried everything that usually will mean they've already tried all the obvious, solutions.Obvious, moronic solutions that anybody can do without asking for help:-reinstall the game.-Delete the map cache, etc.-Verify integrity of the game-run as administrator-run in XP modeIf you are going to respond to a technical support thread where the poster sounds fairly intelligient, then you should assume they've tried all the 'duh, obviously!'

Solutions and please not post them.Now for example, lets say my post looked something more like this:'omgz! GUYZ mai game wont' work dis is stpuid, sega watsed ma money OMG!' Then SURE, go ahead and suggest that I verify the integrity of my game cache. Now my post DOES make me sound like a jerk, and for that I apologize, I'm sure nobody will want to help me now that I've acted this way, but my frustration over posting a highly detailed post, sometimes giving a DXDIAG report, discussing issues of 32-bit vs 64-bit computers, talking about the drawbacks of playing a really old game on a modern computer, discussing how perhaps older games CAN'T use all the other words I sound like I've done a lot of heavy in-depth research for a very long time into the issue.And then I'll get somebody that goes: 'Lol, how about you reinstall the game'.Really?! I just posted a page long post and you honestly believe I HAVEN'T reinstalled the game yet.

Synario - have you ever given tech support to anyone?I meant literally anyone? It does NOT matter how intelligent they sound at all. You ALWAYS start from the ground up if you want to help someone out. Sometimes the 'intelligent ones' are the ones that make the simplest mistakes because they can easily overlook the simpler solutions.Having said that, unfortunately I have no advice to give regarding this issue. The only thing I could recommend - as ridiculous as it sounds - maybe try turning off the steam overlay? Quite often that can cause unexpected. Hiccups.I had to disable it to be able to play War of the Vikings, otherwise my server list would generate nil results.

Rome Total War Laggy Campaign Map

In asking for help you really should list details of your system along with the steps you have tried. Otherwse you are going to get basic steps in reply. Intelligence is not a sound, but an inner working. Education in todays world is often a mask for stupid. Look at Obama.That said. There are many reasons for lag and most will be hardware specific such as trying to run cheap gasoline in a Lambrogini without increasing spark gap and heat.In most cases, it is too much crap running in the background or another program accessing the same exact resources and required support programs at the same exact time if it is not hardware.

I spent two weeks helping someone to find out they were running bit torrent in the background as example. If you have tried everything, this is usually a good place to start. Cool thanks for the help, I'm stupid and I didn't realize I was converting videos in the background.I know how computers work, thanks. We're talking about a game from 2004 running on a machine from 2013. Let's assume I'm not ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and tried all the obvious things like reinstalling, verifying cache, playing with settings and resolutions, doing a google search, and obviously making sure nothing is taking up computer resources.On an i7 with a gtx 660 and 8 gb of RAM the lag on the campaign map is unreasonable. Especially considering there is no lag in battles, and this wasn't an issue when I had Rome on a CD.