EU4 lag after 2,550hrs

[rem_dy]

Hi Paradox forums,

I've been playing EU4 for years now and as the title suggests I've got a lot of time in the game. I've always played in windowed mode so I can answer DMs, e-mails or watch YouTube/Twitch streams on the side while I go after achievements. This afternoon I booted up EU4 to continue a run I started last night, but was quite confused when my game began running like a slideshow, roughly 1 frame every two seconds. My computer is very new, having been built by me just last year with top of the line parts. I've never had any issues like this since I started playing, even on my old rig, and I am not running any mods. Even more strangely, I've noticed that when the game is open in windowed mode and I click to my other monitor the game plays normally. Water textures move without lag, as do moving sprites. I've attached a 20 second clip of me going between my monitors, only when I click into the game's window does it become laggy.

Hoping you guys can help me resolve this! I've verified the integrity of my game cache and restarted my PC, but to no avail!

 

[AndrewT]

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-EU4
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/Europa Universalis IV AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/Europa Universalis IV folders - In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam EU4 or Documents EU4 locations, before installing again.
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add EU4.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.

THEN Right click on eu4.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.

Edit that settings.txt to say:

refreshRate=60
fullScreen=yes
borderless=no

vsync=no

Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode.


If that works better, you can then try windowed mode (although that will always be slower).

 

[rem_dy]

Hi Andrew, thanks for your help! This resolved the problem and hopefully I won't be having it again.