New M1 Max and Pro laptops from Apple - Question for Paradox

[Fat_Mr_Fox]

Hi Paradox,

Are you able to give some advice on CK3 and the new chips/ computers from Apple.
The specs suggest that CK3 and other Paradox games will run smoothly however I have heard that it is not about the specs but rather the compatibility between the game and the new hardware type? I have seen brief videos of people playing CK3 on last years M1 chip and it looked rather low quality.

Any feed back on how CK3 will / should / does cope with the new chips would be greatly appreciated (I know no one has their hands on them yet so happy to wait for an answer). I can foresee Apple putting these chips in all of their computers moving forward so am just interested if you will be able to make it work smoothly or will it always be an issue with compatibility.

Thank you.

 

[Drmcdevitt]

I’m not a developer but I’ve played many paradox games on Mac. As far as I know the games run through the Rosetta translation and potentially in a virtual machine but I haven’t tried that. So comparability is going to be the issue for the foreseeable future.

If you search m1 and read all the responses there is one by a developer that says they don’t support the M1 officially on current titles and he doubts they will rework old games for it either. But from experience playing EU4 on m1 the game runs fine for the most part (could be faster) there seems to be a bottleneck somewhere, probably the translation layer. Performance isn’t the main concern though. It’s the occasional unexplained crashes that are and I doubt the m1 max or m1 pro will fix this. I wish the games were native to M1 though as they would look amazing at 200% scaling on the new machines and run like a breeze were they updated for the platform.

 

[AndrewT]

If you search m1 and read all the responses there is one by a developer that says they don’t support the M1 officially on current titles and he doubts they will rework old games for it either.

That was me, and I am not a developer! Just a tech support contractor. I was just giving my best take on the likely situation, which is in no way to be taken as Paradox's official stance.

 

[Fat_Mr_Fox]

Hey AndrewT, yes I saw your response before posting my question and wanted to ask Paradox directly. But thanks for posting here to clarify for others. Also thanks Drmcdevitt I totally agree with you that Paradox's games would look amazing on M1s considering the specs. So fingers crossed they announce something.

 

[Drmcdevitt]

That was me, and I am not a developer! Just a tech support contractor. I was just giving my best take on the likely situation, which is in no way to be taken as Paradox's official stance.

Ah sorry. Thought you were. In any case I think given what happened with humankind and M1 we shouldn’t except a native arm release of the older games and unlikely the new ones. A shame though. Because the 11 inch m1 iPad Pro with its magic keyboard would be the neatest portable paradox grand strategy gaming device.

 

[Fat_Mr_Fox]

Hey everyone,

After much sleuthing I came across these videos on youtube of someone playing on an M1 Macbook Air 2020:

HOI IV

STELLARIS

EU IV

Looks very promising and if I find anything else I'll let you know.

 

[Drmcdevitt]

So I picked up a base model M1 pro 14. So this is the 8 Cpu Core and 14 Core Gpu model. I am running EU4 at speed 5 in full resolution 3024x1964 so nearly 4k at about 4.25 seconds per month tick. So its not super fast but its pretty consistent. In parallels under windows 11 ARM the game runs about 35% slower which feels too slow. If you drop to half resolution so 1512x982 you can get a slight increase in month ticks but the game looks great at full resolution. There are two issues however. The mouse cursor is tiny as it does not scale with the rest of the game when put into 2X scaling and the notch. One may be able to get rid of the notch by running in a window but I haven't tried that yet.
Edit:
Nope you can't do that either. I suppose the game will have to be updated for the notch or you have to live with it blocking a couple things or scaling at less than 2.0.

 

[AndrewT]

Note that Eu4 has its own performance issues regardless of OS - probably not a good test subject for the M1.

Looking forward to the M1 27"-equivalent iMac !

 

[argh]

I'd like to add my voice of support towards an M1/Apple Silicon optimized version of their games presuming, of course, that is something that gets logged and filed somewhere. Stellaris first, of course as I am biased. ^^ They do seem to be constantly seeking to squeeze greater performance out of this title.. running natively on the hardware would certainly help.

That said, Stellaris is exceptionally pretty at 3456 x 2234 resolution at 60 hertz and the years tick by at slightly more than one per second on a relatively mature (2450-ish) game. Gets a bit noisy at 120 hertz though. One of the speed controls is partially cut off by the curve in the display corner and if I scale up the UI elements, maybe it'll save the slow button but I'm positive some of the resources'll cut into the notch.

Now, I haven't tried EU4 but in Stellaris fullscreen settings, there's a 3456 x 2160 resolution that gives the display a blacked out notchless top bezel, very reminiscent of MacBooks of yesteryear. Also, borderless windowed defaults to a 1728 x 1117 and no notch is seen there either.

 

[Drmcdevitt]

I tried the alternative res in eu4 and it just extended above the area where the merchants and things are, like it was blowing the picture up to full screen. If you don’t do that res a few things are cut off by the notch, if you do change to that res you have that whole bar floating while screen is extended above into the notch area.

 

[TMoney58]

I just tried to fire up CKIII on on an M1 Max 16" via the steam install and performance is abysmal.

About 25 fps at minimum settings 1440p and about 23 fps at maximum settings at the same resolution. Nearly the same performance at lowest and highest settings suggests to me that optimization is a major issue.

I hope the Mac version of CKIII gets some love from the devs and/or a possible M1 port. The game is playable at 20 fps but should be capable of so much more on this hardware.

 

[Ozymandias]

Just another vote for some performance love for the Mac version of CK3.

My brand new MacBook Pro M1 system runs rings around my old PC, but that old PC way outperforms it in CK3.

 

[Ozymandias]

Just another vote for some performance love for the Mac version of CK3.

My brand new MacBook Pro M1 system runs rings around my old PC, but that old PC way outperforms it in CK3.

Also, since OpenGL was deprecated in favor of Metal on OSX, in 2018, it’s a bit sad to see that CK3 is still based on something that Apple has shown so little love for when it’s clear which one is faster and supported.

 

[skol]

I second every other report above on abysmall performance on M1 Max/Pro. So bad, it's incredible. Do I have to install Parallels and buy Windows crap to run this game?

 

[Lesleyhott7]

I am using MBP 2020 M1, and my time tick runs pretty fast like barely 3-5 seconds in a month passes in 5th speed however... the fps is pretty slow. Hovering the game via mouse is laggy and so is the movement of the armies.. indeed there is still something wrong with the macOS version because even cities:skylines runs perfectly well in my MacBook... paradox please fix its a damn waste of money if I cant play this.

 

[heinzbeinz]

I just got the new mac studio and it really is a shame. I replaced my iMac from 2014 and it runs slower on the M1 max than before. I was hoping for a nice ck3 experience but it seems I have to try the xbox version.

Edit: I just tried Parallels with Windows 11 ARM and strangely it is way faster. Maybe Rosetta 2 is not as good as the microsoft x86 emulation? Loading times are abysmal on both platforms

 

[IWSA]

I’ve got a MacBook Pro M1 max and I’ve got around 15 fps in CK3 and 20-40 in Hoi4, then I downloaded Parallels and a windows 11 arm build (the normal one didn’t work with the launcher) and I got 60-80fps in both games with everything on max

 

[skol]

I’ve got a MacBook Pro M1 max and I’ve got around 15 fps in CK3 and 20-40 in Hoi4, then I downloaded Parallels and a windows 11 arm build (the normal one didn’t work with the launcher) and I got 60-80fps in both games with everything on max

Did you donwload a separate Windows version ? I thought Parallels downloaded Windows 11 arm. Steam and launcher are working, but the CK3 app crashes.

 

[IWSA]

Did you donwload a separate Windows version ? I thought Parallels downloaded Windows 11 arm. Steam and launcher are working, but the CK3 app crashes.

yes I downloaded it separate, when I downloaded it trough Parallels the launcher didn't start. So I joined the Microsoft insider program and downloaded a ARM build there and it worked great for me. Same with Hearts of iron, had low fps with the download Parallels provide but with the arm build I easily doubled it.

 

[skol]

Thank you. Indeed it worked!