EU4 fps gradually drops from ~140 to ~60

[Jiajinlong Kang]

Hi everyone,

I got a strange issue with EU4 fps. Basically whenever I open the game, the FPS when game is paused remains at around 140. However, the FPS when game is paused gradually drops as I play. For example, if I play for half an hour or an hour, when I pause the game the FPS will be just about 60. Interestingly, after quiting and restarting the game the FPS will be back to ~140 and another FPS drop cycle continues.

I have a top-end PC with i9 13900k, NVIDIA RTX 4090, 128GB RAM and 3 TB SSD. It appears to me that EU4 is accumulating something in the background and it does not get cleared out properly. Therefore the game gets lower FPS for longer playing time. I am not sure if anyone else also has this issue.

Your thoughts or solution will be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jack

 

[AndrewT]

Well, my first thought is that 60 fps is just fine for a non-action game like this!

Or do you see other symptoms of worse performance, such as slow time passing or jerkiness in the maps?

And have you checked CPU and GPU temperatures in the game?

 

[Jiajinlong Kang]

60 fps is just the fps when the game is paused (i.e. when I do nothing). Also note that I have a near top end PC. 60 FPS is not satisfactory given this specs honestly. Furthremore, if I open any tab, like diplomacy, economy or mission tree, the fps further drops (sometimes to even lower than 30). I did some test and it appears that this issue is worse if I have mods. My guess is that it has something to do with the graphic rendering since mods typically add in more provinces.

CPU and GPU temperature is fine. I have water cooling. CPU and GPU usage is single digit to ~15% though.

 

[AndrewT]

Just to be clear: you have satisfactory performance in other respects, but would like to see higher fps numbers? That's your goal here?

Does this extend to CK3, Stellaris, HOI4 and CK2 also? Or just EU4?

And, has this always happened since you've had this game/these games? Or it/they were okay up to some point?

 

[Jiajinlong Kang]

Firstly, having a 20 FPS when opening a tab is far away from satisfatory and it destroys my gaming experience.

For other Paradox games I am not sure about the FPS but at least I feel smooth when playing CK3. I believe Stellaris has the same FPS degradation issues but I feel it is not as bad as EU4.

Not sure when this happened. I played EU4 a long time ago and I recently picked it up. I can say that I have this issue at least for 1.34 and 1.35.

And by the way a clean install does not solve the issue.

 

[AndrewT]

having a 20 FPS when opening a tab is far away from satisfatory

I understand te fps drops in that and other circumstances. What I'm trying to establish is if there are other performance symptoms! So when you open a tab, is that notably slow to happen, quit aside from the fps at that time?

Not that I have any idea of what is causing this on your hardware, which of course ought to be fast!

 

[Jiajinlong Kang]

I believe FPS degradation is the only noticeable symptom. The game runs fast even at 5 speed. What I mean is that those tabs are quick to open but while they remain open the game FPS drops drastically, making the game super laggy. The worst case is the economy tab. Time by time I need to open the economy tab to check my revenues and cost for reducing corruption etc. While the economy tab is poped out on the upper left of the screen, the whole game becomes very very laggy. It is not eye-enjoying honestly. The second worst case is the mission tree tab. Many mission requirement includes something like "country A does not exist" or "region A should have development over 12". When I open the missiong tree tab and move the map to these countries/regions of interest. I can feel that the game is super laggy (and FPS counter shows that the FPS is cut to 20-30).