Extremely long save file loading times.

[AndrewT]

1 minute 12 seconds to load the save is still pretty slow compared to performance before the 1.19 patch though. Is that considered "normal" for Windows 10 now?

My Win10 test was on a VM - an emulated Windows computer running on my Mac. It is expected to be slow, yes. But the fact it's hugely faster than the much more powerful physical machines in use in this thread shows there's something happening on them.

 

[CraYen]

After few plays I have to say that driver update + v1.21.1 fixed the issue for me Rejoice!

 

[aadrianswe]

Both those dxdiags have February 2017 nVidia drivers, interestingly. Updating to the latest April driver makes no difference?

Here is my dxdiag file,s orry for the delay.
I do not have nvidea, think I have amd.

Any advice would be helpful, it makes no difference to me whether i load the save from cloud or documents, and it makes no difference if the save is compressed or not.

 

[AndrewT]

The updated driver and new game version did not help you, unlike the post before yours?

 

[aadrianswe]

The updated driver and new game version did not help you, unlike the post before yours?

Afraid not, however, I haven't tried to update to the latest version since it ruins all previous save games. Guess I will have to suffer the loading times, until I decide to update the game.
Did other players say that updating solved the issue?

 

[AndrewT]

See post #22 on this very page ... !

 

[JohnyCage]

A friendly reminder that this problem still exists in 1.22.2. Again I must revert back to 1.18.4

 

[AndrewT]

I've closed the other newer thread on this topic and directed those users here.

I've logged a new bug report on the problem, to see what could have changed between 1.18 and 1.19 in this area of the game, that might give us a clue. However the hardware affected, and not affected, is so diverse it's hard to understand what the issue could be.

In any case I'll keep this thread updated when there are updates in the bug report.

 

[Equester]

yea it's really odd that the jump from 1.18 to 1.19+ seems to cause it and that reverting to 1.18 fixes it.

 

[JohnyCage]

If this is going to help I am running windows 10 on Surface book(16g ram i7) 1st generation . 1.18.4 is running excellent but opening in 1.19+ takes ages.

 

[Equester]

Okay I found an odd solution to my slowdown problem. Changing the map-mode from the default political map-mode to trade map-mode, before selecting the game I want to load removes the slowdown and loads the game in seconds, like it did for me in patch 1.18 and before. So I guess my loading problem is "solved" * and hopes it works for others too.

* I would still like to know why it happens and what possibly changed in patch 1.19 and beyond that causes this problem.

 

[Vulkandrache]

It works with this trick., loading time 2 seconds as expected from an SSD.

 

[AndrewT]

Thank you very much for the update! I've passed that onto the developers looking at this.

Is it ONLY the trade map that helps? Any other map?

 

[JohnyCage]

This trade map trick helped me too. Thank you @Equester for letting everyone know.

Edit: Now if only I can teach myself to switch the view BEFORE clicking the save file...

 

[Equester]

Did a test of the different map-modes when loading a savegame.

Terrain and religious map-modes both causes slowdown and long loading times for me.

But besides trade, I got fast/instant load time with Imperial, Diplomatic, development and regions map-modes.

 

[Jeggred86]

Thanks @Equester

Changing to Trademode reduces my loadtime from 20 sec to 2-3.


I know, this is nothing to the 5 min of other players with the problem, but it was 5x that of my Surface Pro.

I am running on 1.21.1 to finish a game, but I get the long load times on the current version as well.

My PC is a fresh Win10 install (last week) on a PCIE SSD (all on same partition), 16 GB Ram, GTX 1080, i7-4790k @ 4 GHz 4 core
Desktop to menu: 30 sec
Clicking on a saved game to play button: 17 sec for a 1444 save, 20-23 sec for a 1600 save
Clicking play: 8 sec

I also have a Surface Pro (first version, a few years old), SSD, 4 GB Ram, Intel HD Graphics 4000 ,i5-3317 @ 1.7 GHz 2 Core
Desktop to menu: 48 sec
Clicking on a saved game to play button: 4 sec for a 1444 save
Clicking play: 8 sec

I don't know why my old Surface doesn't have the problem. The loadtime to menu is longer as expected but the rest is as fast as my PC (with the trademode selected).



@AndrewT

I guess there may be more people out there that don't have the really long load time of 5 minutes but the increased load times I am getting and they don't post in the forum because it is not that noticeable.

I was only irritated because the PCIE SSD should be even faster than a normal SATA SSD.

Maybe a workaround for a fast hotfix would be to start the singleplayer screen in another mapmode.

Edit: There is this little sound that plays, when the game is loaded and ready to play. When I click on a saved game the sound appears after 3-4 sec (the normal load time) but the game kind of freezes after that for 16-20 sec before I can click on play.

 

[superscunk]

I always went to get a coffee while loading a save game. I thought it’s normal to take this long.
That trick with changing map mode before loading is amazing! From ~1min down to 2-3secs.

 

[Equester]

I'm glad to hear the trick works for the rest of you.

 

[JohnyCage]

The same trick helps when you change the starting date. Switch to trade. Set the date to 1818. boom it loads in less than 2s. I hope this may give some hints why this happens

 

[rinehime]

Holy Load Times Batman!
Switching to Trade Map mode before loading the games and it loaded in less than 15 seconds. Used to take a minute (or longer as it got later in the game) I'm never hitting the continue button again!