Game needs optimization

[Kryndude]

There is no advantage to annexing non-core territory except for resource rich states, but the more puppets you make the more the game lags, so you're somewhat forced to play sub-optimally due to poor optimization.

And again, you're forced to go blind on important terrain info like mud and snow, because if you lower graphics settings those no longer show up on the map and now you have to click on each province one by one to check.

But in the end they don't even matter because the game gets too laggy past mid-game.

 

[Kryndude]

Weird, this guy joined this forum in 2011 but acts like a teenager.

 

[Zauberelefant]

Weird, this guy joined this forum on 2011 but acts like a teenager.

That was an honest question, as this matter has been brought up before. You should have noticed in 5 years.
And there are perfectly valid reasons for things being what they are.

So, I repeat without sass:
What would you change?

 

[Kryndude]

It's been like a month since I got into HOI4 so some of my posts may seem redundant to old timers, and if thread necro wasn't something to avoid in English online communities I would've continued the discussion on already existing threads. Anyways, to be honest, I don't really know much about game development so I don't have anything meaningful to say. I'm just suggesting that the devs might want to consider improving performance since, although not as severe as Stellaris or CK2 pre-Reaper's Due, late game lag is real in HOI4. How am I supposed to know how Total War Warhammer 2 or CK2 managed to solve the problem.

 

[Goshawk]

Yes, this game(past 41/42) definitely could be one of the laggier games I have played.

It could be improved by follwing ways:
- Discourage AI building <20 width divisions
- Encourage AI building 40 width divisions
- Encourage AI to have larger air wings
- Put some irrelavant countries in America to hibernation
- Optimise and improve the entire battleplan system

If devs do encourage AI building 40 wid divsions, they should also change combat system to make 2x20 width equal to 40 width.

 

[Goshawk]

I am very interesting to know whether MP games are laggier than SP games.

 

[ramlok]

The pure spam of divisions seems to be a big issue. I can easily build 3x as many divisions as Germany and most countries for that matter. But I believe they made it that way to get people to play minors. The process of building a division should be 3x longer, plus training time. That way you can not spam divisions. I'm sure there are other things that would help, I'm curious to see if there are any mods that address this issue.

If Germany had 100 infantry divisions at the start of WW2. And Poland had 30+ reserves. Anyone know if this website is correct on its numbers?

Would probably have to scale everything back by a third. Maybe have a clicky like the do for historical AI focus at the start. For realistic military sizes.

Start from there and balance with an understanding of reaching realistic numbers. But there again no will want to play minors.
Also would need to revamp how fast countries can scale up and peak out because of bombing and convoy raiders.

World War II - Military technology and firepower of European forces

In September 1939 the Allies were together superior in industrial resources, population, and military manpower, but the German Army, or Wehrmacht, was the most efficient and effective fighting force for its size in the world.

www.britannica.com

 

[Zauberelefant]

It's been like a month since I got into HOI4 so some of my posts may seem redundant to old timers, and if thread necro wasn't something to avoid in English online communities I would've continued the discussion on already existing threads. Anyways, to be honest, I don't really know much about game development so I don't have anything meaningful to say. I'm just suggesting that the devs might want to consider improving performance since, although not as severe as Stellaris or CK2 pre-Reaper's Due, late game lag is real in HOI4. How am I supposed to know how Total War Warhammer 2 or CK2 managed to solve the problem.

Twwh2 probably can make better use of multi cores and is more lenient on graphics Hardware. Outside of combat, it's pretty simple compared to hoi4.
Same I'd say for CK2, as I recon the number of units does not increase as much as with hoi4's "every nation with maximum military" thing.
I mean, every combat, every hour, in land, sea and in air, multiple equations that interdepend from each other, times 180 countries, plus real time AI for each, that's a lot more strain on CPU than tw's turn based games.

But anyway, the Performance issue is known, gets tackled but is systemic to the kind of game hoi4 is. It's a rather complex affair.

 

[Algarde]

But anyway, the Performance issue is known, gets tackled but is systemic to the kind of game hoi4 is. It's a rather complex affair.

more than a problem of the game as such it is an engine problem. The end game lag is classic of the Clausewitz Engine, it is the same in EU, Imperator, Stellaris. In HOI 4 it is probably more accentuated for some factors, but it is an endemic problem of their own engine that obviously cannot be solved in this generation, unless some technical bases are modified.

 

[Zauberelefant]

The pure spam of divisions seems to be a big issue. I can easily build 3x as many divisions as Germany and most countries for that matter. But I believe they made it that way to get people to play minors. The process of building a division should be 3x longer, plus training time. That way you can not spam divisions. I'm sure there are other things that would help, I'm curious to see if there are any mods that address this issue.

If Germany had 100 infantry divisions at the start of WW2. And Poland had 30+ reserves. Anyone know if this website is correct on its numbers?

Would probably have to scale everything back by a third. Maybe have a clicky like the do for historical AI focus at the start. For realistic military sizes.

Start from there and balance with an understanding of reaching realistic numbers. But there again no will want to play minors.
Also would need to revamp how fast countries can scale up and peak out because of bombing and convoy raiders.

World War II - Military technology and firepower of European forces

In September 1939 the Allies were together superior in industrial resources, population, and military manpower, but the German Army, or Wehrmacht, was the most efficient and effective fighting force for its size in the world.

www.britannica.com

It's the encyclopedia Britannica. The world's oldest and most renowned one. You can pretty much take it at face value.

 

[Hoi Neuling]

You won´t get the real Numbers of Devisions (like Tanks, Infantery), Planes for Airforces and Ships the Nations had. That´s fact, why do you think the Devs have limited Army Forces on the World Map and reworked the World Map a 3rd Time?

That´s an big Improvent to the Game incl. implementations from Hoi 2 and 3, which will come in a smaller Form back in Hoi 4. The Game get more and more optimisation to the Game every Version and DLC.

Take the newest Version and DLC then you won´t get Laggs. Everyone who plays on Version 1.8.x or earlyer will have the Lagg-Problem.

An other Option is to use the EAI-Mod with his Expensions for the newest Version, which makes the AI more smoother or other Mods for more smoothnes.

Lagg-Problems have every Game, like WoW, WoT and his Brothers, XCOM 2 for Example on low-level as well as bad medium Computers and Laptops. There you have to play with the lowest Settings of Graphics, Sound and similar things.

 

[Fulmen]

I am very interesting to know whether MP games are laggier than SP games.

Most serious MP games play with mods that heavily optimise the game by removing or greatly restricting most nations that historically didn't take part in the war or did extremely little in it.

Even if such games were played in vanilla, there'd be slightly less lag due to fewer AI calculations, and fewer but bigger units. It's usually hardly noticeable though because there's no playing on speed 5 in vanilla MP.

 

[SophieX]

I just created a small mod to double the amount of infantry-equipment needed for all infantry and infantry-sub-units...
I'm curious to see what will happen...

 

[Zauberelefant]

I just created a small mod to double the amount of infantry-equipment needed for all infantry and infantry-sub-units...
I'm curious to see what will happen...

Keep us appraised, will you?

 

[SophieX]

Keep us appraised, will you?

I will play 3 or 4 games with different countries and then I'll give a report.

 

[sekelsenmat]

What would you suggest as optimization, oh wise one?

The way that it works is that a Paradox developer should launch the game attached to a profiler and let the AI play a game with it overnight.

Then he pauses the whole thing and the profiler will give you exact info about which methods used the most CPU time. You then analize those methods to look for performance improvements. Often by using caches, better data-structures, etc.

There is no way for a non-developer to suggest anything.

 

[Zauberelefant]

The way that it works is that a Paradox developer should launch the game attached to a profiler and let the AI play a game with it overnight.

Then he pauses the whole thing and the profiler will give you exact info about which methods used the most CPU time. You then analize those methods to look for performance improvements. Often by using caches, better data-structures, etc.

There is no way for a non-developer to suggest anything.

Let's assume for a second that somehow, the 4 years' worth of performance complaints like OP we're noticed by PDX and every patch sees Performance improvements implemented. The problem is known and we can assume its existence does not own to sadism on PDX' part.
If we then agree that non-experts don't know jack about the underlying reasons for the situation and cannot constructively engage in discussions of said Situation, it ends Up in whining about a computer game not running as fast as the non expert expected.

Which is a waste of time and energy, isn't it?

 

[Meglok]

The game has had improvements in optimization several times over it's 4 years. Each patch and DLC tends to add more calculations per hour of game time, wiping out some of the gains from optimization improvements. And more calculations are required as soon as major war breaks out and the ai has to figure out what to do with every ship, wing, and division.

The engine is old and there is only so much you can do with it.

 

[sekelsenmat]

Let's assume for a second that somehow, the 4 years' worth of performance complaints like OP we're noticed by PDX and every patch sees Performance improvements implemented. The problem is known and we can assume its existence does not own to sadism on PDX' part.
If we then agree that non-experts don't know jack about the underlying reasons for the situation and cannot constructively engage in discussions of said Situation, it ends Up in whining about a computer game not running as fast as the non expert expected.

Which is a waste of time and energy, isn't it?

Well, true that they probably did some improvements, but every new large feature (think Garrison or fuel) or refactoring has the potential of making software slower if the implementation is suboptimal. So it is not necessaryly getting faster, I'd say it is getting slower.

True that little constructive discussion is possible, but maybe Paradox will notice the complaints and assign resources to it, which is a gain for gamers isn't it?

Someone volunteered to check if less divisions helps, this can be used to mod the game as a workaround, but even if the test shows division count is partly to blame, it is still just a symptom, the real reason is N (unknown number) suboptimal data structures or lack of cache somewhere related to a feature involving divisions. I think that a properly optimized solution should be able to handle millons of divisions.

Also sometimes Devs answer to threads like this with interesting comments

 

[MobiusTwo]

Wish I could upvote the OP twice. Having to play with minimal graphics settings is a hindrance since I can't see where forts are, among other things.

The big culprit I like to blame is the UK's decolonization path, which adds a ton of useless tags to the game and needs several big revisions before I will tolerate its presence in the game.
I think it should be normal for countries involved in the war to pump out as many divisions as possible, but Latin America tends to do nothing but exacerbate the poor performance without ever actually doing anything useful/interesting for the game at all.

In my experience, Man the Guns was fairly well optimized, but things have gotten a lot worse in terms of performance since La Resistance.