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What causes Late Game Lag?

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FLUX2226

FLUX2226

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What are the biggest factors that cause the game to slow down after a few years? My PC isn't the best and HoI4 becomes almost unplayable from 1941 onwards (a single day takes over 10 seconds on max speed), so I've been thinking about creating a mod that simplifies/thins out certain aspects of the game to considerably improve performance.

What are the biggest late game lag reasons? I already discovered from testing that LaR's occupation system noticeably eats up game performance once more and more territory is getting occupied during the war; division spam by the AI is often mentioned as well. What else?
 
I use a mod, called "AI Division Limiter" that limits the number of low-quality divisions that irrelevant minors spam (specifically, it caps the number of divisions they can field as a function of total factories, subject to some other conditions such as proximity to conflict). It has a noticeable impact on improving performance. The downside is that you wouldn't want to use this if you were going for a world conquest, since you'd want those irrelevant minors in South America to have a fighting chance. LOL.
 
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What slows things down is ships, divisions, and air wings in combat, because of the large number of AI calculations as it moves units around (including players' units, because of the battle planner and the way that air and naval warfare work). Mods that just limit the number of divisions in conflict-free zones (e.g. South America in a typical game) don't help much, because those divisions just sit there with very few calculations being performed if they are exercising (and I think PDX has stopped them doing that if it's pointless). That's why things become slower in 1941 in a typical historical game, as the Eastern Front dramatically increases the number of units in combat.
 
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There must be more to this, as in my last few games where I annexed pretty much every major country after 1945 (pretty much all of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa), the performance was still incredible much slower than pre 1942/1943/1944 and there wasn´t even a war ongoing anymore. I was indeed quite suprised by that, because there was no one left with many divisions, planes or ships besides me. Something is there in the lategame which eats performance like hell and its not only divisions, planes or ships (Im not using any mods).

Anyway, I did get huge boost in performance after I upgraded to an I5 8600K 2 years ago (from an very old I7), its like 5x times faster now, before that, everything after 1943 was unplayable. Although I think that some performance improvements were made in the last years by the devs as well.
 
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Ruck said:
There must be more to this, as in my last few games where I annexed pretty much every major country after 1945 (pretty much all of North America, Europe, Asia and Africa), the performance was still incredible much slower than pre 1942/1943/1944 and there wasn´t even a war ongoing anymore. I was indeed quite suprised by that, because there was no one left with many divisions, planes or ships besides me. Something is there in the lategame which eats performance like hell and its not only divisions, planes or ships (Im not using any mods).
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That was likely the occupation system. Each day every indiviual occupied province has to calculate levels for resistance and compliance, as well as resistance activity and effects.
 
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FLUX2226 said:
That was likely the occupation system. Each day every indiviual occupied province has to calculate levels for resistance and compliance, as well as resistance activity and effects.
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This system is still way better than the cav fest it was before LaR


TalyonUngol said:
I think a combination of factories, division counts and animations between aircraft and ships. So lots of everything.
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big issue is that minors will make a bunch of small divisions that are garbage instead of focusing on quality like they should. Hungary will have 50 divisions by 42 and they will all be either cavalry or crappy inf divisions. It makes sense that they should make a bunch of divs so that minors can’t roll them but if they’re in a faction there’s no reason for them to spam like this.
 
I really think its aircraft. more than anything else

I have a achievement run going right now that is super late game 1953. Germany has 85k planes and every airbase in their territory is filled to the brim.

Edit: LMAO, I really shouldn't just read the title and respond.
in that game for me its quite a bit slower than the normal speed of the game, But i have a very beefy rig.
 
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Historically, the a major culprit has been lots of countries with more than one army worth of divisions. Very broadly, 10 countries with 20 divisions each hits performance much worse than one country with 200 divisions, and every two-bit minor power in will generally crap out divisions until their manpower is tapped out.
 
I know this is not strictly what was asked, but I have a pretty potato computer (laptop from 2013), and if I select multiple (4-5) air wings at the same time, the graphics start lagging visibly, only giving maybe around 5 fps, even when the game is paused.

I suspect the range circles, particularly overlapping ones, have something to do with it. Maybe somebody should take a look at it?
 
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Th3master said:
This system is still way better than the cav fest it was before LaR
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The disadvantage of the new system is that it doesn't disappear after the war. If Germany capitulates the Soviets with a peace conference, it will still slow down the game for years to come.

I'd actually have to make a test run about old-vs-new at some point. Because to me it feels like the new occupation system made the game performance worse (I don't remember having such late game issues when I started with HoI4, which was before MtG), but I could be wrong.
 
So an example mod (assuming all of this can be modded) to improve performance could look like this:
>AI can only deploy 40w divisions to limit division spam
>Planes are more expensive but also more effective to limit air force size (starting air forces will be adjusted)
>Occupation stats and resistance activity are calculated once per week, not every day (stats and effects will be adjusted); resistance is completely disabled if you own the territory instead of just occupying it (compliance will still exist)

I'd love to simplify combat as well but that would probably have a hefty effect on balancing unless I get it just right.
 
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