Why Hoi 4 have lags?

[Knyaz_of_Ukraine]

I do not understand why it is impossible to optimize the game, since my processor is constantly loaded at 100%, or the 3rd core is loaded, and the rest are not. The video card is not loaded at all. The game has been around since 2016, couldn't you get the video card to work? It is impossible to play, as the game is too slow and it becomes not interesting to play it!

 

[Thumping_Fox]

I don't think anything significant will be changed. It's just the game engine it runs on is very old, and doesn't even support multi-cores.

So until PDX finnaly make a new game engine, nothing major will really happen. It's a shame cause. even with a good PC, the game runs like trash once all majors are at war.

 

[Simon_9732495]

It's just the game engine it runs on is very old, and doesn't even support multi-cores.

The game supports and uses multiple cores.

 

[FindFloppies]

Stop playing it on a toaster. If not on a toaster, clean up the crap on your computer. Or get some more RAM.

It works fine for me. Does it stop when a big collaboration puppet pops? Yes. (It stopped for a full five seconds when [Communist] French China popped last night!!)

Does it stop for about a full second on autosaves? Yes.

It doesn't lag the rest of the time for me, even with major wars going on.

Also, if you have less than 16 GB of RAM, you probably have lag issues with it as well. 8 GB is a bit too little these days.

And, if you're still running it on Windows 7, well, I hope you're not doing your banking on it...

 

[Mr Thursday]

LAG is a network issue. You have poor local performance, which could be a number of reasons.
3 things that can cause poor performance;
1. AntiVirus/AntiMalware active scanning the HOI4s files (especially the XML files)
2. Steam Overlay enabled will cause odd slow downs (Disable from settings in steam library)
3. Cleanup old Mods and the user cache

 

[Thumping_Fox]

Would my CPU be considered weak then. I've got a Ryzen 5 3600X, and 16gb RAM.

Yet around 1942-43 in major wars, the game runs slowly. And in the end game, from 1945 onwards the game is almost unplayable. Could there be an issue on my end then, if the game runs well for other people then?

 

[FindFloppies]

Would my CPU be considered weak then. I've got a Ryzen 5 3600X, and 16gb RAM.

Yet around 1942-43 in major wars, the game runs slowly. And in the end game, from 1945 onwards the game is almost unplayable. Could there be an issue on my end then, if the game runs well for other people then?

Got an SSD? I run OS and drivers from my SSD. Game(s) run from my 2 TB HD, though.

I have an i7-8700@3.2 GHz, 32 GB RAM, and a GTX 1070 GPU (nothing special on the last)

I haven't looked up the comparison for the Ryzens. Did you build it yourself, or was it custom built? Or did you buy the AMD because it was cheap? If the last, it probably has something else bottlenecking things. Cheap is cheap...

EDIT: 'free' AV and some paid AV are well known for causing issues like this, too. Norton is worse than nothing, for example.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

I don't think anything significant will be changed. It's just the game engine it runs on is very old, and doesn't even support multi-cores.

So until PDX finnaly make a new game engine, nothing major will really happen. It's a shame cause. even with a good PC, the game runs like trash once all majors are at war.

That's literally false. Clausewitz games after EU3 are all multithreaded. Case in point: run the game with the argument [B]-threads=[/B]1 and you'll see how it actually would be if it's single threaded.

The game has been around since 2016, couldn't you get the video card to work?

The game barely uses the graphics card because it doesn't do much in terms of graphics. If you add bloom, SMAA, ambient occlusion, vignette, and 2k textures then you will probably see more GPU use.
Regarding your problem, it's very likely the memory. Windows likes to keep a few gigs of RAM free for system use and non-system programs hit the cap before that. Check your paged memory usage and disk I/O to see if the game is slowed down by memory thrashing

 

[Voigt]

Case in point: run the game with the argument [B]-threads=[/B]1 and you'll see how it actually would be if it's single threaded.

I won't dispute that the game is multithreaded, because it really is. But this quouted pointed is often said, even by the developers. I tried it once. The game was somewhat slower, but still very much playable (6600k@4.4Ghz). So the game is multithreaded, as much as is possible, but it is far far from that the threads can be distributed equally around 4 cores or so, so playing on one core would be unplayable.

 

[Thumping_Fox]

Got an SSD? I run OS and drivers from my SSD. Game(s) run from my 2 TB HD, though.

I have an i7-8700@3.2 GHz, 32 GB RAM, and a GTX 1070 GPU (nothing special on the last)

I haven't looked up the comparison for the Ryzens. Did you build it yourself, or was it custom built? Or did you buy the AMD because it was cheap? If the last, it probably has something else bottlenecking things. Cheap is cheap...

EDIT: 'free' AV and some paid AV are well known for causing issues like this, too. Norton is worse than nothing, for example.

I run the game on an SSD, and so does my OS. My CPU, while being at a good price is by no means considered a weak CPU. I'm capable of playing demanding games such as RDR2 and can get well over 60 fps no problem.

I just can't understand why the game performs so poorly for me, yet every other game runs very well.

 

[Voigt]

Your 3600x *should* play HoI IV fine.

But just for your Info, I assume that RDR2 isn't a CPU intensive game, most work is done by your GPU showing your the pretty graphics. There is some ai and physics stuff.
HoI IV on the other hand is very much CPU dependent, the main limiting factor is calculating ai, pathfinding, checking triggers for events stuff like that. While you GPU just has to draw a somewhat pretty map, without any fancy effects like Global Ilumination or stuff like that.

 

[kettyo]

If i run the game in 4K and full graphics the GPU usage goes near to 100% and the map scrolling becomes jerky. Running this way on 55" 4K TV looks marvellous but i usually switch down to Full HD for the smooth movement.

I have a laptop with Geforce GTX 1050. Probably i should have aimed for a 1080. I thought 1050 will be quite okay as i don't use any 3D heavy stuff. Funny thing is it can handle HDR 4K movies in 60Hz frame rate hands down. GPU usage barely goes beyond 30-40%

100% CPU usage is probably antivirus issue. One CPU thread having full load while the rest relatively low is quite normal for a grand strategy game of such a scale as the AI and combat calculations are run in a single thread and most CPU power required here for those stuff. Ideally a HOI specific machine (or for such games) would consist of two CPU's, a very strong single core CPU for the AI and combat stuff and another weaker supplementary multicore CPU for the rest of the tasks. HOI would fly on such a machine but it would be suboptimal for most other uses

 

[Thumping_Fox]

I decided to run a benchmark, timing how long it would take to reach 1st April 1936 on historical.

First I ran the game completely zoomed out and got a time of 1:29. This seemed slow to me, especially as someone else did this with a 3600 and got a time of 1:06

Second time through I zoomed in on an oceon tile and got a much better time of 1:04.

I know that some CPU power is used to display the graphics and the map, but it seems weird it would make such a siginicant impact.

 

[Voigt]

Just tested aswell:
01:15 for zoomed in
01:43 for zoomed out
on my 6600k@4.4Ghz and GTX 1070@1080p.

So your CPU seems fast enough. I have 16GB RAM, but I think 8GB should be plenty for HoI IV.
Dunno what you consider unplayable though. I mostly do runs till 1940~1941 to test stuff for MP or test my ai mod, but when I play to get an achievment this can go till 1944 or something. The game becomes slower yeah, but far from unplayable for me.

 

[kettyo]

Also i think there is a difference between fullscreen and windowed although i run windowed and it's fine for me.