I don't want to ramble on too much so I'll try to cut to the chase.

The game in general runs smooth, but it seems it doesn't take many units onscreen before it bogs down.
My understanding is the game only runs on one core so that's probably why.
Even if there are only three unit formations onscreen there's a noticeable framerate drop.

Anyways I've tried settings all graphics settings to the lowest and the issue remains the same.
It seems to be either the animations or pathfinding causing it because when I pause the game it runs smooth overlooking large armies, but as soon as I unpause it framerate tanks.

Checking the settings.txt I see a setting or two for LOD. I'm not sure what to set it to to lessen the unit LOD and hopefully help the game run better for me.
I think it's at 4 right now, and I'm not sure if lowering makes it better or worse, or if I have to set a negative integer or what.

Aside from the framerate bogging down and an annoying sound issue the game runs great and since I've been enjoying it lately I wanted to post about this issue in the distant hope I could get it improved.

Vince

Firstly my specs:

Windows 7 x64 Home Premium
Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 @2.33Ghz
Nvidia GeForce GTX460 @768MB
8GB RAM

I do have performance issues on a few games, usually either games with many units onscreen or games that only use one core.

A quick mention that GalCiv II is multicore and was created in 2006. They could see that multicore was would be worth implementing even though not many people has multiple cores yet.

But I don't think posting a saved game will help because I have this problem even after starting a fresh new game on any campaign or sandbox game.
Changing the model detail doesn't seem to help but turning shader detail helps a little but mostly for other things such as cities, which I would lag when scrolling over cities.

In regards to the sound issue, it seems to be an issue I have with many games, usually lower-budget games. When certain sfx 'tracks' end there's a pop/crackle sound. It's more common for certain sounds. The easiest one to notice and reproduce for me, is when zoomed into a marching army and you hear the heavy marching sound, then zoom out; as soon as the marching sfx stops the sound cracks. The only way I've been to alleviate this is by changing sound quality to low, which removes the heavies marching sound, though I still get crackles here and there and the sound variation sucks on low.

Like I said I've had some sound issues like this before, and have talked to developers trying to resolve similar issues but with limited success.
I think it has to do with certain sound cards, mines Realtek. I'm hoping when I buy a new PC one day it won't have this issue.


Back to the performance issue. It might be pathfinding, but the game runs smooth unpaused so long as you're not looking at more than one or two units on screen. Early on in the Philip Campaign even the fight with Bardylis where I only have Hypaspists and 2 Phalangites, maybe 1 or two peltasts, and the game slows down to a crawl.
That's why I thought it might have been the actual animations of the units since pausing made it smooth, so I was looking for a way to reduce the quality/smoothness of the animations.


In the end though the truth of the matter is that on one core, my pc sucks. Most games that use one core I struggle to run, and have been planning for awhile to buy a new pc and when I do I plan on getting a very good one.

This game (and Rome) is very unique and I have suddenly felt like playing it a lot lately, but this performance issue is distracting.
And it doesn't seem like it should cause such a performance issue. Because if you take the number of men that cause my computer performance issues, you'd think it could be optimized somehow.


I am looking forward to Rome, but before games are released I don't follow them too much, so I don't get overhyped. So I don't even have any idea of the release date.
As far as I'm concerned, as of right now, there is only Hegemony Gold.

Thank you for replying, I went to sleep after posting the OP so it took me awhile to reply,
Vince


EDIT:
This is very off topic, but since you're reading this anyways I didn't think I needed to create a new topic.
While I've been playing the Philip Campaign, I noticed when I have a truce with someone, and get the 'Truce Violation' banner on the side of the screen with the timer; when hovering the mouse over it shows you can left or right click to do two different things.
Right-clicking works to open the diplomacy window.

But left-clicking does nothing. It says left click >'show brigade' so I think it's supposed to jump to my unit violating the truce. But it doesn't work.
So far it's been very difficult to find the truce violator even when I don't have very much territory yet because of this.
It doesn't seem to show my unit no matter what unit or which faction I'm violating the truce for.

I'm using the Steam version currently, 1.5.6 rev.23316