From Steam, verified on my game:
“I had a surprise with treesize analyzed of the game folder:
resources_common\drs\graphics =33GB (I have the enhanced dlc)
there is almost 1200 files for a total of 18GB, containing “building_name + destruction”.smx
Is that true? more than half size of the game dedicated just to the destruction animation, seriously? or it contain other stuff?”
Can we delete this files to save hard disk space?
My graphics folder is only 7.5 GB, but that depends on the resolution you play. For small monitors or notebooks you get smaller textures than UHD or 4K monitors. Wonder and castle destructions are the files with bigger size, since each has 150 pictures, while the actual building only has 1.
Yes I play in 1080p with the enhanced graphic pack because the zoom in is superb, but the destruction of the buildings is dispensable to me, like this Steam guy, I admire it durings the first hours of playing but if there is a “destruction disable option” to keep even less than 10Go, I will click it…
What do you mean by 150 pictures? .smx files are animation video?
There’s a lot of useless files you can safely delete, too. I’m talking about translations: EVERY LANGUAGE POSSIBLE is downloaded in your PC. you can clear around 3gb, i think, by deleting languages you don’t want.
It seems this was resolve in spring game versions, in my language folder, just the English art of war video are useless, it still remains during installation with every other language you use on Steam
Ok, I tried by myself, I zip (to restore in case of troubles) all the files named with “destruction”, no troubles at all, when a building is destroyed, it disapear suddenly with some smoke and ruins appeared normally, the “stone by stone” animation is the unique loss in the “mods”. The 2nd play I forget I’ve done this and didn’t noticed anything XD.
So now the zip file is deleted, just beware of the “intregity test” of Steam ;).
If you are sceptic, zip the files in the folder (and delete the files if you don’t check it in option of course 
), test it in game and save 18GB! (with the enhanced graphic DLC)
next step, the same folder still use 15Go for units death (it seems), I will try to zip the heaviest files (>10MB, a total of 7GB) to see if I missed it…
I’ve gotten this problem since the the latest update some months ago. However, I have only abt 30 saved games and that cannot be considered many…
Must be something else as well…