GAME INFORMATION
These details are CRITICAL; DO NOT skip them or your issue may not be reviewed.
- GAME BUILD #: 155976
- GAME PLATFORM: Steam
- OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 10
ISSUE EXPERIENCED
3-4 updates ago something changed. If enough ranged units are attacking a red clock will appear for every player and we’re all treated to a power point presentation.
This didn’t used to happen; the settings I play on were fine for years. My computer has only gotten better in that time and it affects everyone in the match when it’s a problem so it’s likely not a hardware issue. The threshold at which the game now throttles itself is much lower, to the point that it can even happen in standard 200p games. At 300p, it is unplayable at times for all involved. If a game goes late and there are projectile civs like Koreans, Portuguese, Ethiopians, Chinese, Khmer, or Bohemians; then no one can even move their mouse or type until most of the initial ranged units are dead. Then the game is fine again. If people re-pop to 300 and don’t make ranged units, the very same game is magically fine. Latency doesn’t impact mouse movement. Only game resources or CPU/RAM being throttled can. Task Manager says the latter isn’t happening.
I suspect a memory leak, and that it has gone unnoticed due to proper capping usage of system resources, which is otherwise a good practice. Maybe temporarily removing the cap in a test environment will help determine if this is the case or not.
People leave these games now when it starts happening, and I don’t blame them. No one wants to watch a slideshow for 10 minutes until someone lands a big enough SO shot to make the game playable again.
There was tinkering with global projectile and targeting behavior when fixing the rocket cart exploit and it’s around the point at which this started happening. I suggest looking there first. Other than that if you have any version control at all you should be able to narrow it down.
When it happens, you’ll know. The lag is absolutely unreal. I’ve owned this game a long time and played thousands of matches on DE and thousands before that and it’s unlike anything before.
FREQUENCY OF ISSUE
If I pick the handicap, AI civs, population, players and map I can replicate this 100% of the time but across all games it’s ~5%.
REPRODUCTION STEPS
Here’s the steps to reproduce the issue:
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Wall vs a 130% or 140% AI game or play a boom game with 300p
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Pick lots of ranged, tower, and/or siege civs
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Wall, let the game progress to where players approach pop cap, and enjoy the power point presentation
EXPECTED RESULT
Frames are supposed to be more than 1.
IMAGE
