I tried doing a skirmish and right from the beginning (no units, not buildings, just moving the commander) it's lagging beyond playability. I have an asus 64-bit intel i7 16GB RAM nvidia geforce gtx 960m graphics card I tried uninstalling/reinstalling/updating drivers of the game, steam, and graphics card tried changing several setting on the graphics card, tried everything on lowest settings/highest setting and everything in-between.. thanks for your time
Did you check the list and disable ASUS GameFirst? https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Windows_Incompatible_Software
OH MY GOODNESS.. I can't believe that's all it took.. I did check if I had that.. but I must not have looked very hard because I didn't think I had it.. feel kinda dumb because I have an asus.. anyway.. works perfectly now.. appreciate it
I too suffer from extreme lag. Whenever I launch a game, it almost freezes to complete stop due to lag or low frame rate. I recently begun to study abroad so I don't have access to my gaming rig. I bought a laptop specific for gaming. ASUS G501JW Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.6GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 16GB RAM I can play Shogun 2, Supreme Commander and Shadow Warrior without any problems. I thought PA would be "less demanding" than those mentioned. Since this is an ASUS computer I checked for the program called ASUS GameFirst but I can't find it. Neither can I find any of the other programs mentioned.
Check if you are playing PA using the discrete graphics cards. PA is often not auto-detected and thus plays on the Intel instead of the NVIDIA. You'll have to add it manually (and note that there are three PA.exe's). You can check the PA log to see which card it is using.
I wasn't even aware my laptop had two graphic cards. I went to the Nvidia control panel and changed PA to the Nvidia card but it made no difference. Also, I can't find any other PA.exe's. Not in the task manager when PA is running and not in the game's installation folder. There's a possibility the PA I'm running doesn't have the Nvidia cad applied to it. Is it even in the Nvidia control panel I change the desired graphics card or do I do that in another panel?
The other two are in the bin_x64 and bin_x86 subdirectories, I think. I don't have Windows myself, so I can't check. But upload the latest PA log, and we can see what card it's using. See here how to get the logs: https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Windows#Reporting_Windows_Issues
I found the log and from the looks of it it's using the Nvidia card. I've tried to set everything to low, validated all files and disabled all mods, server and client. It makes no difference. I took a look at the earlier logs before I "changed" card and it says it's using the same card. So what I did in the Nvidia control panel did nothing.
Hmm, yeah, that's ok. Are you really really sure you don't have ASUS GameFirst III installed? Anyway, can you try the clean boot option that is mentioned at the end of the incompatible software list? https://wiki.palobby.com/wiki/Windows_Incompatible_Software
I'm positive I don't have ASUS GameFirst installed. It doesn't show up when I search for it and it's not in the list of installed programs. I got some good news though, I got the game working... more or less And I haven't tried the clean boot option yet. I ran the PA.exe in the bin_86 folder with the "run with graphics processor", choosing the Nvidia card. If I launch the game through Steam, or launch with the Nvidia cad with any other PA.exe the game freezes to an almost complete still. I get one frame every 5 seconds. However, running it from the 86 folder is far from perfect. I can't play in offline mode and I can't host locally. Also, when a Helios gets destroyed, the very second its HP reaches 0%, the game stops working. No exceptions, if a Helios dies, so does the game. The good news is that I can resume the game as soon as I boot it up again but if many Helios are present in the game... well... it's not worth the effort to boot it up over and over again.
The one in the 86 folder is the 32-bit version of the game, so that means it cannot access more than 3GB of memory. I guess the Helios explosion is just very memory hungry. Especially with Mirolog's fancy explosions mod. And there is only a 64-bit version of the server program, so that's why you don't get offline play with the 32-bit version. But yeah, try the clean boot.
I got some very good news. I also got some bad news. The bad news is that I feel embarrassed and stupid -_- The good news is that the game has returned to be 100% functional Launching it via Steam works like a charm. So... what was the problem? It was just as you said, GameFirst. The reason I couldn't find it was because I was searching for an ASUS program, but it was named ROG (Republic of Gamers). I went through the Programs folder manually and found it right away. Removed it and the problem is gone. Thank you for all the assistance. I really appreciate it