How To Improve Performance (All Video Cards) + (Driver links)

Im having terrible performance from the start of the match and the more buildings i build the worse it gets i was able to have playable matches against the AI in the past but now with all the recent builds performance has been very poor. And with the latest build im getting alot of stuttering and flickering

Im from Namibia my best performance has been on EU West servers

my internet connection 1mbs
kbs 0.89dwn/kbs 0.33up

Ok i am going to add this here too. Please add this to the list as it helped fix my extremely unclear and obscure performance problems:

*Execute from PA.Exe directly.
*Execute as Administrator.

This cut my loading times from ~5 minutes to ~30 seconds.

Which PA.exe?

The one in the PA root directory or the one in the x64 binaries folder ?

Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Planetary Annihilation

i have the steam version.

Either one should work. The one in the root directory should just chain-call the proper one in the bin 32 or 64 directory.
Ironically getting rid of the admin rights is incredibly hard and I see no reason they should even try with this chain loading.
Note that instead of running as admin, just installing into a folder not the "programms" or "programms x86" directoy is often an idea. Since Vista "programms" folders are heavily limited from teh rights, often causing issues with games unless run as adminsitrator. So I made it a habbit to have a games directory where I install everything that is a game.

how do i change resolution for the game?. my monitor's resolution is 1024x768 and the game only shows half of it

PA should automatically adapt to desktop resolution (at least on windows) and there's no dedicated setting.
If the game ain't launching in fullscreen, try hitting ALT+Enter while in the game menu

The game uses a borderless window stretched to fullscreen, then it's set as always on top.
To get the game to run at 1280x720 or higher you need to set your "windows desktop resolution" to 1280x720 or whatever resolution you want the game to run at.

The minimum resolution the game runs at is 1280x720 for 16:9, and any 4:3 resolution that is wider than 1280 pixels like 1280x1024.

Hi all,
I am having terrible performance issues with this game and I am not sure why. My problem is that the game appears laggy but when I look at the FPS counters they tell me I am ~50-60fps which doesnt make much sense to me. I have followed all settings changes at the top of this thread and any hacks I could find around the internet to no avail. Im pretty sure my rig is good enough to run this game but I am not able to. Someone please help?

Uninstall GameFirst III. It manages to squeeze itself between PA and the local server causing horrible lag. I'm 99% sure that's what causing your lag.

Hi DeathByDenim, that fixed it. Thank you!

I've attached my DXDIag info....

I recently upgraded to Win10. everything was working fine and then Win10 decided to take a dump and no longer booted. I had to use the "reset" option for Windows and reinstall PA. Now when PA Launches, I get the launcher that looks all messed up.... this didn't happen before and I've tried updating several drivers and DX to get it work with no luck.......... if someone could point me in the right direction, that would be awesome. Thanks.

There's a lot of errors in that DxDiag.txt (See the "+++ WER? +++" field at the end of the file). You might want to try scanning your system files for corruption using the sfc tool in Windows as it sounds like your update to Win10 didn't go over that well. Instructions are here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929833

If you still have issues, you might want to start a separate thread in the Support forum here, as this thread is meant more for improving performance and your posts might get a bit buried here.

I did a clean install of Win10. That seems to have fixed it... although, not ideal. SFC tool wasn't able to fix the install.

Well, clean install beats repairing afterwards any day.
But yeah, not ideal. Glad you got it working again though.

I've tried everything in the main post as well as various other tips found with google fu. Nothing has helped even slighty so far. I have attached my dxdiag file. Onto the issue.

I can open the game fine, UI works fine, even loads up fine 9 times out of 10. My framerate is over 100 when windowed and in low settings.

My problem is that the game is super laggy. Unplayable laggy. When I give the only guy on the field an order to move it takes him 5-10 seconds to even register that i told him to move and he then proceeds to move to that point very lag like. He will hiccup, and sometimes will just be in one place one second and another place another second. When I try to setup one of the factories, its the same thing. progress bar just jumps around until its finished and the animation is very hiccupy. I really have no clue what to do. I want to play this game so bad, but i think I am going to have to get a refund. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I went through this thread backwards and found DeathByDenim's suggestion to someone else's issue which sounded very similar. I was doubtful, but it completely fixed my issues. This remedy should get added to the main post. THANKS SO MUCH DeathBYDenim!

This was my problem as well. I can't believe some random program I hadnt even used before would affect a game so much. Thanks!

I will add a warning about third party programs like GameFirst III causing issues with PA's framerates,

There was a thread about this a long time ago but it would be so deeply buried in the forum that even local searches on this forum would probably yield no results.

There is also issues with PA and window managers like Stardocks "WindowFX" and "WindowsBlinds," and, various screen recorders which i cant remember off the top of my head.
I will do a forum search over the week and update the main post with these issues to help new players find and remedy client side issues.

I will also add link's to SXX's post's on these problems on the steam forum/discussion board,
He has a list with warnings about conflicting applications and programs and remedy's to some common issues.

Can you also add a warning for users with AMD's GCN 1.2 based cards (R9 285, R9 380, R 380X and the whole Fury range) that these cards have a 'green planet' bug and there is no known workaround. Uber sadly haven't responded to any requests to fix this, which doesn't bode well for the future of PA given it's likely to be the case for all future AMD cards.

Hello all. Quick issue that i'm sure can be fixed easily. I am able to run PA on maximum settings with no apparent issues and a fantastic framerate. The problem is that each consecutive map i play gets slower and slower. I have to quit and open it back up every 3 matches or so. Not exactly the worst problem in the world but it is very annoying. Does this have to do with RAM caching or something? HALP!