[2023] Game suddenly lagging and loading extremely slowly after update

Please do a full **clean** re-install:

- move any valued save games elsewhere
- "uninstall" in Steam-CK3
- manually delete both the Steam/SteamApps/common/CK3 AND Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3 folders
- re-install game in Steam, run a Steam Verify when done.
- add CK3.exe to the exceptions list of your antivirus app; ESPECIALLY if you have Windows Defender, add it to the Ransomware "Apps Allowed Through" list.
- start the game with no mods active and test

In particular make sure there are no files or folders left under either the Steam CK3 or Documents CK3 locations, before installing again.

If that doesn't help, this may be coming from outside the game. Do HOI4 and Stellaris run okay, or also have this issue?


DXDIAG is a program you run from the Windows search box on the task bar. After running it will open a window and start collecting info with a progress bar in the lower-left corner. When it completes click the 'save all information' button and save it to a file then attach that file here.

Please attach here your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/pdx_settings.txt .
From your Documents/Paradox Interactive/CK3/logs/ folder, attach here system.log , error.log  

That's odd. If you delete that system.log does the game make a new one?

There are some mod errors in that log; please disable ALL mods and only test this with a new campaign (ie started under the 1.9.x patches, no previous patch) .


Unload every other app you can, and especially GeForce Experience if that is running.

THEN Right click on ck3.exe , properties, compatibility. Tick "disable fullScreen optimisations" untick every other box in that dialog, Apply and exit.
Then in the launcher Game Settings menu, select fullScreen display mode, Vsync off, cap refresh rate at 60.

Is that any better?  

Wolf6120 said: I'm not sure what exactly unloading every other app means - just making sure they're not running when I launch the game?

Yes, that's right. The idea is to make sure there is enough available memory, as with 8gb in tis machine shared between the game and Windows, that doesn't leave a lot for anything else - if Windows was swapping stuff out to disk that might explain your performance issues.  

Go into the Startup apps setup part of Windows and disable everything you can, then reboot. Does that improve the situation?  

HOI4 and Stellaris minimum requirement is 4gb, this game's is 6gb, so it is actually more demanding of memory than our older ones.

Run Task manager/performance, then start this game in windowed mode so you can see TM. Do you see CPU, GPU, memory, IO, or anything at 100% when this issue is at its worst?

Can I get a new dxdiag please, plus install and run the free utility Speccy. Send its output to a text file and attach that here please.

Speccy - Free Download

Download Speccy - the System Information tool www.ccleaner.com  

Wolf6120 said: this really did only start happening quite suddenly on Sunday morning, the game was fine Saturday evening when I turned it off. I didn't even have the computer turned on between those two times, so I don't know what could have caused such an impactful change in memory capacity/usage in those 12ish hours.

There was no patch released just then. 1.9.0.3 was on 2023-05-02 and 1.9.0.4 on 2023-05-16. Which implies the issue comes from outside the game in some way.

I see you have Norton AV but disabled, plus Windows Defender active. Disabled AV apps are still in effect to some extent (it is still running, I can see); if you really don't want to use Norton any more you should completely uninstall it, and use the free utility Revo Uninstaller to make sure it is 100% gone.

I see OneDrive is running; your Windows User Documents folder is not stored there, is it? If so that might cause problems.


And finally I see many Failed or In Progress Windows updates stuck there going back to 2020. If you manually run the UPdate utility does it find anything to do? If so apply that and reboot.  

I am sorry then, I cannot see what has happened in this machine to cause this to you. Especially, why just CK3? I wonder if Vic3 would also do it to you on this machine.

If it's Windows issue a Windows Reset would probably fix it, but if it comes from hardware or external sources, that won't of course.

Make a new Windows user on this machine and log into it with that, is the problem any better then?