HoI 3 Performance Tweaks

• Hearts of Iron 3 is a relatively easy game to modify, so it is not surprising that many mods have been made for the game. This article includes three essential Hearts of Iron 3 mods which every player should try if they are becoming bored with the vanilla game. These mods improve naval combat, provide more playable nations, and improve the realism of the AI.
• Set HoI3.exe to high priority, in the task manager right click HoI3.exe again and click High Priority. Realtime priority may interfere with device drivers and cause mouse or keyboard lag. Perform steps 2 and 3 after you first start the game and are still in the game menu. Note: this must be done every time you launch the game.

Posted by kurgan62 (6http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?421694-Fix-your-lag-in-5-minutes):

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Fix your lag in 5 minutes

There is quite a bit of interface lag in HoI3 but with a few simple steps it can be reduced, on my machine I got the lag down to minimal levels.

1. Restrict HoI3.exe to a single core (dual or quad core machines only)
*CTRL-ALT-DEL -> Processes -> Rick click HoI3.exe (it must already be running) -> Set Affinity, to a single core (1 for dual core, 3 for quad) (the highest core is the least used by other processes).

HoI3 appears to be a single threaded application, a lot of the lag I was experiencing was due to thrashing of that single thread back and forth between my two processor cores. Setting this each time you play the game will help to reduce that thrashing.

2. Set HoI3.exe to high priority, in the task manager right click HoI3.exe again and click High Priority. Realtime priority may interfere with device drivers and cause mouse or keyboard lag.

Perform steps 2 and 3 after you first start the game and are still in the game menu.

Note: this must be done every time you launch the game. (the only problem with the following approach is that mods aren't available to pick from the menu)

For non-XP users this may be more convenient than setting affinity and priority every time you run the game, thanks to warp_kez:
Quote Originally Posted by warp_kez View Post
1) Open command prompt
2) Change the directory to where HOI3 is installed (eg C:Program FilesParadox InteractiveHearts of Iron III)

To test that it works, type:

start /affinity 1 /high hoi3game.exe

IF that works, then create a text file by openning Notepad and pasting the above command in and saving it as hoi3.cmd then create a shortcut to it on your desktop.

There are other options available - some may work better than others. Just type 'start /?'.

EDIT: Tested on Vista32 and Vista64

3. When playing use a different map mode than 'Diplomatic', the Diplomatic map mode causes an extreme amount of graphical lag when I use it. I find that I get the least lag when using the 'strength' map mode which is also an acceptable map mode for conducting warfare.

Hoi3 Cheats

4. Set Multisampling in HoI3 settings to 0, turn trees and advanced water off.

Hoi3 Cheat Mod

5. People have gotten performance boosts with windowed mode, you can change this within the HoI3 settings file ( Paradox Interactive/Hearts of Iron III/settings.txt ) change:

fullScreen=yes
to
fullScreen=no
I haven't experienced much of a speedup with this but I only tried it once and the window border bothered me.

With these changes I would estimate that 90% of my lag issues are now gone, and the game runs smoothly at full speed with interface lag similar to HoI2 at full speed. Remember that the game will begin to lag after an hour or two of running, so restarting every once in a while will help performance.

6. If all else fails: Try turning off or minimizing the size of your pagefile
*Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Performance (Settings) -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory (Change) -> No paging file

This is not advisable if you have less than 2GB of ram and/or run a large number of applications at once. This can cause unexpected software failures so don't fiddle with it if you aren't confident.

EDIT 8/16: I updated some stuff, I do acknowledge that reducing or eliminating the pagefile can be a risky move... but so can letting your blood pressure skyrocket when HoI locks up for 20 seconds at a time (heart health before software health if you get my drift). I'm glad to see these things helped some of you guys out.

EDIT 8/23: Added warp_kez's workaround for the .cmd launcher so you don't have to set affinity every time you start HoI.

EDIT 9/7: With patch 1.2 it appears that the Diplomatic map-mode has been fixed/optimized, there is still a slight slowdown but it is not game hindering. The rest of the options should still yield improvement.

EDIT 10/16: I've reserved myself to waiting for a new patch until I play HoI3 again, but thanks to delra this might help you guys out with some lag, I haven't verified it though:
Quote Originally Posted by delra View Post
Please add a mention that all the officer-related and politician-related lags can be fixed by renaming Hearts of Iron IIIgfxpicturesportraits folder, creating a new portraits folder and putting there only one file from the original folder which is empty_position.tga.

This makes a lot of slow downs go away since the game no longer has to traverse this gigantic folder (17000 files in there) every time you click to switch division commander.