As a client (rather than host) I am getting a lot of lag when battles start. In fact, I end up with no control of my formations and the game lags out with ghost soldiers (mine and enemy's) all mixed up with each other and not even seeming to fight (although they die off eventually). Admittedly, we are playing with PT and getting up to 6,000 plus units each (counting peasants and military). I am on the eastern seaboard of Australia and host on eastern seaboard of America so about latency of 150 ms or a little more. I have 16 gig of memory and Processor is Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-6100 CPU @ 3.70GHz, 3700 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s). My internet does about 35 mbps down and about 11 Mbps up. Video BenQ GL2460 ([email protected]) Card 4095MB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 (ASUStek Computer Inc) Surely, all that is enough? Though a little out of date now. Can C3 not run big unit count games? What is the experience of others?
It's hard to tell. I wanted to try through Hamachi to create a network with my neighbor and we did not succeed . He has Windows 7, I have 10. I see the normal connection, and he sees with error. Wanted to create a network in Sega emulator.
From what I know the host usually see a much better battle when the game lag. I think the worst I seen was playing with you @Ftoomsh with big army in late game, there would be the first shots then I would see units pass each other, I remember some attacking soldiers even going to the base near the fight. Then suddenly all the soldier would fall. The fight happened but I couldn't have any control apart from the initial order and didn't have the least idea of which side won before everything was long done. It also happen frequently to me when trying to play millions or long pt games. Always at the start of the battle. Funnily, the battle happen much better when I'm not looking at it, so I would look at a corner of the map and only guess from the unit counter and the minimap. I have a friend with a crappy connection (not that mine is much better) and a computer on the low end but he live in France like me. The game is slow but we don't have ghost units during huge battle. In singleplayer with high unit count the game only slow down a lot but there is no ghost unit either here. I would say that while Cossacks 3 doesn't handle well high units count, it seems the way information is sent in multiplayer is more the problem.
Foeurdr, what you say agrees with what I see as game client. It even gives a hint of what is wrong, I think. There was one patch, in early or mid 2018 which made matters a lot worse for players like me. The game has code to slow down when action gets too much and yet it doesn't always slow down. Sometimes instead I get exactly what you describe "there would be the first shots then I would see units pass each other, I remember some attacking soldiers even going to the base near the fight. Then suddenly all the soldier would fall. The fight happened but I couldn't have any control apart from the initial order and didn't have the least idea of which side won before everything was long done." Also you describe "Funnily, the battle happen much better when I'm not looking at it, so I would look at a corner of the map and only guess from the unit counter and the minimap." There is code in the game to skip animations when the animation graphics load gets too heavy. When it does this it won't slow down, it just does what you describe. Thus the slow-down code and the skip-animations code are two approaches to the problem but they don't work together at all well. In fact, I am sure the skip animations code is very bugged. They needed to optimize animations. Of course, it will never get fixed now. I have given up my dream of a large battles game. I am trying to mod a small tactical mod now with a 3,000 unit limit.
Smells like classic desynchronisation. This was happening me often in CS1. But sadly it can be caused by anything from OS, internet provider or game support mechanics itself. I would suggest to find someone who is physicaly available and try classic LAN. Then start to checking what's causing the troubles (PC itself - HW + SW, huge armies, OS?). If everything will be fine, start with him internet match a continue with provider, multipayer setting etc. Quite shallow suggestion, but it's everything I know.
You are quite right, that is the correct test process. All the things you list could be causes. Unfortunately I do not have access to a friend for LAN party test to start the process with basics.
