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jerwin

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Original poster
Jun 13, 2015
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My sister is a roman history buff. She bought Rome II Total War on Steam (it was on sale!!!), and attempted to run it on her lowly macbook, only to discover that the fans ramped up, making it unenjoyable to play.

So now, I've tried playing it

I have a 3.5 Ghz i5, and a m290x graphics card. My first thoughts upon playing the game were-- wow, these graphics are super crappy. So I began to maximize my graphics settings.


STUPID STUPID STUPID

my mac began to crawl, at 7 frames a second. And then it began to hang.

control command eject time.
Taking a more sensible, and incremental approach, I started to benchmark at what I thought might be appropriate settings, toggling things on and off to see if the framerate rose dramatically, or alas, dropped.

And then, it began to hang.

control command eject
Since control command eject is hardly a recommended routine, I'd thought I'd ask here...

Given a machine of my specs, what settings are appropriate, and which will cause instability?
 
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It ran fine on my 2008 Mac Pro and then my late 2013 iMac. You should be able to get minimum spec from game itself. If Rome II doesn't work well for her go to Feral Interactive and get Rome I. I played it for years and always found it fun. Rome II was a bust for most TW fans. Much hype too much left out.
 
I'll look into Rome I.

Frankly twiddling with graphics settings did little to assuage the essential uglinesss of the game.
 
If you think Rome II is ugly then it is unlikely you will enjoy any of the Total War games. I don't understand your comment however, beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.
 
So the soldiers look like emaciated zombies in every version of this game? Good to know. Good to know.
 
No they don't. Perhaps your computer/graphics card couldn't handle the game properly and therefore your graphics were distorted. Whatever you have should be able to handle Rome I so you might find a demo version available however, the game is pretty inexpensive today.
 
Screen Shot.png
so what are your settings, and what are your framerates on the forest benchmark?

This is mine on very high, 1080p with distortion turned off.

The draw distnace seems more than little off-- details suddenly pop into view. It's a bit jarring.
 
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The following are the system requirements (if your graphics card is a Radeon HD 2000 series it is not supported):

System Requirements
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AMD Radeon HD 4850, NVidia GeForce 640 or Intel HD 4000 with 512 MB of Video Memory
Other Requirements
Please be aware that the Mac App Store version of Total War: ROME II – Emperor Edition does not feature any multiplayer functionality, or the ability to purchase additional DLC content or install user-created modifications.

Unsupported graphics chipsets for Mac: NVidia GeForce 9 series, GeForce 300 series, GeForce Quadro series, AMD Radeon HD 4000 series, Radeon HD 2000 series

https://www.gameagent.com/games/total-war-rome-ii-emperor-edition
 
This is the kind of thing that I was looking for:

http://forums.totalwar.com/showthre...sis-Guide-of-Graphic-Performance-vs.-Settings

with tips such as "turn off the grass and shadows, leave everything else on high, or extreme."

As I may have mentioned, I was coming from my experience of running "Company of heroes" which can be run on ultra settings, at 5K on my mac, though I usually run it at 1440p. (and it looks bloody brilliant).
 
I've only really been playing two games on it:

Tropico 5: 1440p medium.

Company of Heroes: 1440p ultra-- playable at 2880p ultra, but the visual improvements are miniscule.

I had planned to start getting my ass kicked in Elite Dangerous, but I don't have the time.
 
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