I have updated my post as the most important part of it is still true for .981. I should also mention I play with ground cover set to none, not that it makes much difference for FPS. Also, I noticed forests and cities affect performance the most.

I don't remember having problems with WoM. But I might have had a lower resolution monitor back then. Still, it's a very annoying issue and must be solved.

EDIT: Disabling HDR gives another 2-3 FPS, but it isn't worth it, since it makes the game look much uglier.

What about the other computer specs? I'm sure the devs would like to see a debug.err file to see what the issue may be.

http://pastebin.com/VWMfJrNf

It's actually full of errors and warnings, but the errors seem to be font-related. Maybe someone will take a look at this and tell me what's going on.

I have a decent machine, I don't have problems with more spectacular games like World in Conflict for example.

I too think it's a LOD optimization issue, because I don't think LOD scales with zoom level, so at higher zoom levels, everything is still rendered in full detail, and there's a lot more of everything on the screen, hence the FPS drop. Usually shadows are a FPS killer, but disabling shadows in FE doesn't make much difference, I've actually disabled everything relevant I could find in the prefs.ini and still didn't gain a significant FPS boost.

What I'm seeing in your reports is not that the video cards are bad but rather the resolutuion they're being pushed at is too high.

Here is what *I* would do if I were you.

I'd lower my resolution to something like 1280x768 and play that way.  Lower your desktop resolution if that helps (FE, by default, runs at your desktop resolution).

It's kind of like Battlefield 3. I have a monster machine but if I run it at 2560x1440, bad things happen for me.  So I lower it to 1680x1050 and it runs fine.

FE is a pretty demanding game.  In a game like Battlefield 3, you've got, max around 50 "units" and those units are all pre-made.  In FE, every one of the hundreds (or thousands) of units have their own boots, shields, armor, helmets, weapons, etc.  So there's a lot you can do.

The #1 performance thing you can do though is turn OFF the outlines.  They suck up a lot rendering time.  On my machine, I get around 10fps (which is meaningless to go from 50fps to 60fps but still).

^This can be huge, and highly recommend it be dynamically set based on the users' machine specs (as well as manually configurable).

Then give my 32-bit laptop back those little pedestrians.

You can set that level in the advanced options area.

We did indeed want WOM to run on every laptop. But that isn't a promise we're making for FE even though it runs better for most people. It's not the forest details but rather tha units and buildings that are hard on the graphics card.   You can also turn off pedestrians, that helps as well.

Oh I knew that, it's the workaround I use now, it was a suggestion to other people with similar issues. I wasn't clear

Pedestrians are only shown when zoomed in close to a city, they disappear when zoom out, and the FPS drops when zoomed out, when pedestrians are not shown anyway. But it's good that they disappear at an appropriate zoom level, less stuff to render.

If there are any more advanced tips you can provide, we'll be grateful. Disabling the obvious, shadows and HDR, has little effect. AA and outlines do have an impact on FPS, and I recommend disabling them, but I don't have any more ideas beyond this. However if in fact, the issue are units and buildings, because of their fixed LOD, then there's simply a need for more graphical processing power. And I've squeezed everything I can from my GPU...

EDIT: I was able to find a combination of settings that does improve my FPS from ~11 in the worst areas to ~21:

- AA set to 0

- Outlines disabled

- Pedestrians disabled (it does indeed affect performance, my apologies Brad)

- Shadows disabled (small effect, but they all add up)

- Using the camera setting 4, by pressing the '4' key on the keyboard, which gives a smaller view angle, hence less stuff to render

- Cloth map zoom level 91

Particle effects also have a small effect on FPS, but I really like them. Stylized lighting might too, but it looks too ugly without for me. You guys give these settings a try, maybe we can further refine them.

I'll be sure to post here my findings as soon as I play the new patch. You have my utmost gratitude for your efforts in this matter.

Actually, no.  Not even remotely.

I've talked, at some length, with the Civ 5 team on these issues. First, if you're playing on DirectX 10, you get the benefit of multithreaded rendering. 

But most importantly, every unit in FE has its own unique equipment that shows up in game and has to be rendered. That means a lot more passes.

If you want to just say we suck a programming or whatever you're trying to imply, the knock yourself out.  But it is what it is.  

@Frogboy, is there actually LOD in FE? It's really difficult to tell, especially since the buildings are in most situations small and cluttered together anyway.

Some possible optimisations could be:

 - Disable pedestrians in all cities except the one closest to the centre of the screen

 - LOD slider for pedestrians (turn them off at a certain zoom level) - might already be done? Might cause issues for certain tiles eg wild horses?

pedestrians are like one of my favorite parts of this game.....that shall never get disabled in my games...a slider i guess would be cool....love to see those peeps.....