FWIW, on an Intel i7 Q840 & dual ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870s, running in a 1280x1024 window, I'm seeing between 20 and 40 FPS, depending on where I'm looking on the map and how zoomed in I am.

I get 60FPS on the options screen

Edit: Forgot to mention that's with shadows and outlines turned off, pedestrians on, and AA off.

So it seems all video cards, Nvidia, AMD-ATI or Intel, low-, mid- or high-end are affected. And the more map is explored, the more the FPS drops. This leads me to believe it's an engine optimization problem. Let's just hope it gets fixed soon after release and that people won't bash the game for it.

EDIT: Disabling the Terrain Information Window will improve FPS when moving around the map, both 3D and cloth, as there's no need for the engine to read and display terrain information constantly. Since by now we all know how rivers, forests, swamps and roads affect movement, disabling this is a viable  idea.

I agree.  I mean even just using the cloth map i still only pull about 50fps....and to have to turn off options just to get this playable is not my first choice.  Alot of us should max this game and still have room to spare as far as fps goes....im gonna hope it gets corrected.  until then there is gw2 and torchlight 2

306.23 are the latest (including beta), and I have those already.

How much smoother is your experience?

I think i may have a decent suggestion for the dev team, and if this exists and i over looked it apologize.  I think we need a way to disable the water/ocean animations.  They are constantly in effect and are eating my fps!      Do you think you could in the future you can make it a check box to enable/disable ocean animations?

there are huge fps drops also when menus are open.  for example when choosing what to build on the town screen....fps goes down to about 25.

nah at start of game, i go down to 25ish fps......close the menu...back to about 45.  late game is horrible to, but so is the  start.  i like to zoom in and out, up and down, side to side with pure speed......it aint pretty right now

Ok.  I've figured it out.

It's the overlay.

Try this:

go to your main game directory

rename sdnxloverlay.dll to something else

then try the game.

To use crtl+x you need to have run the game with -cheat

It's -cheat. I ran the game with and without SDNXLOverlay.dll and when disabling the interface I get maybe one more FPS in low FPS areas, that is to say from 17 to 18. I use the same savegame from when I made this thread to compare results, it was .952 I think.

Maybe your solution will help others, like jgiombet who says he gets 25 FPS even when starting a new game. While my FPS drops from an initial 60 as I explore more of the map. It might be different problems.

You got it frog dood!!!!  renaming the .dll file completely solved my issue.  now everything is running at 60fps constant, w/ vsync forced on my system.  all town overlay menus are also not dropping my fps to nearly unplayable levels!!!  so i can confirm this works on main screens, town screens, cloth map.  considering i was at the start of the game pulling 43fps and opening up town screen goin down to about 25fps, right at the very start and now its completely fixed, well i gotta say im very happy.    so here is my setup now:

beginning of game, 1920X1080, 4x AA, outlines enabled, particles and most importantly ......PEEPS in the towns! --------> 60fps!   good work, its much appreciated!

who knows how they will be late game, but thats late game and is acceptable to me.....clearly this made a huge difference

Great investigating! Knowing the root cause is always so much better to address the symptoms. Best wishes on the best way to get it all fixed.

You guys are awesome.