Scotty I need more power!

[Alarik]

I am trying to play on a Sony Viao laptop with a Pentium III and I didn't figure I would have any problems but am finding it too slow to realistically play. ( It takes almost a minute to move the map even one click) The battles completely freeze me out. I did download the patch. I saw you guys talking about drivers and dx9. Not sure if DX 9 is on my computer yet unless it comes with the game. I'm assuming I really could use some new drivers but want to make sure I get the right one as I don't want to have any big problems with a computer I use for other things. Wish I was more tech savvy about these kinds of things and could really use some help. Thank you in advance to any good samaritans I may find on this internet highway.

[Norfleet]

Your computer is simply inadequate for the task of playing Dominions II at normal graphics levels, in all likelyhood. Laptop graphics capabilities are notoriously awful, and I've heard particularly scathing remarks about Sony VAIOs. If you want it to run, try modifying your shortcut to dom2 -x. That will reduce the level of fanciness in your graphics to a level which probably won't make the computer chug. Maybe.

Note that not having enough RAMs, in conjunction with a large map like World, will undoubtedly exacerbate the problem.

[tinkthank]

I know nothing about computers, but I play on a Clevo (no-name) Pentium III with somethink like 1Ghz (?) and 512 RAM and a 64MB something-graphics (starts with an A?) card, Windows 98 SE and notice no problems whatsoever. On Windows 2000 (otherwise: Same setup) it sucks all my resources and I find it hard to play at all. Try maybe Win 98? Sorry if this is stupid, I can only see the surface of computer problems.

[Chazar]

I'm running it on my Laptop, a Fujitsu-Siemens with not-uptodate ATI Radeon Mobility Graphic.

First it was awfully slow (Battle Frame count was around 2 with even the lowest quality setting, unbearable), both under Linux and WinXP, but those Omega-drivers recommended in that sticky thread really worked: Now I've set quality to the highest value and the frame count is still around 90...

This sounds incredible, but I guess that this is due to the very bad OpenGL support in most (Laptop-)Graphics drivers (eg. ATI in my case, which officially doesnt support the mobility chips).

So try different (third-party) drivers like those Omega-Drivers. Maybe just trying the game with one of those up-to-date Linuxes-from-bootable-CD (Knoppix, etc.) might also be worth a quick try...

[Alarik]

Thanks to all. I know there is a solution because it runs some (graphically) fairly comparible games like Shogun: Total War really well. I'm on windows 98...I personally think it's a driver issue. Can anyone recommend some good third party drivers that are compatible with the standard Viao Graphics card? I love computer games but on some of these tech issues I'm way out of my depth.

[NTJedi]

Use MSCONFIG to clean out the startup group... and disable any anti-virus services.

See if that improves performance.