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Hearts of Iron IV > Guides > sumbris's Guides
42 ratings
How to enjoy this game on a toaster
By sumbris
Have you made the choice to buy Hearts of Iron IV without checking if your machine can run it? No? Then you probably won't need this guide, but on the chance that you did and can no longer refund the game, this guide will help you get a playable experience from HOI4.
   
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Created by
sumbris
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Category: Gameplay Basics, Modding or Configuration, Walkthroughs
Languages: English
Posted
6 Dec, 2021 @ 5:54pm
2,990 Unique Visitors
43 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
Pre-Launch steps 
In game steps. 
Comments
Pre-Launch steps
1. Go into the Documents Hearts of Iron IV folder (usually found here: C:\Users\User\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Hearts of Iron IV).
2. Open the settings.txt file.
3. Find the line that says draw_water= and make sure it says no. MAKE SURE TO HAVE draw_terrain set to yes, because if it is set to no, you will have a black map with nothing to see.
4. Save the file, close it and open the launcher.
5. Launch the game.
In game steps.
1. Go and start a new game as a test. Let it run for a few seconds to see if anything has changed. Chances are, there is not much improvement.
2. Open the menu and click on options, go to the video tab.
3. Change the settings to this:
Mode: Fullscreen
Rsolution: as low as possible, I have a 16:9 ratio and use 1280*720. You might be able to go and tinker with the resolution in the settings.txt file, but I haven't tested that.
Refresh rate: as low as it will go
Multisample level: 0!!!!!!!! - This ♥♥♥♥ causes severe lag if set not on 0 if you have ♥♥♥♥ graphics.
Gamma: doesn't matter, just brightness and how much you want to damage your eyes.
Texture quality: Low
UI scaling: don't touch before you have relaunched the game with a lower resolution. Once you know how the UI looks with your new resolution, you can lower this and test. I use 0.7x.
Checkboxes: Everything unchecked except for rivers. Rivers are usually the only thing that matter and you don't need to see 3d cities or trees as the provinces are different from plains in 2d already. Personally I enable Full rendering resolution because I don't like the grainy feel it gives when disabled, but if it lags disable it.
4. Relaunch the game and start a new game.
5. Enjoy a marginally better experience and reconsider your life choices.
12 Comments
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Darthyboi 20 Dec, 2021 @ 11:47am 
excellent advice
Daytona 20 Dec, 2021 @ 5:02am 
Just use Reduce lag mod, this won't do much.
Wideworld 19 Dec, 2021 @ 3:23pm 
People enjoy this game?
BiccyThiccy 19 Dec, 2021 @ 2:34pm 
Why would you want to intentionally lower your games refresh rate? There's literally zero reason to
sumbris  [author] 16 Dec, 2021 @ 12:55pm 
@A blue mage, If you try it with these settings it will not look as good as the HD screenshots of the game. However, you should still be able to pull off some epic reddit worthy encirclements to farm that poggers karma! Mostly cpu dependent on how fast the game can run though.
SiB | Danta7638 15 Dec, 2021 @ 9:00pm 
How does the game look though? I'm too scared to try myself.
Seoul 14 Dec, 2021 @ 3:22pm 
Grab division limiter mods as well as most of the lag comes from nations spamming divisions out.
BerkeRise 13 Dec, 2021 @ 1:13pm 
4gb Ram and Intel core i3. I have 1k hours into this without this guide... I need to reconsider my life choices...
sumbris  [author] 13 Dec, 2021 @ 12:15pm 
@Brian Johnson gaming, your issue is likely with the processor as 我是英国人 already said. You can't do much in that regard with vanilla settings. Only thing that you can do is to artificially reduce the amounts of decisions the AI has to calculate each hour or day. Lower amounts of divisions, removing irrelevant countries and less research slots for minor countries are some of the things that come to mind if you want to reduce lag. There are mods you can find on the workshop for this.
Thomas1753 13 Dec, 2021 @ 8:17am 
The main bottleneck for this game is the shitty 20 year old engine with it's garbage optimisation and terrible multi-core support. There isn't much we can do sadly :(