Ideas

LuK_Twitch's avatar
LuK_Twitch
Rising Spectator
13 days ago
Status:
Needs Info

Severe lag after 1 hour of gameplay : requires restart

Hi,

I'm experiencing a major performance issue that seems to affect a lot of players (I asked my community and many confirmed having the same problem).

When I first launch the game, everything runs smoothly. Menus like Needs, Inventory, and Aspirations open instantly. Build/Buy mode is fine too, with maybe a tiny freeze the first time, but that’s normal.

The issue is: the longer I play, the worse the game performs.

- After around 30 minutes, the menus start to feel a bit slower.
- After about an hour, the game becomes extremely laggy:
  - Opening the Needs panel takes a few seconds.
  - Build/Buy mode freezes for 5–6 seconds before opening.
  - The Eyedropper tool has a delay of around 2 seconds.
  - UI and general interactions become very sluggish.

The only fix is to completely restart the game. After relaunching, everything is smooth again — but only temporarily. After another 30–60 minutes, the problem comes back.

This isn’t a hardware issue. My PC setup:
- Intel Core i9-12900K
- 64 GB DDR5 RAM
- NVIDIA RTX 4090
- Game installed on SSD
- No mods, no CC
- All expansion packs installed

I also tend to play fast-paced, usually on speed 3. In one hour of real-time gameplay, I can go through 10–14 Sim days. It seems like the game is slowly filling up memory or cache that never clears unless I restart.

It would be great to know if this has already been reported or tracked by the dev team, because it makes long play sessions really frustrating.

Thanks!

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