AoE III Definitive Edition: Fix Low FPS, Stutter and Lags

In this guide, we’ll show you how to fix low FPS, stutter and lags in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition.

 

If you are struggling to run AoE III: Definitive Edition on your laptop then this guide will help you to optimize your PC.

 

The first one is the game mode, please turn off this mode because it’s causing stuttering like losing FPS also in a lot games not just like Age of Empire.

 

Next, make sure that Xbox game bar is off and also background recording and the recorded audio is off.

 

Also make sure that you’re not using any overly like the discord overlay and video overlay because you’ll lose FPS and you’ll probably get some stuttering if you have a low level computer.

 

Next, open up the graphic settings (Windows 10 Ver. 2004).

 

Make sure that you turn on the Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling and also you have the latest driver for your video card.

 

If you have an entry level PC then you’ll see an improvement here but if you have a high end PC then you won’t see a difference.

 

It is important that you have your latest driver for Nvidia, AMD and even Intel if you have an integrated GPU.

 

Now, we’ll go inside of the game and optimize parameter. So let’s open the AOEIII DE tree.

 

In the game click option. For the Windowed Mode make sure that you’re playing full screen and the result match with your monitor resolution.

 

Super sampling - you can’t down scale this game so make sure that you set it at 100%

 

Particle quality - if you have a low end CPU this will help you a lot. So go with low. If you have a mid range PC like i5 i7 you can easily play at normal you’ll not see a difference in your FPS.

 

Tracer effects, dynamic lights and cloud - just uncheck. Here, you’ll get 7% FPS boost.

 

Bloom effect - uncheck. This also gives you another 2% boost.

 

SSAO – uncheck. This will get you another 3% in your FPS.

 

After that the first thing that you should do it’s definitely the Shadows. You need to turn this off. You really don’t need shadows and those type of games and it will give you a lot of FPS.

 

Foliage - set this on low to get some FPS boost.

 

Shaders - medium            

 

Water - Low

 

Textures - if you have 3GB of ram or more go with high 2GB medium and less than 2GB go with low.

 

For the Graphic parameter inside of the game you’ll have to open the config file. To find your config file you have to go in your C drive - users - the name of your computer - games - Age of Empires 3 DE - common, here you’ll find a file called GraphicalProfile. Right click on it you can open it with notepad. There you see all the parameter that you have already changed in your game plus more.

 

So the first one that you really need to change is the “optiongrfxparticleenvironeffects” put here false.

 

Next shadows make sure that it’s at false.

 

Water reflection - set this one at false.

 

With these settings you should definitely run this game at 60 FPS and this is pretty much last resort. If you change everything in the game and you’re still lagging then definitely test this so after that click X to save. Make sure that you lock the file because probably when you will open the game you don’t have those options inside of the game so they will probably override your file. So right click on it go to properties make sure that you put the file in read only. Click apply click ok and you should be fine.