lol...are you serious? do you know how many variable, traits, abilities, spells, movements and calculations the game does? same with all 4x games, some have less deep mechanics or less layers which have to be processed, but more often than not, every 4x game will bog down a bit.

AoW3 has also good visuals, what is your gpu? if your gamesettings were high from the start then try ultra, it seems to work better. also try classic turn based mode instead of simultanious.

making exceptions in your antivirus program is also a necessity!

i have core i5 4440 (4x 3.1 Ghz) and AoW3 runs on ultra settings like a charm for me!

I am absolutely, utterly serious. How many calculations does a turn based strategy do between turns, when waiting for player's input? Close to none, unless it has AI threads thinking in your time.

Let me put it differently - do you know Paradox games like Crusader Kings 2? It runs in real time, and it contains thousands of characters with various traits and histories, a database many orders of magnitude larger than this game, and yet it is less demanding on CPU.

I have faith that it will be improved.

How many cores is it running on? On mine, i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.4GHz, it only uses 20%. Borderlands uses about the same amount just sitting at the main menu, and the same amount actually in the game doing nothing.

The more 3D you render, the more CPU it will use. CPUs aren't just used for logic calculations, it's also used to determine what should be rendered every single frame, and then sends that data to the GPU to do the rendering. There is a lot of 3D in this game.

My specs:

AMD Phenom X4 970 (Deneb) CPU o/c @ 4.1 GHz (H50 Corsair Water Cooled)
8GB RAM
Windows 7 64-Bit Pro
XFX 7870 VC (slightly o/c)
Western Digital Black 1TB HD
Antec 300 Case with 4-120mm & 1-140mm fans.

My rig rips thru this game without any problems! The GPU tends to run a "tad" warm, but that's it. My rig isn't really "top-notch" anymore, but still holding it's own. I don't understand why some people are having problems with this game! Do I think the game replies heavily on the GPU, yes it does. But not that bad IMHO.

maybe he didn't add an exception for AoW3 to his antivirus / protection program or he has a huge amount of other background tools running....or his HDD hasn't been defragged in ages...or he has a problem with one driver. reasons could be many, but instead of just ranting, why not state your exact specs, driver versions and game settings (graphic settings).

also if you use simultanious turns then it has less fps than with the classic turn option because simultanious turns means everyone plays at the same time / turn. switching to classical turn-based mode is much more fluent and to be honest for me more relaxing. because sometimes it really depends on who clicks on the spot first which decides who goes first. especially against the AI, i find classic turn-based mode more relaxing than the standard version.

I'm running it on Ultra settings on a worse PC. It's absolutely fine for me.

I'm running the game on a dual core 1.7 AMD and a Radeon 7770, Win XP with max ram. Running on custom with most graphics features on and medium textures. Not 100% smooth at all times, but does not bother me when playing.

I do think the game is poorly optimized as I was able to play the new Starcraft more smoothly and it looked better too. Can't complain too much though as I am well below the minimum required processor. I can't see how the game would stress a decent processor unless it was doing all of the work for a really poor graphics card.

I much prefer the graphics of the prior games and so far the gameplay as well. But I'm sure I will get used to it. I'll never understand the attraction of resource hogging 3D engines that end up looking inferior to the beautiful 2D games that came before.

I explain it to you: 3d makes possible to view units and terrain at different angles and thus rotate and zoom the camera. Increases visual fireworks of the tactical combat when camera zooms in at the moving/fighting units. I have liked that ever since Battle Isle 3.

You should try 'not' running it on a 4k monitor ;D

I have to agree. For a game that, let's face it, isn't going to win any graphics of the year awards, this game performs pretty badly.

Same setup here with a GTX760 and while performance is ok its making my usually silent machine run very hot and noisy when I can run a modded up Skyrim without any problems.

no, you should not do this.
either your anti virus program is crap in which case you should get rid of it.
or it is good in which case you shouldn't need to make an exception. the only time you should ever make an exception in an anti virus is if you are absolutely certain it is identifying something as a false positive and need to run it.

hmm ok, i usually do it for game folders to improve performance. in terms of virus program i have avast (free).