Hey all,

Been trying to play the base game in campaign mode.

Problem, as many have recorded, is that it stutters like hell and becomes unplayable. I've opened a support ticket with GOG, as I'm pretty disappointed. I hear this is a non-issue with the expansion (trying it out tonight), but I want to play the original campaigns, etc.

I have tried the 98/ME compatibility workaround, and this sorts out most of the gameplay stutter to the point where it plays very well. However, this has another issue with it and that is the sound -- I get sound stutter that often gets progressively worse as a game goes on.

I was wondering if anyone else has had this issue and if they have any ideas on how to remedy it?

I have the disc version and not the gog but I'll try to help if I can:)

First, lower the graphics to the lowest setting, as that might be the easiest solution.

What operating system do you have? Is it Mac, Windows XP, 7, etc

If your running 98, (and that's why you need the workaround) it might be time to get a new pc.

Anyway, have you tried running it in compatibility mode?

If you don't know how to do this (and are running 7) you right click on the shortcut, click on properties, then go to the compatibility tab, check the box that says "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" than try Windows XP (Service Pack 3), then you check the box at the bottom that says, Run this program as an administrator.

If that doesn't work, you can try other settings, e.g. Vista, 98, etc.

You can even try just running as an administrator with no compatibility settings and see if that does it.

If that doesn't do it, try uninstalling it, re-downloading it, then install it on your root directory, i.e. C:\Star Wars Empire at War Gold

If all of these don't work let me know

Same here. Running the game in win98 compat mode cured the horrible slow down, but introduced insane sound stutter. Here's what I did:

1) Set compat mode win98.

2) Open task manager.

3) Launch the game by any means other than the galaxy launcher.

4) As soon as the game boots imediately alt+tab out.

5) Go to task manager, details tab, find sweaw.exe, right click and set affinity to anything other than single core.

Doing it this way solved almost all issues for me. Keep in mind you'll have to do this affinity trick every time you are going to play. Looks like win98 compat mode defaults to single core. I tried every other compat mode newer than win98, they all lagged badly and took several minutes to load and unload. Oh I also added the disney patch...didn't seem to have any effect. Good luck.