After furiously checking if your PC can run Age of Empires 4, your research will definitely show that there are two components that you should invest in: the CPU and the RAM.
What if your PC setup is already in place and there’s just no room for you to upgrade for now? What if you don’t have the budget to buy a new CPU or a higher RAM?
One of the best ways to ensure that your build is still efficient, even in the face of a game that consumes a lot of RAM, is to allocate more RAM towards the game. Allocating RAM obviously doesn’t mean you can magically increase the capacity of your RAM. Rather, it’s almost like “tricking” your RAM into apportioning most of its memory to your chosen game.
There are a lot of ways to do this and you don’t need to do any hardware upgrading to do it which is why a lot of players also like to do RAM allocating techniques.
This article will give you the exact step-by-step know-how of how to allocate more RAM to Age of Empires 4.
Disable the Steam Overlay
Age of Empires 4 could be played on a number of video game platforms but the biggest and most popular one is Steam.
Apart from the thousands of games on Steam, one of the reasons why it’s a player favorite is because of its user interface. It’s easy to learn, navigate, and it has the Steam Overlay.
The Steam Overlay allows access to the friend’s list, a web browser, chat, and in-game purchasing, all while you’re in-game. As you can imagine, the game can lag if your system isn’t up to multitasking.
Removing the Steam Overlay will definitely lighten the load for your computer.
To do this, open your Steam window. At the upper left corner is the “Steam” drop-down menu. When you click that, at the bottom part of the menu, you will see “Settings”. A new window will appear and you will have to navigate the “In-Game” tab which can be found on the left side. Uncheck the box for “Enable the Steam Overlay while in-game” and then click “Ok”.
Close All Background Apps Including Discord
If you still aren’t aware of how RAM works, it is basically ultra-fast storage. Except, instead of storing files, the RAM is only used for apps that are running.
The same concept of filling up a hard drive applies to RAM. The more apps you run, the more the RAM space will be used. The more space is used, the slower the loading time of your PC will be.
Oftentimes, gamers will unconsciously run a game without checking if they also have other apps opened. In some cases, gamers purposely leave certain apps open because it helps them in-game. Applications such as Discord or TeamSpeak are popular among gamers and are used while playing to communicate with their friends or to check out game tips.
Close all unnecessary background applications prior to playing Age of Empires 4. Instead of simply closing them, go to the Task Manager, right-click the app, and click End Task. This way, you can be absolutely sure that the background app has closed.
Prioritize the Game Through the Task Manager
The Task Manager is the most effective way to see the processes and programs of your computer. It is also the best way to close an application that is not responding. Even non-savvy PC users know this.
However, did you know that the Task Manager also has the ability to re-allocate the processes of your computer?
Like we said before, you don’t necessarily have to buy new hardware and increase your RAM to run your programs better. You can just “trick” your computer into prioritizing certain applications or, in this case, games.
To allocate more RAM to Age of Empires 4 via the Task Manager, you can press ctrl + shift + esc. A window will appear and it will automatically go to the “Processes” tab. You have to navigate the “Details” tab and look for the game. Right-click on the game, click “Set Priority” and then click “High”.
It would be best if you restart your PC before playing again.
Run Steam as Administrator
Do you share your computer with someone, perhaps? Or are you playing on a family computer with different accounts? You might find that there are certain things you cannot do unless you’re on the administrator account.
If you aren’t on an admin account, you won’t be able to download, make security changes, and of course, you won’t be able to run your apps as an administrator.
Running an application as an administrator is basically the same thing as having an admin account. Once you run something as an admin, the application will have special access to processes that are otherwise restricted.
Whenever you play Age of Empires 4 on Steam, always run Steam as an admin. Also, instead of manually doing it literally every time you open Steam, it’s best to just set it from the get-go.
All you have to do is to right-click the Steam icon and then go to the “Properties” option, which is at the very bottom. There are six tabs and you have to navigate to the “Compatibility” tab. At the bottom of that window are a couple of checkboxes and the second to the last check box is the “Run this program as an administrator”. Simply check that box and apply changes.
Summary
One great thing about games that are tied to specific video gaming platforms like Age of Empires 4 is that when there are issues, it’s quite easy to do some troubleshooting techniques. The same goes for allocating more RAM to Age of Empires 4 so you can build the best AoE4 civilization without interruptions.
