Stuck or Frozen on Battle loading screen - TheOldRealms/TOW_Core GitHub Wiki

The first time a user loads assets takes a long time and may appear frozen, this is expected.

The reason this happens is that the game recompiles shader files in the background which is particularly slow. This is done on the engine level beyond the modder’s reach. You can track its progress observing the logs.

Shader recompilation happens once for every 3D asset/material in any mod when it is loaded for battle the very first time. Shader recompilation is also re-triggered every time Bannerlord updates through Steam, no matter how small the patch is. This affects all mods that add lots of assets to your game, not just us. We urge TaleWorlds to allocate some of their resources to optimize their shader compilation routines so this process may be accelerated, as it is a bad user experience.

To have a smoother experience it is recommended that the first thing you do is launch a custom battle that contains every unit from the mod activated and participating, launch the battle and wait for 90-120 minutes while it loads. The amount of time it takes is dependent on the power of your PC. It is not ideal but given our current limitations it is our best current solution. This way you only have to endure this process once, then the game will load fast after that.