Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition (4700)

[Grauiton]

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Total War: MEDIEVAL II – Definitive Edition
• Steam AppID of the game: 4700

System Information

• GPU: Intel Iris Xe
• Driver/LLVM version: Mesa 23.0.2
• Kernel version: 6.2.12
• Link to full system information report as Gist: https://gist.github.com/Grauiton/843099419fc3d56fec20efc92e3ca791
• Proton version: Experimental (as of 2023/04/26), 8.0-1

I confirm:

• that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-4700.log

Symptoms

Some units have textures that are either invisible or improperly rendered on the battle map.

Screenshots:

Reproduction

Start a quick battle or a custom battle with random units. Chances are you'll see at least one unit that is improperly rendered. It seems to happen more often with Western factions. You can also look specifically at the units in the screenshots.

It does not seem to be dependent on GPU because I heard that someone else had the same symptom with a recent Nvidia card.

Changing video settings doesn't fix this issue.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @Grauiton, please add PROTON_LOG=1 %command% to the game's launch options and attach the generated $HOME/steam-$APPID.log to this issue report as a file. (Proton logs compress well if needed.)

[Grauiton]

OK, done.

[Blisto91]

Thank you for the report. This seems to be a issue with Wine's builtin d3dx9_30.dll.

Normally when you install the game a DirectX installer will pop up and install the Windows native version of that dll, but i can see from your log that it is using the builtin one. If it didn't run the installer then that is a separate bug. Could you try verifying the game and see if it will let you install it if it didn't already?

Ideally the Wine dll's should work just as well as the Windows ones so i made a upstream Wine issue for that and it has already received a MR that should fix it. See https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/merge_requests/2725

[Grauiton]

That was fast! Awesome.

When I installed the game for the first time on my current machine and started it up, there was no DirectX installation dialog.

I tried verifying the game. There was no DirectX installation during or after verifying. I started the game after verifying and again there wasn't installation.

Really looking forward to the fix landing in Proton.

[Grauiton]

I can offer a reason why the DX installer didn't run.

The game doesn't use Steamworks Common Redistributables. Instead, the game itself includes a dxsetup.exe installer inside of the dxsetup folder. I guess that normally on Windows this dxsetup.exe gets executed using an install script. But, as the Steamworks documentation states, "There is no Linux/SteamOS install script functionality at this time." And so, the installer doesn't get executed on Linux.

[Blisto91]

It does get installed for me so it should work. I have encountered issues on Experimental before where a game would run it's first time setup, but not on stable Proton versions.

[kisak-valve]

Medieval II: Total War (won't start)

Issue transferred from #9332.
@PillagingProgrammer posted on 2025-12-24T14:06:11:

Compatibility Report

• Name of the game with compatibility issues: Medieval II: Total War - Definitive Edition
• Steam AppID of the game: 4700

System Information

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT

- Video driver version: (I hope this is what you need)

   - Device-1: AMD vendor: ASRock driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: gen: 5
    speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: DP-3,HDMI-A-1
    empty: DP-1,DP-2,Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:7550
    class-ID: 0300
   - Device-2: AMD Raphael vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel
    arch: RDNA-2 code: Navi-2x process: TSMC n7 (7nm) built: 2020-22 pcie:
    gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16 ports: active: none
    empty: DP-4,HDMI-A-2,Writeback-2 bus-ID: 0e:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:164e
    class-ID: 0300 temp: 35.0 C
   - Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.2
    driver: gpu: amdgpu display-ID: 1
   - Monitor-1: DP-3 model: Acer XV272U V3 serial: 1322131231233 built: 2025
    res: 2560x1440 dpi: 109 gamma: 1.2 size: 597x336mm (23.5x13.23")
    diag: 685mm (27") ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 2560x1440 min: 720x400
   - Monitor-2: HDMI-A-1 model: HP S2031 serial: 3CQ145PR06 built: 2011
    res: 1600x900 dpi: 92 gamma: 1.2 size: 443x249mm (17.44x9.8")
    diag: 508mm (20") ratio: 16:9 modes: max: 1600x900 min: 720x400
   - API: EGL v: 1.5 hw: drv: amd radeonsi platforms: device: 0 drv: radeonsi
    device: 1 drv: radeonsi device: 2 drv: swrast gbm: drv: kms_swrast
    surfaceless: drv: radeonsi wayland: drv: radeonsi x11: drv: radeonsi
   - API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa
    v: 25.1.5-1pop0~1753463422~24.04~8af185e glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes
    renderer: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT (radeonsi gfx1201 ACO DRM 3.64
    6.17.9-76061709-generic) device-ID: 1002:7550 memory: 15.62 GiB
    unified: no
   - API: Vulkan v: 1.3.280 layers: 7 device: 0 type: discrete-gpu name: AMD
    Radeon RX 9070 XT (RADV GFX1201) driver: N/A device-ID: 1002:7550
    surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland device: 1 type: integrated-gpu name: AMD
    Radeon Graphics (RADV RAPHAEL_MENDOCINO) driver: N/A device-ID: 1002:164e
    surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland device: 2 type: cpu name: llvmpipe (LLVM
    19.1.1 256 bits) driver: N/A device-ID: 10005:0000
    surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland

• Kernel version: 6.17.9-76061709-generic
• Link to full system information report as Gist:
  • System Information: https://gist.github.com/PillagingProgrammer/4c72642fb1e63489f103cbdd8437eaf3
  • Steam Runtime Diagnostics: https://gist.github.com/PillagingProgrammer/8e9bcab7c7b0ba696a44207872db8d76
• Proton version: Attempted Proton 7.0, 8.0, 9.0 and 10.0

I confirm:

• that I haven't found an existing compatibility report for this game.
• that I have checked whether there are updates for my system available.

steam-4700.log is completely empty.

Symptoms

Game won't start. If I try with Proton 10.0 and 9.0, I get the pop-up An error occured while launching the game: Disk write error - /media/<username>/X10 Pro/SteamLibrary/steamapps/downloading/3658110/files/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdav1d.so (where <username> is my username) and the game never starts.

8.0 and 7.0 will just crash (nothing pops ups and the game never starts).

---

@PillagingProgrammer commented on 2025-12-24T14:27:47:

FYI if I set Compatibility to Legacy runtime 1.0 and update the Medieval2.sh file with the following, it will start (including the Kingdoms expansions). It will all run just fine.

However, I want to try to get Medieval 2 working with Protons as I believe it's the only proper way to get mods working.

[kisak-valve]

Hello @PillagingProgrammer, appid 3658110 would be Proton 10, and that's a filesystem error with Steam trying to stage the Proton files while downloading it. We've seen that kind of snafu before with secondary Steam library folders on non-Linux native filesystems.

[PillagingProgrammer]

@kisak-valve I also found Steam Linux Runtime 1.0 (scout) works as well. Tried some older Proton versions and they had the same results as 8.0 and 7.0.

In regards to the libdav1d.so issue for 10.0 and 9.0: I found this post on the Linux Mint forum. Indeed the X10 Pro I have is an External SSD that is exFAT formatted... so I think this may be the main issue: Proton being hosted on an exFAT drive!

So I moved my installation of M2:TW to my PC (~/Games/Steam/steamapps/common in this case), and even deleted the Proton folders from /media/<username>/X10 Pro/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common. I even moved the Proton folders to ~/Games/Steam/steamapps/common.

However,when I select a Proton version for Compatibility, even though M2:TW is on my PC, it will install to /media/<username>/X10 Pro/SteamLibrary/steamapps/common! And when I try to launch with 10.0 and 9.0 with M2:TW on my main PC hosting my Linux Distro: An error occured while launching the game: Disk write error - /media/<username>/X10 Pro/SteamLibrary/steamapps/downloading/3658110/files/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdav1d.so

How do I change the download location for Proton? I think if Proton is in ~/Games/Steam/steamapps/common then Proton could work.