When you get more than 60 frames per seconds melee damage is buffed, animations get cancelled, AI at over 100 frames does no longer makes manaliths and without manalith it's useless. This just puts game on another level... For speedrunning as melee damage is good manaliths killed. Lack of mana for enemy wizards is easy mode to kill them as they won't be fighting much back. AI not making liths sometimes will make it stay in base defenceless and skipped animations for casting will allow to summon army more efficiently, as you will able to go for w larger distance than you would go normally where the root effect lasts longer.

Can fps be capped?

Thank you for this detailed reply. That is definitely the problem and I would never have figured it out by myself. Now I need to figure out how to fix my framerate to below 60. Hopefully I can force it within the graphics driver.

EDIT: For posterity I would like to report that capping the framerate at 60 fps worked for me and the enemies are back to their normal level of aggressiveness. In the final mission (minor spoiler) Marduk keeps whooping my ass with constant attacks , summoning high end creatures and casting huge spells. This is the game as it was meant to be played.

Unfortunately it was harder than I expected to actually cap the framerate. My NVidia driver has a setting in the 3D control panel to limit framerate but I couldn't get it to work for sacrifice. In the end I switched to an old 60 Hz monitor and enabled Vsync to force the framerate to be 60 fps. This worked great but I would love to find a software solution.

I personally use dgvoodoo. MSI Afterburner also has such functionality. Your monitor probably is more than 60 FPS and the old one is 60. You can set the mode that monitor works at like 60 Hz in advanced resolution settings. You can probably also make custom resolution in Nvidia control panel that would force 60 FPS. All you would have is to remember to switch those everytime you play sacrifice and stop playing it. I use dgvoodoo as it caps framerate(refresh rate) for Sacrifice while outside sacrifice I have 144 Hz on. I seen that you posted on steam too. You should join discord and ask there because neither here or on steam people look to help people.

Yes I posted on Steam and also on PCGaming wiki because I really love this game and it pains me to think that many people will not experience it properly because of the framerate issue. I gave you credit on PCgaming wiki I hope you don't mind. I managed to get it working on my 144Hz monitor by setting the desktop to a 60 fps mode. To do this I went into (windows 10 Advanced Display settings - Display Adaptor ~Properties - List all modes - selecting a 60Hz mode. When I run sacrifice it seems to pick up this desktop frame rate rather than the framerate cap set in my Nvidia display driver.

I must be the last gamer on the planet who isn't using discord. Probably need to check it out.

Well, it's well known issue and we as community of the game strongly recommend people to cap their FPS at 60 before coming into multiplayer as playing above that value is considered cheating. Fixing issue by setting desktop resolution is just like temporary fix as other games will display only 60 frames per second and it's not a reason to have 144 FPS monitor. Like you have to do it before and after playing Sacrifice. Dgvoodoo can do this for any game when set up correctly. Once game is off monitor works as 144 Hz monitor. No input from player is needed.

[edit]
I finally read the sticky thread, got on discord and learned that yes- there is still a community, and that patch3 is applied. Thanks to mbp & ViperDarkstorm for getting me started.

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I realize this thread is a little stale. @mbp: Are you familiar with Patch 3 from back in the day? If so, would you say Patch 3 has been applied to the GOG version?

I have the original CD, and it runs on my integrated graphics under Wine (Linux, Fedora 33). But the AI was also less aggressive prior to Patch 3 (although not to the extent you described) and the game is less enjoyable. sacrificepatch3.exe just gives an error message (something about DirectX maybe!) on this setup. Dunno if it is even possible to trick the patch into running - I certainly don't have the knowledge or skill. @ViperDarkstorm: I did a doubletake and then a tripletake when I read that. Is there actually a community who still plays this game online? IP games arranged on Discord or something?

Sacrifice was the only game I really got into. I confess I've never been on Discord myself, and of course I don't really have a working setup. But wow, what a blast from the past it would be to have the regulars kick my tail one more time. :) Might be worth the effort.

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[edit] This is all trivia unrelated to the GOG version of sac on Win10.

My memory on patch3 was really bad. sacrificepatch3.exe references DX8, not DX4, and it is a warning, not an error. The program does run, with what I'll just describe as what look like typical Wiine warnings and errors on the console. Afterwards the game has no text on most of the buttons. If I try to start a game anyway I get a dialog
Program Exiting: Error processing chunk 'char' of type 'TEXT'
I'll have to reinstall sac if I want to play again.