I read in a couple of places that people reported that BTS runs smoother than either Warlords or Vanilla. Is this true? My laptop can play Vanilla ok, but really struggles (overheats) with Warlords.

W

It runs much smoother.

Not sure if your overheating problem will be fixed however.

While Vanilla and Warlords always do every python check (except in speed mod), most of which are unnecessary, BtS determines beforehand which checks are actually needed and ignores the rest. Most of the waiting time was caused by superfluous python checks, so it theoretically should be much smoother and easier on the hardware than Vanilla was.

In my experience this is BS. Running far LESS smooth than Warlords for me

Yup, runs a lot smoother and they've made the unit movement a lot nicer as well... Or not, I'm not really sure I like my soldiers scurrying around like insects whenever I give them an order to move...

Definitely runs smoother for me, but if Warlords slowed down your computer, your late games will still probably get pretty slow in BTS...

The slowdown on my lowerend laptop is less severe, but still occurs by the modern age.

BTS runs much slower for me (P4 3.0Ghz, 2G mem, 256K video) compared to Warlords with ViSa 3.1 modpack. Even the earlier turns.