Starting the game getting real slow

I have been having problems in the last couple of months just starting the game from Steam. It goes into the 2K launcher stuff and just freezes if there are any Steam updates waiting. So I restart and even when it works, it typically takes about 15 minutes to get to the game I was continuing. It never used to take this long ( I have 2000+ hours on this game so have plenty of historic times to compare).
Anyone else seeing this happening or is my hardware just getting old.

 

You can try to simply avoid the 2k launcher to start the game directly. If you right click on Civ 6 in steam and go to properties you can set -"F:\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Base\Binaries\Win64Steam\CivilizationVI" %command%- as start option (without the - and ofc you need to put in the correct path to your civ files).

 

This.

 

Latest game, froze at about turn 300 ( globe lower right stops turning ). Restarted, played few more turns, froze again. Then again. So finally bit the bullet and implemented the fix to bypass the 2K Launcher as described by Buktu in this thread. It is a bit tricky because you have to alter the path to what it is on your own machine. (e.g. on mine the path was under Program Files (x86) / ...... ) You can take a look under File Explorer to find where your exe file is. And the path goes red in parts when I was typing it in but just ignored this. When you get it right, it works.

And it worked great ! Immediately noticed that the start-up music which had been stuttering and stalling for months now plays smoothly without interruption. Completed the game on turn 397 without any further problems.

I have to conclude that the 2K Launcher definitely interferes with game play and causes problems. Bypass it.