diff --git a/apps/openmw/CMakeLists.txt b/apps/openmw/CMakeLists.txt
index 8570d9df60..22956bf00f 100644
--- a/apps/openmw/CMakeLists.txt
+++ b/apps/openmw/CMakeLists.txt
@@ -123,6 +123,19 @@ add_library(openmw-lib STATIC
     ${OPENMW_SOURCES}
 )
 
+if (MSVC)
+    # these TUs take a lot of memory for codegen
+    # in CI, they often go over the 8GB memory limit if another cl.exe is running at the same time
+    # this option (make sure you're not looking at the docs for the identically-named linker option) stops four codegen threads being spun off
+    # it hurts build time ~33% to enable this unnecessarily, though, so target it to the hungriest boys
+    set_source_files_properties(
+        options.cpp
+        mwlua/stats.cpp
+        PROPERTIES
+        COMPILE_OPTIONS /cgthreads1
+    )
+endif()
+
 if(BUILD_OPENMW)
     if (ANDROID)
         add_library(openmw SHARED