Load Saved game mechanics oddity

So, you get to the end of your turn, moving whichever units you want, the rest being Do Nothing, Alert, or Fortify. You Save game and Quit to Windows. Or likewise, the Autosave occurs as the last thing to happen that turn.

Then you Load game to take you to that point where you quit. At least that's what you _think_ you are doing. In actuality, if you were to, for instance Load your end-of-turn Save or the Autosave for Turn 100, the program picks up at that point and then **immediately**, before you as the player can do ANYTHING, plays through the AI's between-turns cycle and you _finally_ get control at the beginning of Turn 101.

I don't know about you, but if I want to pick up where _I_ left off, I want the game to resume IN THAT TURN; not the next one. Every other game I've played operates that way. Why does Civ do it differently?

[Note: If you Saved and Quit while there were still units that were active and still had remaining movement points, then you _will_ resume IN that turn. But if you had Saved at the very end, then.... ^^^]

If you save before clicking Next turn, when you Load you'll be at the same point. The game won't automatically skip to next turn.

Autosave, however, saves the game on the start of your next turn, not the end of your turn. So even though it says turn 100 autosave, it's actually the start of turn 101.

VisageTDI said:

If you save before clicking Next turn, when you Load you'll be at the same point. The game won't automatically skip to next turn.

Autosave, however, saves the game on the start of your next turn, not the end of your turn. So even though it says turn 100 autosave, it's actually the start of turn 101.

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That hasn't been my experience. I don't Save and then click End Turn. That would cause the AI to start processing it's turn, and Quitting while the AI is processing is NOT a Good Thing. I finish my movements, Save, and then Quit To Windows. But when I Load that particular Save, once Loaded (and you get the Load panel showing your civ's historical background), once I click on the "Continue your journey" button, the AI _immediately_ starts to do its turn. I don't get control of my units again until the turn AFTER the turn in which I Saved.

I find it annoying because when I resume a game, I like to look at my cities to see if there had been any tweaks I had overlooked. If there were any, the AI jumping ahead just cost me a turn of useful tweaks.

I've often saved before hitting Next Turn button and it never auto-started next turn when I loaded the game. If you're experiencing this behaviour, either save before moving your last unit or on the start of your next turn.

This simply doesn't happen, so I am not sure how it is happening to you. What you are describing is the auto save feature...it actually saves at the end of each turn so when you load (30) you are actually at 31.

Regular saves don't do this.

Another thing to check. Make sure you don't have the "auto-end turns" feature enabled. That may cause something like this as you would load with nothing left to do and it would auto end the turn.

Yzman said:

This simply doesn't happen, so I am not sure how it is happening to you. What you are describing is the auto save feature...it actually saves at the end of each turn so when you load (30) you are actually at 31.

Regular saves don't do this.

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Seconded. Like the OP, I routinely save at the very end of a turn, before clicking "Next Turn", and when I load, the game resumes at the exact same point. I've never experienced this auto-forwarding to the next turn.

Yzman said:

Another thing to check. Make sure you don't have the "auto-end turns" feature enabled. That may cause something like this as you would load with nothing left to do and it would auto end the turn.

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Ooh, this. That's probably the simplest explanation.

Yzman said:

Another thing to check. Make sure you don't have the "auto-end turns" feature enabled.

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I _never_ use auto-end on any of my turn-based games. I don't want the game to move on until _I_ say it's okay to do so.

But _why_ would an autosave at turn's end auto-forward when that turn number is Loaded? If I Load Turn 100, by god, I want to get back into Turn 100! -- not Turn 101. Why make me Load Turn 99, forcing to repeat ALL of my actions of Turn 100 just so I can then add some action tweaks? The auto-forward of an autosave Load seems out of pattern for the Save and Load features. Loading a Save should ALWAYS take you right back to where you were -- _before_ you pressed the End Turn button.

CaptainPatch said:

I _never_ use auto-end on any of my turn-based games. I don't want the game to move on until _I_ say it's okay to do so.

But _why_ would an autosave at turn's end auto-forward when that turn number is Loaded? If I Load Turn 100, by god, I want to get back into Turn 100! -- not Turn 101. Why make me Load Turn 99, forcing to repeat ALL of my actions of Turn 100 just so I can then add some action tweaks? The auto-forward of an autosave Load seems out of pattern for the Save and Load features. Loading a Save should ALWAYS take you right back to where you were -- _before_ you pressed the End Turn button.

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Like we said, the AUTO save saves at that point, at the end of the turn. Its a bit silly but just know that it really is the turn after so load one prior to that.

REGULAR SAVES do not do this. Just use the regular save function. It seems like every topic of yours is a complaint of some feature you don't understand. Just save normally and you won't have an issue. This is how 99% of the people likely play and have no problems.

I remain confused about what the OP thinks the problem is. Perhaps confusion results from not recognizing that a game "turn" does not end until the AI, CSs and barb have made their moves on that turn.

If you do a manual save after making your moves on a given turn (say, turn 167) but before you click Next Turn, the save (which will be labeled as a turn 167 save), when loaded, will resume at that precise point in turn 167 -- you can click Next Turn, or you can revisit choices you made before you saved and then click Next Turn. Once you click Next Turn, the AI, CSs and barbs will complete their moves on turn 167 and then the turn counter will click over to turn 168 and the human player can proceed which his next turn.

If you do a manual save after clicking Next Turn while the AI, CS and barb moves are being made, your save will still be labeled turn 167 but the precise timing of the save will depend on how quickly you click the save. If you load the attached file (a throw-away Industrial era start I played for enough turns to make sure the AI and CS turns would last long enough for me to click save), you will, when the game loads, see the bottom of screen notifications about CS and barb turns being completed before the turn counter flips over and the human player can play its next turn.

Finally, as others have noted, autosaves are created at the end of the game turn (after the human player, AI, CSs and barbs have made their moves on that turn) and are labeled that turn. When the autosave is loaded, the game immediately flips over to the next turn, which I agree is needlessly confusing, but once you realize that's what's happening, you can adjust.