6K Man's guide to Reloading

Sounds fair, and where do you draw the line with reloading (In other words, what level do you stop at?)

Thebes is Judaism holy city
Thebes has Stonehenge and 2 Priests from Obelisk... later Great Wall & Oracle. Total 10 Great Prophet points & 2 Great Spy points
Great Prophet chance is 95%
"Matahari (Great Spy) has been born in Thebes"... What degree is it?

I'm not the official authority, but 4th (You gambled, you lost) seems to fit best.

Absolutely great article, very fun to read I'm somewhere between 2nd and 3rd level....

Yeah, great article, both well put and hilarious.

During the game, I am a level 3 reloader. I rarely hit level 4, never above.

However, I guess I still am a lowly cheater, because I regenerate maps a lot.
The reason? I always play archipelago and a lot of archipelago starts absolutely suck (small islands, ice starts, you name it...). On average, I must abandon 4 games out of 5 after a few turns. How bad does that make me?

Hmm. Depends I guess, technically you can argue for 7 since you "Lost," and restarted, however, honestly I'd say its not cheating at all since you're effectively starting a new game. I'll say no degree, unclassifiable.

I like this guide a lot.

Here's one temptation I've run into a lot lately that I'd put somewhere between 4 and 5:

Your Panzer attacks with high favorable odds against Willem's last Infantry unit in Rotterdam, which is just a little too close to Dusseldorf. You know that you are THIS close to getting him to talk to you and accepting favorable peace terms. You lose the unit AND fail to take the city. But you'll take it next turn. Willem launches ICBM on Berlin. Willem launches tactical nuke on Munich. Paratroopers, etc.

In that situation, if I really want to tell myself I'm being ethical or just experimenting with odds to understand the game better , I'll save my botched game. If I go back to the earlier save and Willem doesn't accept peace turns after my Panzer easily takes that city, then I'll admit defeat and either abandon the game or go back to my original save. The distinction here that taking a city and saving a unit sometimes can be survival issues in the late game. Yeah, units die. But the death of some units matters more than it reasonably should.

In my last game I've attacked with a Super-Medic Cataphract.
Win chance 97%... And he failed...
Luckily I had another GG resting in my city, so I've created another Super-Medic... who failed with a 99% chance
I think that AIs are cheating, because more our troops fail their exceptional high chances

That's some bad luck. But why the hell do you engage a super-medic in battle? I wouldn't, even at 99.9%.

lasombra1984 said:

In my last game I've attacked with a Super-Medic Cataphract.
Win chance 97%... And he failed...
Luckily I had another GG resting in my city, so I've created another Super-Medic... who failed with a 99% chance
I think that AIs are cheating, because more our troops fail their exceptional high chances

Click to expand...

Actually that raises a really good point, albeit this might not be the right thread for it and it may a discussion someone is already having somewhere else. But I've also noted that I get results over time that seem not to match the odds' predictions. In one recent game where I wanted to take a city as an experiment to see what effect it had on capitulation and not to save the result , I reloaded 11 times on my Curaissier attack a Longbow behind a while, even though I supposedly had about 50 percent odds. Having to reroll at least 3 or 4 times in that situation is expected. Having to do it 5 to 8 times is annoying. More than that with 50 percent odds is just me and fortune both being stubborn. And that's one example, I've seen other similar results, in both directions. I've won on the first try with 10-15 % odds many times. But I don't think I've ever won when the ods were < 10 %. So what gives? Anyone who's taken a look at the code know whether the odds estimator is accurate?

We don't win at 10% odds. Because we stay away from such fights.
Anyway,I've won quite a few 10% fights,with 95% withdraw Cavalry.
It's our mind fiddling with us. We tend to remember bad,unfair things that happens to us,but we forgot our lucky rolls.
97% chance->one for 30 fights is lost. 99% one for one hundred. How many times per game one attack at 97% odds and win ? Pure bad luck,thats all.

On topic:
I like my RPG super general unit. Write the rest. But I try to stay away from that as much,as I can.

I have to confess I can fall into the trap of being a reload junkie. If I loose a unit here or there most of the time, no big deal, units die. But sometimes you do get into that big fight at a crucial point where you are just going to keep rerolling until you get the result you need. I'm interested in how reload playstyle has varied for players who are shamefull reroll junkies like me and have played 4 Civ versions. (Hey, I can remember when there was no Civ and PC games and I set up scenarios on my Risk board to see what would happen, and I was a reroll junkie even then.)

Anyway here's my thought on the evolution of reload:

Civiliation: There was no internal reload. You had to quit out. Even so, I can remember setting up a Batch routine in DOS so that I could do this easily. But having to quit and relaunch was a disincentive and I tended to reload aggressively only in extreme situations.

Civ 2: Reload here was easiest of all, which may have something to do with why I always won, even on Deity level. I especially reloaded to make sure I got the Advanced Tribe or the Wandering Nomad from the goodie hut.

Civ 3: The random seed issue was hardwired this time. As others have noted, the work around was to do things in a different order. Sometimes you got results that seemed to defy the apparent odds if you stack attacked in a different order. Civ3 is my least favorite Civ version for many reasons and subconsciously, this is probably one of the biggest reasons. Hey, I want my do-overs!

Civ 4: With the ability to force a new random seed in custom settings, this is as potentially easy as it was in Civ2. Practical application, however, is a bit different. For one thing, when I first started playing Vanilla, the time lag on my computer was insane and so reloading with rarely worth the trouble. As the game has been patched up through BTS and I've upgraded my PCs a couple of times, the situation has improved but there's still a lot of lag, something I don't recall being an issue with reload in Civ2. Also, the odds system seems to be less chaotic. I find that there's less chance of getting that extreme outlier than there was before, so I'm not going to lose my Rifle to a Warrior and want to reload even though it's still theoretically possible. I'm also not going to be tempted to take out a tank with an archer any more. I don't know if the die-rolls really have changed that much, but my perception is that it's much more sane than it was in the old day.

As a result I'd say, Civilization -- Limited Reloading, Civ 2 -- Insane and constant reloading, Civ 3 -- Rarely reloading, Civ 4 -- Limited Reloading.

EditorRex said:

So what gives? Anyone who's taken a look at the code know whether the odds estimator is accurate?

Click to expand...

PieceOfMind (who created the mod Improved Combat Odds that adds more detail to the displayed odds) investigated the outcomes of battles and said that they do appear fair and in line with the displayed odds. Check the threads started by him--I think this thread title referred to the "RNG" or Random Number Generator.

And if you reload many times to try the battle again, but your game doesn't have the option "New Random Seed" enabled, and you don't do anything that uses the RNG prior to launching your attack again...you will always get the same result.

Since some map types can yield wildly uneven start positions, I always go into the world builder at 4000 BC to make sure that everyone has a decent start, including a river (I just like rivers). I tend to add some deer and fish to the polar regions too to make them less useless.

So should the shame level for this be defined by the policy? Presumably 0 if--admittedly a big if--I am capable of applying this fairly on both conscious and unconscious levels. (I suppose I should also have to forget everything about AI IDs and locations; actually I mostly do, but of course I can't forget who is closest and which way. I should get my son to do the map adjusts.)

Or game by game? In which case could vary from +4 or +5 to negative depending on who benefits.

To reset the random seed if not playing custom, use WB to create a warrior and a barbarian warrior and have them fight, then delete the survivor. I do this when the effort required to deal with a barbarian galley would be just too time-consuming, or when my caravel/explorer who traveled 15 turns to get to the last hut on the map win a scout.

ck07 said:

Since some map types can yield wildly uneven start positions, I always go into the world builder at 4000 BC to make sure that everyone has a decent start, including a river (I just like rivers). I tend to add some deer and fish to the polar regions too to make them less useless.

So should the shame level for this be defined by the policy? Presumably 0 if--admittedly a big if--I am capable of applying this fairly on both conscious and unconscious levels. (I suppose I should also have to forget everything about AI IDs and locations; actually I mostly do, but of course I can't forget who is closest and which way. I should get my son to do the map adjusts.)

Or game by game? In which case could vary from +4 or +5 to negative depending on who benefits.

To reset the random seed if not playing custom, use WB to create a warrior and a barbarian warrior and have them fight, then delete the survivor. I do this when the effort required to deal with a barbarian galley would be just too time-consuming, or when my caravel/explorer who traveled 15 turns to get to the last hut on the map win a scout.

Click to expand...

Probably level 3. You know who is in the game and where they are. Getting your son to do your map adjusts or creating the map and playing it about a month later would get rid of this problem. If you are able to forget everything about the map I'd say the shame level is 0. As long as you are fair with the polar region improvements. The problem is, you'll never get a perfectly fair game without a lot of work.

If you find a start you like, save at 4000 BC and then play for a while before discovering the starting position isn’t so great, “Regenerate Map” doesn’t work with saves.

Click to expand...

Not sure if this has been said, but that statement is not true. Reloading that initial save and regenerating from there works perfectly well for me.


Reloading taking forever?
This has to do with the amount of data Civ stores as your game progresses. Exit to main menu and reload from there to cut the reloading times by 70%.