Is correcting a decision from reloading a save cheating or invalidating?

Hi, opinion question here. Playing a marathon king match on Terra with Egypt, currently winning in most ways. I made a blunder by extending my armies to reclaim a fellow civs city, but got shadow attacked by a horde of winged hussars and crossbows. With my veteran army weak and scattered, Japan suddenly goes ham and declares war, coming in with a MASSIVE army and ing up all the territory around my capital, probably going to take it within the next few turns. I'm wondering what you guys think about reloading from about 20 turns back to being stable and non involved in conflict, how much merit would this take from my inevitable victory? Is it worth it to continue? Is this cheating?

If you have to ask "is this cheating" then I think you know that it is.
But consider the following; Who cares?

That isn't some high and mighty brush off but rather a legitimate question. Is this a multiplayer match? It it being played via Giant Death Robot? Are you going to submit this game to the hall of fame here on Civfanatics? Are you playing a personal game for yourself?

If nothing is on the line, nothing at stake, then go nuts and cheat all you want. Thats kind of your dilemma isn't it? You know that if you reload, then you could always reload whenever you don't get favorable results but if you don't reload you might lose the game or at the very least be strongly delayed in winning.

Which is more important, to you?

Yes, is cheating...the real question is:where the fun in playing Civ?An easy (and boring?) victory or an engaging defeat?

If you are in straight up SP (e.g., not in HoF, not in GotM) then it is about impossible to craft a definition of “cheating” that includes reloading. It is a basic game feature! This board has a strange -- and counter productive I would argue -- attitude about reloading.

Reloading is how most people learn to play the game better. As you get more experienced, you will reload less.

If I never gave myself permission to reload, I never would have worked my way up to Deity.

Skynet doesn't think this is cheating.

I'm wondering what you guys think about reloading from about 20 turns back ...

Click to expand...

It depends :
- if you play to learn the game or to just have fun, it is ok ...
- if you play for competition to tell other people you beat AI in the game, it is cheating ...

You are lucky that AI cannot go back to an older save game everytime the human player is winning ...

Developers could modify the game so that reloading on the highest difficulty level or in a "competitive mode" is not possible.
(The same would apply to restarting the game for good resources at start ...)

Well, I sometimes load up an autosave if something unbelievably annoying happens either by a stupid mistake by myself or if the bloody AI beats me to a Wonder one turn before completion (I reload and build something else instead). I don't do it all the time mind you, but sometimes instead of rage quitting I will load up an old autosave and do thing differently.

I don't consider it cheating unless I am genuinely trying to challenge myself and those games I take very seriously and ban myself from reloads. If I am in caual mode, I'll happily reload!

It's only cheating if there's rules against it.

Not playing in a format that requires rules? Then save scum to your heart's content. It's your game.

My learning of the game included a lot of reload. Reload allows for many parameters to stay fixed while you try something else.

If you're save scumming to beat the presented combat odds or upset your privateer didn't capture, that's pretty scummy. Reloading to learn how to play better, and even salvage a victory from a defeat, is ok in my books. Backing up to try out a different choice of policy? That's a great learning opportunity. It's hard to understand how different policy perks are going to affect your yields & happiness until you try them out. It's only scum if you're showing off your HoF knowing that you reloaded a million times to pull off those scores. Each to their own though...

I don't think there is any problem with reloading in this SP scenario. It IS a learning experience as others have said.

That said, a lot of players fall into the habit of reloading when things don't go as they want rather then when they really made an error and are losing. Make sure you are reloading because there is no hope rather then just because you're sad you lost a few troops. Troops die, on Deity you face 5-10x your number and you'll eventually lose some guys no matter how you play. The deity AI if they hate you will sometimes put the full force of all their production into troops to crush you. If you don't do the same, switching your production to troops to fight, building walls on your borders, etc, then you aren't playing a real war. You were counting on the AI to be stupid and not crush you when they had the chance. If all it took was Japan (who is a warmonger) DOWing you as you were fighting someone else to defeat you then that is bad planning. My guess is you majorly skimped on home defenses. That said, it's not too late. See if there are some last-ditch efforts you can do to save yourself. You'd be surprised how easy it is to avoid defeat even if you think you're done for. the AI fights really badly. Do you have friends? borrow some money and cash buy a wall and castle for your capital. That'll buy you a few more turns. Turn your other cities to produciton and build troops like knights farther out and longswords/pikes closer in. Buy a garrison if you haven't already and a duplicate to take a defensive position behind the city.

For future reference, if you feel like there is a risk of a multiple front DOW either:

A. build a target city that is very defensible near the border, many players will chose a nice hill/mountain site and if you get attacked it can hold off early rushes, especially with a wall and garrison.

B. Make at least one friend you can borrow cash from to buy some quick walls/defenses or save some money in reserve. Or build walls ahead of time. It's a good investment.

C. Hold a few troops in reserve. It honestly doesn't take a lot to hold of AI rushes. They are bad at strategy. If you have some in reserve you can attack flanks as they beeline the city they want and thin the force before it gets to you and set up defensive ranged on nearby hills, put 1-2 melee to wall approach angles and your city will be fine. Then retaliate with pillaging/worker stealing with your horse units till they sue for peace. You hardly need to win the 2nd front just hold them off and harass them so they get tired of the war.

Since I'm a minimalist I tend to do A-B and just quick-buy or produce the reserve I need in C if the attack comes then I'm not wasting maintence cost but that IS a bigger risk. Many players advocate keeping a steady reserve defense force just to be safe.

I tend to think that if you reload bc you misclicked something or bc you legitimately missed something bc you were distracted making dinner or whatever then its totally acceptable.

If you make a game decision that turns out badly and reload to before and change it...that is basically cheating.

That being said...sometimes cheating this way is extremely helpful to the learning process so don't feel bad about it at all. You arent playing against humans after all and the AI cheats hardcore.

I'll reload if I misclick a unit and it ends up getting slaughtered in the middle of a battle. Or I misclick another unit and send him God only knows where.

I used to reload if I missed a Wonder by one turn, but I no longer do that. Usually it's not even worth it. I can change my production to make it faster, but I still get beat by one turn. It's like the AI was predestined to get it.

I have saved a file and after I won a game, I will sometimes reply it. Usually it's a save when choosing an ideology. I like to experiment and see what would have happened if I had picked a different ideology.

The two/three front wars are pretty much, sometimes. Though it really messes you up so far as science and growing your empire. Had a game last night where I was the Huns, and the Aztecs were right next to me. And they quickly settled two more cities around me. (I only had my capital). And they declared war on turn 60–70 or so. And they sent wave after wave of Jags. But I had my horse archers and comp bowmen and I was racking up lots of promotions. Then Indonesia attacked me from the other side--and I was taking care of them with little effort.

I think I had 10 or 12 military units to fight them off.

I ended up not finishing the game as, although I enjoyed the war(s), it really put me behind the eight-ball, and I was last place in science and behind an entire era. And low on gold and happiness. And that's on King level.

I just didn't have the patience to try to finish the game, though I kind of wish I would have saved the game file.

There are many reasons as to why one would reload. I've heard stories of people waiting ten, eleven, twelve turns even for their Great Prophet to appear and then getting beat to last Religion by some AI picking up Hagia Sophia out of nowhere. I think reloading is completely fair in a situation like that. The same goes for early game wonders. If I beeline to Petra and miss it by one turn my entire gameplan is screwed. I don't like playing out scenarios like that.

Usually when something like this happens it means one of two things: You had bad luck or you had a bad gameplan. Usually it is the latter. That is why I think reloading is something good, it allows you to evaluate your current position, reconsider all your decisions, identify all your mistakes and come up with an improved gameplan.

My machine will freeze, requiring a reload; so I have to save every 2-3 turns, or I'll go 20 turns by being excited (my building projects in 13 cities finish in 2-3 turns !!) and ... <#*$ing SOLID LOCKUP needing a shutdown to escape . Frustrating, it is .

Thanks for the replies;so, I feel that making a tactical error can be weighed evenly with the accomplishments and victories you've already achieved in a game. Right now I'm at like turn 900, just captured Kyoto after warring forever, survived multiple onslaughts from the maps, Babylonians, Persians, Russians, Germans, and poles, have 20000+ in da bank, 200+ per turn surplus, elite military, first in science and in wonders(Of course). This all coming from a silly tactical decision to unnecessarily liberate a Brazilian city, only to be scattered and attacked on all fronts. I feel coming this far it really outweighs the knowledge of me making a decision to not do a decision. Gonna buy those space parts and win. Onto Deity, promise I won't redo this time

I screwed up a bunch last night while at war and really wanted to reload, but I was recording an LP at the time and so had to press on. It was hard and ugly but I pulled through and won the day. I feel kind of proud as a result... So, nothing against reloading but taking the medicine of a flubbed war is not all bad

Ref: https://youtu.be/Q-xdvWMSXpI Tho not all episodes are up yet


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I give you credit for reloading at an earlier point to see if different choices will give you a better result. Rather than call it cheating, you should give yourself a little credit for staying with the game. I frequently just say to heck with the whole game when something doesn't pan out. I cry and then start a game as Poland so that I can beat the snot out of the AI. However, I would consider that much closer to "cheating" than reloading a save.

Good for you for keeping on in a tough match. As long as you're not hopping on civfanatics to claim your sub-turn-175 science victory, I'd say you're doing yourself a favor by picking a different fork in the road to go down.

Depends .

I just had a spectacular World's Fair miss on a Diety game. Lost by 1.26 hammers. I didn't reload it. Felt it more honorable, even if it was quite painful.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=691820143

Like Acken says, reloading starts is often super informative as to your play. I learned a lot about city placement and maximizing Tradition starts by reloading turn 0 autosaves if I didn't make great settling decisions. It's a good way to discover your bad habits and how to break them.

I'm never allowed to reload as all my games are HoF submissions.

At the same time, I'm one of those people that says "It is your game, play it how you want."

However, except in the case where you are using it as a learning experience (such as how Acken says earlier in the thread) I am NOT an advocate of reloading, even if it were allowed.

I'm now playing on Immortal level, and the last time I did a non-crash reload was in Civ 3. My play has gradually gotten better and better over the time it took. I get a late start with each game, though. I purchase the game right around launch, play a match or two, and then I just wait for expansions until I've got the final, and then I start doing HoF submissions... there's just never a situation where I thought reloading would help my game. I absolutely DO see the value of trying different strategies in a closed situation, though!

I think you learn more and become a better player if you never reload. It forces you to deal with a bad decision or a mistake you make, and then you learn from it. Sometimes, that bad decision makes you even prouder to win if you are able to fight through it and still win your game!

My second submission of this version to the HoF, I was very tired and trying to finish a SV before bed. I was attempting to rebase a nuclear missile and instead wound up misclicking and nuking my second biggest city. Not only did I not quit and reload, I still wound up winning and submitting it to HOF. Even though it's a horribly stupid mistake, it didn't cost me the game... most mistakes you make aren't going to nuke a 30 pop city, so don't reload!

You may not be "cheating" but you're definitely cheating yourself!