Do you reload?

[Matrix]

Originally posted by marshalljames
Well according to the way the rules are,that's cheating,and is not allowed. I suggest that your game of the month not be submitted as you have openly admitted re-loading therefore cheating.

That is allowed because you didn't mean to.

I'm not that harsh, marshalljames. That's just silly. The GOTM is a casual contest.

Originally posted by ERIKK
"When misclicking your galley, you loose your settler and galley but discover new land"

And that's an extraordinary situation. Good luck comes with bad luck. In such a case you should play on.

Guess what? In the current GOTM, I accidentally moved my galley in a wrong direction which would mean a pikeman wouldn't be in a city in that turn (with enemy at the city border). Therefore I reloaded. To your suggestion my game is now invalid. Bad luck I'm the administrator. Perhaps therefore you shouldn't play the GOTM anymore since it's corrupt.

All I'm saying, give me a break here! Again: it's casual. Reloading all the time means f*cking up the ranking, but we do keep it fun.

 

[Mighty]

I reload a lot and so therefore I dont submit a score to the GotM, but I really enjoy playing it and reading the spoiler threads to see how everyone else handled the game.

 

[el_kalkylus]

It would be nice if the developers would have had a built in program that counted everytime you reloaded IN the game, and ignored it when you started the game. Or at least, have a special game-level: Ironman game. You would only have one savegame, and the game autosaves for you at all times, and it's unallowed to reload and save, unless you start the game. They have that in wizardry8 for example. The only way one can reload in the game is to make a backup of the savegames everytime you want to save.

But sadly these are only civ3-dreams... there is no way of stopping people from cheating. That is why I stopped playing civ3...no wait, wiz8 was the big reason...

I actually feel quite annoyed when I look at the civ2 savegames too. There is no way people can have that much luck in combat. I know they don't use only diplomats to take over cities.

 

[chrome_gnome]

I haven't looked into the saved games folder very much but couldn't you tell if a game was reloaded by looking at the last modified date and time in windows explorer of the .sav file? This obvious requires the entire list of savegames for the GOTM be reviewed either by sending them all (not al all pratical) or by looking at a couple of submitted screenshots of explorer (subject to photshop edits). Both of these is against the whole spirit of the competition though in my opinion as it really isn't an honor code system any longer.

Has anyone tried to contact Firaxis and see if there is any help they might be able to offer the community? Alot of other game developers are pretty up on helping out the community from time to time and this seems like a noble cause. Sometimes it just takes a polite request from the right fan site people. Perhaps they could add some simpe no reload option that would overwrite the sav game file with each new save so that the most a person could do is reload the last turn. They know the code better than anyone and perhaps they could clue a code savy Civ player into how to write a special .bat or .exe file that would launch the GoTM and keep it "pure".

It never hurts to ask and see what we get. Even just some simple help could allow the community to fix the problem themselves without a tedious and probably illegal decompile of the software.

 

[Alc0p0pz]

Considering Civ3 GOTM is meant to be ...

a very casual contest

... people are taking the reloading issue rather seriously ...

 

[Alc0p0pz]

btw I can't submit this month's GOTM (which was my first GOTM attempt) because I started again (from the 4000BC save) after losing the first time very early on.

I agree with the sentiment (don't reload) but I think you've just got to trust that people won't/don't ... it's (as you said) a casual contest, and in any case there's nothing you can do about 'it' in the first place.

So relax?

 

[Durendal]

It seems that a flag in the saved game file that could disable the save game feature except as part of the Quit Game function would solve our problem. However, it would be a pain regarding fat fingers.

-Durendal

 

[Rain]

You will never eliminate reoladers. Some people cheat at anything ~ every game i have played from chess to MMORPG's has its share fo folks who want to win or be seen to ubah by others whether they possess skill or not.

The concept of milking a score is somewhat bizare to me but to each his own. I guess i can see that some folks want to complete a "masterpiece game", but to me the time spent isnt worht the reward. Similarly "exploitive tactics" are not something im fond of. I try to win the game as its design implies it should be played, not through exploiting the bugs in the ai. I think a reasonable approach is to look at a exploit and assess how reasonable this is in the context fo the game. Pop rushing carries its own penalties like rop breach. Now whehter the penalties are sufficiently severe is another question. Trading territory is not entirely unreasonable in concept, but the notion that these cities revert back is to some degree. It is a subject open to debate. I try to look at things in their political/historical context. Pop rushing has a rough equivalnet in slave/despotic states for example. Maybe pop rushed units should be of lower grade like conscripts.


The domination reload smacks of cheating to me perhaps more than any of the other things mentioned.

Anyway jsut my humble opinions. As to crashing i do find the game crashes occasioanlly, not frequently. Relaistically a game crash can be recovered on the same turn so this is hardly a significant issue generally. I found tweaking a few things on the pc reduced the crashes for me. But generally a reload to the same turn is hardly a major significance. Perhaps oif more cosnequence early in the game than later when the map is well known and u can more readily assess your opponent. On the other hand crashes more likely to occur later than ealrier. Cant see this si a significant point.

Oh well enough rambling

 

[philippe]

i never reload.why?
because i have honor.
in the world of games eveyone wants to be the best
and some players are cheating for that(in this case reloading)
but i think it will get you more satisfaction if you played it fair (no reloading) then you can say if you are good or not
and if you have a good result you will be happier then if you where cheating (reloading) that is my opinion and probably the opinion of many gamers