[BTS] How often do you re-load? I do it all the time and I want to know if I'm the only one

[CGQ]

I've played this game for the last 3 years and I can't tell you how many times I've raged/reloaded!

I usually try to avoid re-loading. When I gamble for instance, fine. But...

Lose a super-promoted great general in a 80-90% odds battle? Reload. Lose a settler to a bear? Reload. Mis-click? Reload. Lose your fully fortified double-forest promoted warrior on a forested hill to a barb archer? RELOAD!

What do you guys do? Do you all reload or just rage-quit? Now me? I've had my fair share of rage-quits and in my earlier days, nothing like being DOW'ed when I'm having an amazing game (but have weak power) to make me immediately do something else with my life, such as buying a new keyboard and monitor.

 

[sampsa]

Re-load on misclicks or some brainfarts, assuming the game isn't competitive. I tend to lose interest in the game if I need to re-load though, that's why I prefer to focus enough to not make anything stupid.

 

[Henrik75]

Reloading is fine when you are climbing difficulties and you are learning in the process, better to finish the game than throw it away because of a mistake you didn't see coming. In multiplayer or competitive games they obviously won't let you reload, but in single player no one can tell you that you can't reload.
Reloading misclicks is obviously fine, the game's UI can be very finicky sometimes and moving your stack on the wrong tile can have detrimental consequences.
However I don't think its good to reload every single error to try to optimize things perfectly. Gave Civil Service for currency when you could have got machinery 2 turns later? unfortunate but not worth reloading. Refused a demand and then they DOW'd you? Don't reload that, honestly you really should know better or be prepared for them to declare.

Lose a super-promoted great general in a 80-90% odds battle? Reload. Lose a settler to a bear? Reload.

Promoted generals are destined to die even at good odds I just accept it and move on. Recently I was doing trebuchets vs rifles and nearly all my knights and maces won at 30/40/50/60% odds but my 2 generals died at 80%, I use the generals to promote a group of units (get them all to city raider 3) rather than making one super duper guy so its okay to lose them.
Losing settler to animals is a classic rookie mistake just have a warrior fogbusting the area you want to settle, fortified in a forest it should have excellent odds vs any animal (below deity). Always get at least 1 warrior before your settler and send him to where you want to settle.
Being dow'd in early game sucks, Shaka and Sury with their sneak attacks ruined several of my early day games when I was climbing difficulties, but now I suspect it and investigate it when they start plotting.

Agree with Sampsa, too many reloads (usually 2 is my limit) or replaying the map simply causes me to lose interest and rather just start again on a new map.

 

[Fish Man]

I reload up to a few times every turn to optimize combats and trades, and sometimes reload back a few turns to "give" an AI a tech or make a trade to influence AI tech choices and beelines. I have a sort of extremely peculiar and, from what I can see, unique reload-based playstyle in which I try to squeeze the mathematically perfect space victory time (and space victory specifically) out of every map. It's for this reason that I rarely play deity for conquest or domination, except on hand-picked "masochism mode" deity maps - since given my reload-based style of play, those victory types are all but "assured" from t0 given the fact that I have near-infinite paths and chances to take.

Now, why do I play this way? I think I may have stated a long time ago as well, but when I first started playing the game on higher difficulty levels, I got really anxious about making mistakes, to the point where it pretty much ruined the original purpose of the game as stress relief and just added to the then-significant stress of school, classes, etc. I would have almost a racing heart just clicking the "next turn" button, and clearly this was not something that was enjoyable to me anymore. Additionally, I had been raised in a fairly perfectionistic mindset, so (among other reasons) I actually had more fun "winning games" than actually playing them, and any game I played that I did not win, I felt quite bad about (even if I learned something), and I kept playing until I won, which led to a lot of time wasted and me beginning to fall behind on my work as I threw more hours at the game in frustration instead of fun. I eventually realized that, long story short, I could get to a point where I could play deity without reloading, but that honestly wouldn't be fun for me to develop my playstyle that way. Deity wins without reloading just weren't entertaining if I saw a map I could play that was "easily winnable" (I mean, yet another 1200AD or 1500AD conquest win or whatever is just meh), while on hard maps where I wasn't sure if I could win or not, I would get too nervous and also feel like I would be wasting time if I lost (and have the compulsion to replay the map or play similar maps until I won again). And once I started reloading, it was very hard to let mistakes or imperfections slide without doing so more. So, I settled on my current playstyle where wins were pretty much "guaranteed", but what varied would be the storyline/trajectory of the game, as well as how well I could fine-tune the specifics of a space victory. This was both enjoyable and relaxing to me, as well as somewhat "unique", because by focusing on space wins, I could master an area of the game that previously had been understudied because it wasn't the most efficient path to victory turn-wise compared to blindly whipping 100 cuirs or cannons or whatever.

Now if you think, "wow this person must have something going on mentally", then you would be right. I've been working for about a year now in the mental health field doing case management and research among other things, so, all of this is nothing new to me. I'm not going to rattle off my diagnoses (either official or suspected), at least not now, because it's not really relevant especially to a group of somewhat strangers online, but rest assured I know the way I do things and what I find fun is somewhat...unusual.

 

[jnebbe]

Only for misclicks, usually I'll just go into WB to correct it instead of reloading since it's usually accidentally moving a unit the wrong place.

Used to have a very bad habit of rqing whenever I'd get declared on. It's easy to expect everything to go perfectly when you're microing everything so much but that doesn't always happen. I've found that the most enjoyable and satisfying games are the ones where I get attacked early on and have to play damage control for a while, and then find a creative way to catchup and eventually win. Granted I only play immortal but I'm always surprised how far behind I can get and still manage to win.

 

[soundjata]

Nice ! Philosophical discussion in S&T

I do reload, because I can (the program allows me to)

I was born in 1978 and started programming and video gaming at the age of 5...
Have you seen me slow down ?

Real life make our actions "Irreversible" (search for the movie yourself, it's ultra violent ) in a moral and practical sense.
Video games don't, unless one choses so (example losing your city #2 to a barb at 1% chance)

In the 1980's, games did not have a reload function. Examples :

Spoiler :

So you had to make a perfect run in order to complete the game (example 1 : snail)
or had a limited number of lives to spare (example 2 popeye). BTW this one does not have a victory possibility. Once you reach 999 points the counter goes back to zero

Then the possibility to save / reload happened. Joy!
Mistakes don't matter so much. Freedom!

My son is 10. There is only one way he plays civ 4:
Sneak onto my computer, open world builder and create 753257 tanks or colorful features on the map.
Either to troll me out or to play the game on his terms
End turn? Nah

I guess it's a matter of preference.

In "real" life you have just one run.
The arrow of time is implacable. We are mortals beings. Ephemeral!
Ticket to existence is one way only!
Or so are we accustomed to think

Switch into the spiritual world (music, religion, CIV4) and you can chose to rewrite the story differently countless times (aiming for perfection or perversion)

Look at Mozart and Fish Man modus operandi :
Reload / reload / reload / reload... and be happy with it.
I reckon I can't reload too much because there'll be a point where will ensue
(example monty island), maybe because then I'm losing the sense of "continuity"

But if a guy can resist this nausea and give me this :

Spoiler :

Please reload more !

 

[krikav]

Depends entierly on what mood I'm in, what map I'm playing and also how much time/energy I have.
Just last week I have played two maps recently where I reloaded and replayed quite abit, exploring what the map has to offer and enjoying it as a puzzle. (Monty Island, Low Sealevel Gilga)
(A while earlier than that too, there was the deity toku map where I went whole hog into exploring different options.)

I have played a BOTM where reloading is strictly prohibited.
And I have played the recent NC305 I ran som scientists in a early city in which I later ran merchants for trade mission.
Got a scientist at super low odds and was annoyed at that because it ruined my idea of the map.
Had this been BOTM, I would have planned more ahead and not run early scientists in a city where I wanted merchants later. Or I would have played differently making contingiency plans to handle such unlikely events.. But in a more relaxed setting I just avoid the mental effort and simply let the die roll again.

 

[Mr_Trotsky]

For me it depends a lot on what stage of the game we’re talking about.

In the early game, if I mess up, get unlucky with barbs or getting boxed in because some micro error delays my settler by a turn or two etc, I just accept the loss and move on if it’s not salvageable given my competence (or lack thereof). I feel the rest of the game is tainted by reloading and I’ve not yet invested much time in it. Plus the early game is the best bit so it’s never too upsetting to get to do the best bit all over again.

If I mess something up after I’ve been playing for a week or so - it takes me a good couple of weeks to finish a deity game because I’m slow and spend much of real life being forced to do things I don’t want to do - I’m more inclined to reload. I want to see how it plays out even if I can’t claim it as a proper win.

 

[LEMD]

I will reload on mis-clicks unless I haven't saved it in a while and the auto save is too far back. I don't save my game often enough to be able to re-load. Normally I load the game play for hours and save it when I stop playing for that day and maybe a time or two in between if I take a break just in case the computer crashes or something. I used to save before big decisions in order to have the option to reload if it didn't go as planned. I stopped doing that and it improved my game and made me pay more attention and come to this forum to learn how to play better. As far as GG go, I don't make battle generals. I only make super medics and its with a unit that should never have to defend. I used to think that was stupid but it's truly not. They are hardly ever lost and it doesn't bother me if it happens because I'm more worried about the entire stack I just lost in order for him to die instead of him being killed himself. I settle the other generals.

However, before that I would reload all the time and for pretty much any reason you can think of.

 

[elmurcis]

Very philosophical topic to be honest. Had to think about it before being able to put it together (I need to re-load thoughts to get them right )
I do have no-reload ("challenge" since it has to include some oopsies too) games time by time (something like 1 "clean" and 2-3 "not so clean") and they are great.
Now to re-load part. I like to separate it in few parts.
1) Personal "memory leak" re-loads. I hate them but they will happen once or twice per hour or something (just a nature of my brain - it will know what to do but not when). Like forgetting to switch to Repre/US after Pyramids are done but I don't want to switch right away (might be some settler to be done etc., so "1-2 turns later" aaaaaand forgot about it). Or preparing awesome whips around entire empire aaaaand, it is 1 turn too late everywhere.
2) Now these ones I don't like and like same time - most of times when doing "clean" game, I might do 2nd/3rd try on same map with some knowledge (not spoiling original game although sometimes game does it by itself - like when settling new city far away from capital, one can get "city wants to join X empire" even if I have no contacts with that empire - "aha, there is Hannibal in game? Must be quick to Optics as I love +1 movement bonus") and stuff but same time with urgent need to do better. And that can turn out to be worse as some random factors can change and/or I might overestimate what my cities can do etc. Buuuut it can be one of most enjoyable games overall since it also can be "clean" game (just with map knowledge so more like scenario than random map).
3) This one is controversial - doing things to "get around" big things. 1st and most obvious - go some turns back to prepare for DoW (it can be "done" even in clean game with 10-turn begging so AI would unload it's forces and attack only 10 turns later). In theory I might have placed scouts/caravels to check where AI's stack is and calculate how many turns I have and where it should land. Or just let it land, reload, prepare defense (whatever I can if I can - sometimes it can too big and I might even retreat with reinforcement to prepare actual counterattack) and then try to deal with "actual" situation. Or like something that happened some weeks ago - I had nice game going on (with Romans) and I was on pace to have solid Domination win at some point. Aaaaand some AI strikes with AP vote and wins. It wasn't even major religion or anything (so didn't paid enough attention to actual votes in F8 screen to see that every AI has votes) - literally like human "cheese" AP win (with 1-2 cities for each civ). Got 3-4 turns back and tried to figure out what I could do (legal way) since vote will come up. Luckily I had only 1 city with AP religion and there was one lucky AI with only few cities so I could gift it to it. Worked perfectly and AP was not major issue again till the end of game. Personal Hall of Fame (only thing that matters) still holds boths results as reminder - Diplo lose and Domination win from same game
Happy civing - keep this gem alive till the end of time (year 2050 I mean )

 

[BornInCantaloup]

I'll happily reload worker actions, especially in the early game, if I think I can do better.
Same goes for build orders, to a lesser extent. If I think a different build order lets me manage better, I might reload into it.
I'll sometimes reload heavily when I get a wonder and I want to improve the date. This is a very fun little exercise.

I mostly play to toy with workers. I don't care much about the other units. If I lose a war, oh well, gg wp
Joke's on you, Catherine , I don't play to complete maps anyway !

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Never reload, even if it's not a competive game (HOF or SGOTM) I still use the BUFFY Mod with Lock Modified Assets on so no worldbuilder either. This teaches you to really think about what you are doing and makes everything much more consequential IMO.

If you enjoy reloading that's great but not my cup of tea.

 

[BornInCantaloup]

Never reload, even if it's not a competive game (HOF or SGOTM) I still use the BUFFY Mod with Lock Modified Assets on so no worldbuilder either. This teaches you to really think about what you are doing and makes everything much more consequential IMO.

If you meant HOF or BOTM, sure,
But SGOTM is a very interesting place and probably where the most reloads will happen, Oh Great Zarkon They won't happen on the official map, that they won't, but teams will go savage on their test maps, that they surely will.
I agree that plannning is a critical way to improve. If one wanted to reload less, I would suggest to Save and Quit the game (in that order) more often and think about it off screen (to plan better - maybe take a screenshot).
Then there's testing. Replaying the same 25 turns segment over 30 times has a way like no other to contrast the trade offs and make them apparent. What is gained and what is lost here and there and how to weight each and every move - or how consequential they've been. Sometimes, another player will have found the perfect line and simply replicating it will be enlightening.
Reloading is a great learning tool, because it allows comparison.

It might be worth mentionning that reloading isn't a magic trick that ensures success and great wealth. Just like micro-management can be counter-productive (if it's poor ), there is no guarantee that a player will find the "right line" for the sake of reloads only. In fact, blind trial and error has infinitesimal chances to get there.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

If you meant HOF or BOTM, sure,

I did mean BOTM although reloading is also prohibited in SGOTM as well!!

Replaying the same 25 turns segment over 30 times has a way like no other to contrast the trade offs and make them apparent. What is gained and what is lost here and there and how to weight each and every move - or how consequential they've been. Sometimes, another player will have found the perfect line and simply replicating it will be enlightening.
Reloading is a great learning tool, because it allows comparison.

Yes absolutely, great point as is the one about test maps.

 

[6K Man]

6K Man's guide to Reloading

 

[Fish Man]

Nice ! Philosophical discussion in S&T

I do reload, because I can (the program allows me to)

I was born in 1978 and started programming and video gaming at the age of 5...
Have you seen me slow down ?

Real life make our actions "Irreversible" (search for the movie yourself, it's ultra violent ) in a moral and practical sense.
Video games don't, unless one choses so (example losing your city #2 to a barb at 1% chance)

In the 1980's, games did not have a reload function. Examples :

Spoiler :

So you had to make a perfect run in order to complete the game (example 1 : snail)
or had a limited number of lives to spare (example 2 popeye). BTW this one does not have a victory possibility. Once you reach 999 points the counter goes back to zero

Then the possibility to save / reload happened. Joy!
Mistakes don't matter so much. Freedom!

My son is 10. There is only one way he plays civ 4:
Sneak onto my computer, open world builder and create 753257 tanks or colorful features on the map.
Either to troll me out or to play the game on his terms
End turn? Nah

I guess it's a matter of preference.

In "real" life you have just one run.
The arrow of time is implacable. We are mortals beings. Ephemeral!
Ticket to existence is one way only!
Or so are we accustomed to think

Switch into the spiritual world (music, religion, CIV4) and you can chose to rewrite the story differently countless times (aiming for perfection or perversion)

Look at Mozart and Fish Man modus operandi :
Reload / reload / reload / reload... and be happy with it.
I reckon I can't reload too much because there'll be a point where will ensue
(example monty island), maybe because then I'm losing the sense of "continuity"

But if a guy can resist this nausea and give me this :

Spoiler :

Please reload more !

Ahh...thank you...that's very high praise <3. Never in my wildest dreams would I think of comparing myself to the likes of Mozart, though I suppose reading your reasoning, it makes sense!

 

[Fish Man]

6K Man's guide to Reloading

I might make a far more detailed "guide to reloading without random seed" for people who absolutely have no shame and want to force Gandhi to do a radio beeline without touching rifling or steel, almost guaranteed, every game or something.

 

[Henrik75]

Im pretty sure the general theory is, if you change one thing slightly, i.e. dont whip x on turn 42 but whip it on turn 43 instead, or move warrior 1S then 1SW instead of 1SW then 1S, it changes the seed completely, including ai's tech paths or plotting decisions even.

 

[Snowygerry]

I dress it up a bit - sometimes when I screw up I will exit without saving, just to continue some other time from the last save,

sort of in-between a rage-quit and a blatant reload

 

[Gwaja]

I personally like to save my game only right before a major event like the decision to attack someone, or to build a certain wonder, etc. If things go horribly wrong, I would go back and re-attempt with different decision than the last time to see if things turn out differently. Other than that, due to my rather zippy pace of play, I rarely feel the need to reload. Perhaps I should try a little more of it, only for educational purposes. ^_^