Ironman mode

Does anyone play without saving?

Generally I save frequently in case of crashes. Since the game has bored me lately I thought I would try being risky and play a game without saving once. Normally I play on Immortal as it's pretty difficult for me, but I decided I would try this on Emperor in case I made a major blunder I wouldn't have to throw away an entire game.

Now, I might be in for some disappointment in a few dozen turns, but so far the game has gripped me a lot more this way! Knowing that I have no safety net in case of a misclick or forgetting to reassign citizens, I'm a lot more engaged in all of the details of each turn! I've stated in many places that I find civ5 to be boring, and I may be bored late on in this game if the difficulty level proves insufficient, but right now I'm actually enjoying the game again, and I like it. I'm hoping this feeling stays with me until it finishes/crashes.

Does anyone else play this way? I challenge civ5 detractors to try this mode and give me your impressions.

I'm only on turn 64, but by now I would pretty much already be going through the motions and quit from boredom in less than 100 more turns. I'm not taking back anything I've said about the flaws of this game, but I do find that I am at least enjoying my purchase more at the moment (no matter how fleeting this moment ends up being).

 

Even though I'm not an Immortal/Deity player, I've always played like this, only saving when I stopped playing.
I never found it fun to load a save game a few turns back to remedy some battle results or anything else.

Then again i'm probably just a Prince/King player, despite playing Civ for a long time because I enjoy RPing my games and actually picturing my nation growing and having relations with it's neighbours. Obviously reloading causes a serious break in immersion.

 

I always play this way as I find it much more fun. That said, I'm only a mid level player - I find it more fun to be able to make a mistake and work to arrest it than to play a more efficient game with reloading if necessary. I play for the fun, engrossing experience as opposed to any conpetitive desire to win in the quickest/highest points manner necessary. I normally don't even finish games because I enjoy more to get in a postion to win than to actually seal it.

That said, I've been able to beat Civ5 on emperor doing this and I don't think i was good enough to do that in Civ4.

Am I still bored? Compared to Civ 4, Yes, because if you make even a quite large mistake the AI military tends not to always punish it I've had archers marooned and nearly dead yet completely ignored whilst the AI fires futile arrows at a full health city for instance. Just the usual...

 

I quick/save every turn, in case of crash, but I never reload.
I think in 20 years I only reloaded once in Civ1 when my Battleship lost to a Chariot.

 

Who the hell saves a game before a battle and reloads it if they lose?
Why not just save yourself the hours, say you win, and go masturbate for real?
Moderator Action: Such comments are not appropriate for this forum.

 

I don't reload as I consider it cheating. If I made a mistake, live with it (or rage quit if its a biggy).

I only make full saves when closing the game to have a break. I rely on autosaves for crashes.

 

I'd say a full 50% of my Civ V games have ended on a ragequit.

 

I dont reload the game, but I would not advise not saving with any game you play as any game could crash.

 

@OP

It autosaves automatically unless you turn this option off so unless you've done that you still have that safety net - you just didn't know it!

 

Don't most people play this way? I tend to enjoy the earlier parts of the game the most, so I don't really get too upset when I have to start over. It's pretty rare a misclick or something causes me serious problems (though it does happen), and when a major tactical/strategic error is made, I don't really see that as warranting a reload or anything - I just played my cards wrong.

 

I used to reload a lot, but since I started playing multiplayer I quickly lost the habit.

I played one game for 4 hours that started with me losing a settler to barbarians. It took me 30 turns to recover the damn thing. I had to take a break and come back because I was playing badly because of frustration!

"IF ONLY I HAD MY GODDAM 3RD CITY THIS WOULDN'T BE HAPPENING!!"


And yet, I still don't defend my settler if it means 4+ turns of waiting for a military unit... sometimes I just play the probabilities, if waiting slows me down too much. You could say better planning prevents settler death, but thats not always the case when liberty expanding, usually a brave settler is necessary at some point. [2+ settlers might be walking at the same time, with a military unit returning from escorting a 3rd!]

 

That's funny because my concentration is lazy when i play single player and i can lose workers or even settlers since i play very fast with AIs. I can play 100 turns on quick speed under 30 min. if i don't go to war often. In multiplayer i have TIME because other players have not finished their turn yet. This allow me to think a lot more between turns

 

What's the fun in reloading if the game is not going well? I never do that...

 

To you and others speaking of reloading, this thread is not about that. It is solely about the psychological effects of not saving the game frequently.

For me this entails:
1) the game feels more risky
2) I am more invested in each turn
3) I am enjoying the game more

Unfortunately the game is still quite easy. =/ I'm still having fun, but my closest neighbor just gave me half of his empire in a peace treaty where I didn't attack any of his cities (but did destroy many units of his). I will have to try this on Immortal next.

 

I will occasionally do a reload if things go badly wrong and start to get boring. Sometimes I might do a what if with a save at a key point when trying something new/risky/silly.

mostly I don't bother

 

only time I save is when I'm in a major war and a 3 turns-old autosave would be very tedious. and even then it's only when I remember, which never seems to happen when the game crashes...

@OP: I agree with you btw, I used to save civ4 all the time and would even reload some times if things weren't going my way. it's much more fun to just play the game out these days...

 

I don't completely understand the difference between 'always choosing not to reload' and 'choosing to prevent yourself from being able to reload', except of course for the fact that you might have your game evapourate in a crash, and you have to leave the computer running even if the game takes a long time to finish.
Well anyway, I only play GOTM, and I consider GOTM rules to constitute Iron Man in all the meaningful ways. And yeah, I've submitted enough failed games in my time, lame strategic calls, woeful luck, stupid misclicks...

 

I don't even reload anymore however I am using autosaves for the first time coz civ 5 crashes for me.

 

Well the difference would be that I did occassionally reload, so for me at least your comparison is a false one. I didn't do it frequently, but the constant saving would break immersion (ty for making me realize this ruskyandrei) as well as making me feel completely safe in case anything got botched for any reason, which I found made me bored.