IronMan setting

[Matrix]

Hi, AC players!

I've only played AC for a week or so, but I am unfamiliar with the IronMan setting (making reloading impossible). I've read someone talking about that in the Game of the Month forum and am very interested to know how this setting works. Could anyone explain it to me?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Lucky]

The Iron Man setting is simple:

• no autosave function
• the game only lets you save when you end with "back to windows"

So you only have one save at the time you end your daily play.
And if I´m not mistaken this save also replaces the one from the last break.


It still is possible to reload of course. You can end your game at a critical junction and then restart the whole program, see what happens and somehow terminate the program without saving (Ctrl-Alt-Del), but this would be highly annoying and uncomfortable.

So this setting effectively prevents the method of:
"Well, let´s see if my only unit can capture that base (city)! ... Oh, I lost and now am at war with a much stronger faction. I´d better reload the last turn!"

Unfortunately Firaxis didn´t see it necessary to implement this in Civ3, too.

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

Yhe only save, upom exit, is in the auto save folder, called something like smac save 1. Since this is the first auto save, you need to be careful not to auto save over it by playing another game, either diasble auto save in any intervening games, or rname it somthing else before playing another game.

 

[Lucky]

Lefty, your spell checker module is indeed NOT functioning!

But thanks for the reminder. I wasn´t sure anymore whether you could name the save or not.
Didn´t play SMAC for something like 2 years.

 

[Matrix]

Right...

Perhaps we should "push" Firaxis a little into that direction. That's actually quite handy for GOTM purposes.

Anyway, thanks for the clarification.
(O wait, I already thanked in advance... )

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

You cannot name it when you exit, as it is an auto save, but you can afterwards rename it with you file manager. It will be the the auto subfolder of the saves folder.

 

[kundor]

I believe you can also hit save, choose any name you want, and when it finishes saving the game will quit.

 

[Lefty Scaevola]

cool, that is easier.

 

[Talar]

You certainly can name your save when you quit and you can also save as a new file. So you don't need to replace your save file (but there would be no point anyway in keeping old saves when playing ironman...)

I love the ironman feature as I always play without reloading anyway. Ironman give me 50 well deserved bonus points in addition to the extra fun of actually not knowing if my attack will be succesful.

I don't want to turn this into a debate of which is better, but for you save/reload people, I think you should try a real ironman game just once. It makes you change your playstyle when more uncertainity is added to the game.


just noted in my last game that the ironman bonus is actually 100%, didn't think it was that good...