Mulligans

[Woodreaux]

I'm not a golfer. I don't play the game, but I know of the term because it comes in discussion of college football one loss teams and various other sports related contexts. To get the Civ meat of the matter, I'm talking about reloading from a previous save point to get a do-over.

Obviously, the abuse of such a practice does and should receive criticism. Due to the nature of the game, it's like time traveling. I don't think Sid had Hiro Nakomora* in mind when he developed the game. However, I do believe at times it is indeed called for.

He's an extremely obvious example: in 2300 BC, during a game on Marathon/Noble, I'm in the process of founding my second city. Taking the appropriate precaution, I send my settler out with an armed escort, a warrior (hey, it' still 2300BC!). There are wild animals roaming the vicinity. Knowing this, I prudently choose a course along hilltops and forest to gain defensive bonuses. Then once my my settler and warrior arrive on the hilltop site of the new city, a bear eats them. I have 3 choices:

• Continue playing, knowing this early setback will be magnified into such a disadvantage that I'm screwed... (I'm just starting to play on Noble).
• Rinse and repeat: but I've spent a while doing scout recon and planning land use.
• Load from a turn before, pause and wait a turn for the bear to attack them on the adjacent forest hilltop (instead of the bare hilltop).

I don't know about yall, but the point of me buying the game, learning it's dynamics and spending time playing it is to have fun. Rules and fairness are important, but statistical anomalies at crucial times defeat the fun factor. As a player, I've developed the intestinal fortitude to swallow the loss of a Great General attacking with a 97% victory rate and take it in stride (the knowledge that it would neither prevent nor prolong my inevitable victory certainly helped). The delay in expansion would be the civilization equivalent to having Downe's Syndrome.

I'd like to read other Civilization Fanatics' options and personal guidelines about Mulligans. When is it acceptable to do it? When does it become a cheap cop-out?

* Hiro Nakomora [spelling off?] := dude from the ...<Snip>... show, Heroes who has the ability to alter the space-time continuum, vise-a-vie teleportation and time travel.

Moderator Action: The language isn't want, nor is the comment regarding Downe's Syndrome.

 

[Jaybe]

Continue playing. Do it for the EXPERIENCE (YOURS not your units ). Yes, it will be a greater challenge and you might lose, but it will be valuable. Even the experience of being wiped out by the AI should be done on occasion (well, at least once).

You could just start over if it's just too much to bear (or is that bare?).

DO NOT Load from a turn before. Getting into the habit of doing so is like sliding into the dark side. Your enjoyment and appreciation of the game will degrade substantially if you do so.

 

[jimbob27]

I reload mostly just when I make stupid mistakes. Like I might loose a worker because I told him to work instead of move, as I didn't notice the barbarian in the square next to him.

Sometimes I'll declare war on somebody, without checking the diplomacy screens properly if they have defensive pacts, or vassals. If this happens, and I end up being at war with more people than I intended, and I'll reload.

Mostly it's just human-error things I'll reload for...... a bear eating my settler wouldn't count.

 

[strollen]

It would depend but in general if it was my 2nd city I would reload. If it was my 5th or 6th city and barb animal attacked and won I would not reload.

It is ocassionally fun to fight to the bitter end but realistically I want to win.

 

[RobEllin]

Personally I believe pulling a "mulligan" is fine if your still learning the game. For example I'm not much of warmonger, so during my current game I'm reloading old saves to replay wars which went badly. I then try and figure out what I did wrong and rectify it.

However once I'm happy with my warmonger ways, I wouldn't do it and I'd accept the loss.*

*I say that now, but I'm yet to do it. I don't seem to be learning and have made the same mistake twice now (being impatient, not preparing fully and declaring too early, losing most my units and having to fall back and rebuilt). I've yet to reload the second time (I saved and exited to think about it over night), however typing this out has convinced me to stick at it and continue without reloading. I should have known better.

 

[Munch]

I don't do it often, but I will reload an auto-save when I make stupid mistakes, for example:

# I spend ages building the Pyramids for the sole purpose of running Representation, and then forget to switch to Representation for several hundred years.

# I spend ages researching Alphabet to make the first technology trades, and then forget about it for several hundred years as I slip into backwardness.

# I march a defenseless unit into the path of a barbarian/enemy unit, resulting in inevitable death. This also includes when I send my settler to a city site several turns walk away, ignore him until he gets there, and sadly at some point he gets eaten (arbitrary use of masculine form for simplicity's sake ).

I won't reload if I lose lots of units attacking a city (I used to, but now have more discipline). I won't reload if I give my workers the wrong orders (e.g. accidentally destroying a chain of irrigation). I won't reload if I switch to some silly civics without thinking about it. Basically, as long as no defenceless units die, and nothing critical to my master plan gets stupidly overlooked, play on.

 

[Kark]

I don't look at reloading as cheating, but I try to avoid it. I mostly reload after making silly mistakes, not to get the best result from a goody hut or to win a battle when the odds are against me.

I find playing at emperor level to difficult to go on playing when my second settler has been eaten a bear, because I know I can&#8217;t catch up with the AI civs after that. So I usually start a new game.

 

[Andraeianus I]

Well in this case the first poster took a risk. I nearly always first build archers before founding a second city just because of the animals and the early barbs. I am playing on emperor; so barbs appear soon. This has the additional advantage that you can found your second city farther away from you capital, as your defence is stronger.

By the way: there is no real need to escort a settler. Just position your warriors so that you have a clear line of sight within which it is safe for your settler to travel.

The only time I reload is when I make an obvious mistake like misclicking with the mouse. I usually restart my game when my initial warrior gets destroyed very early in the game.

 

[LegionSteve]

I don't reload. In your bear example I would either play on and see what happens, or start a new game. Not because it is 'cheating' but because once I have accepted that I can re-load my current game if something goes wrong, I start to lose interest in that game and eventually stop playing.

 

[Bino]

I seldom reload, mostly for stupid mistakes (wrong mouseclicks most commonly) or when im really pissed off about something (mostly a needed wonder, when i lose it to someone else when im one turn away to complete it).

 

[graves_09]

not that i condone it, but you could always go to WorldBuilder and "fix" the mistake instead of reloading (depending on how far back your save is)

 

[Munch]

not that i condone it, but you could always go to WorldBuilder and "fix" the mistake instead of reloading (depending on how far back your save is)

Yeah, but then you can barely avoid seeing things you can't currently see like future locations of resources, and enemy units/cities. For me, if I open WorldBuilder, it's because I've already written off the game and am just curios as to how things might have panned out - I would never play on armed with the knowledge of whether I will get uranium in 3000 years, for example.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I used to reload all the time in previous civ games, but I never do it anymore; the reason is to train for multiplayer in case I ever play hotseat with my roomates. There isn't going to be any reloading if I lose a battle there! So I accept the consequences and move on.

Nowadays I only save and reload in RPGs like Neverwinter Nights, because I always want to see what happens when I choose a certain evil, but hilarious line of dialogue to say to an NPC.

 

[gps]

I don't know about yall, but the point of me buying the game, learning it's dynamics and spending time playing it is to have fun.

...

I'd like to read other Civilization Fanatics' options and personal guidelines about Mulligans. When is it acceptable to do it? When does it become a cheap cop-out?

As I am still adjusting to the higher levels of the games, I sometimes go back a few thousand years and try a different strategy - to see if I could have gained an advantage attacking XYZ or if I could have completed my spaceship faster, if I'd built more tempels or whatever.
Nevertheless I don't really get the point of this discussion. The point of buying the game is a company called Firaxis earning money. What is fun to the buyer is largely a matter of taste. Some like playing the hard way. Some like winning at all cost, even if it means to boot up worldmaker every second turn - and some like to pin the sparkling game CD/DVD to the wall and play darts with it. If that's fun to anyone who spent his hard earned money on the game - who am I to judge if that's acceptable? From my point of view everone can do as he pleases. I don't really care...

 

[gunter]

I dislike cheating,I prefer to loose and learn from my own errors,even the random ones.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

* Hiro Nakomora [spelling off?]

Hiro Nakamura.

I recommend never reloading from previous saves. It's very easy to get into the habit of doing it, and before long, you'll find yourself reloading for just about anything.

However, if you have a very limited amount of time to play the game and will only enjoy playing if you win, then that's a slightly different story, because playing any game is about having fun after all.


In most cases, I find myself better off not reloading, because it gives me a huge confidence boost if I do pull out of it and leaves a lasting, memorable sting if I don't, which serves as a reminder of what not to do.


In your situation, I think there are two things you could've done differently:

• Like Andraeianus I said, you really only need a clear line of sight to the destination, so send the Warrior/Scout a few moves ahead instead of babysitting the Settler/Worker.
• Likewise, if you are close escorting a Settler/Worker, move the Warrior/Scout ahead first. Then if you see bad things, you know to keep your Settler back a little.

-- my 2

 

[quiddity]

Imo this game take is whole sense when you always are in the dead line, I mean when every of your choice is Really important, when the win or loss of every unit ( or almost ) can change the game.

DoW with a huge SoD and reload a few turn after because you realize that it was not this huge compared to your ennemy's army don't take any sense for me.
Like it was said before your defeat will make you learn a LOT more than your reloading wins, and next time u'll send 2 warriors with your settler if u play with raging barbs, or sent couple a spy to determine the military power of your futur opponent etc ...

Of course it's really a pain in the ass to lose a 20+ hours game for a dumb mistake, but you have to determine in the very begining of your game if you wanna play for "training" to really improve your skill and grab the deity level the sooner the better, or if you just wanna play for "fun" with the world builder.

Personnaly, my Best games where my defeats, when i get raped off the whole game and ( often ) loose in the very end. Where i can say " it was hard , really, but without this . .. .. .. .ing mystake here , i could have won .."

Of course, the difficulty level matters alot, on your playing style i mean.

 

[Woodreaux]

I appreciate everyone's input. Looking back at my teching path, I researched Bronze Working and the Wheel instead of Hunting and Archery. I was playing Augustus and planned to rush Praetorians and sack Hyuna Capac. Seeing that problem resulted from poor strategic planning and not a "Spearman killed my Tank"-style statistical anomaly, I've determined that this is not an acceptable mulligan scenario. However, I'm not going to play it through either. I've lost 40 turns worth of production early in the game. Being crippled as such, I'm starting a new game. It's better to loose an hour of game time than 3 days.

My current mulligan allowed situations are:

• Misqueue - obviously, clicking on the wrong tile is a given. Accidentally canceling a large production project is a bad one.
• Spearman killed my Tank - I know a few things about statistics and outliers. If I attack with greater than 99% odds and loose twice in within a span of ten skirmishes, that's just ridiculous, I'm reverting.
• Brainfarts- many of us have forgotten to switch to Representation.

What I don't take mulligans on (but used to):

• Lost wonder/tech race - I used to be a wonder-monger. Eschewing this practice made me put a lot more emphasis on planning my research and production.
• Invincible Army- I used to bring short stacks up to a enemy city and call it a SoD, and revert every time I lost a unit. I even stooped so low as reverting whenever a unit with a Flanking1 (10% retreat) failed to retreat. Even worse than spending more time reloading than playing, my victories felt hollow and I realized I wasn't learning anything. With the exception the Spearman killed my Tank clause, I've abandoned this underhanded tactic and learned to bring sufficient force and deal with attrition.

 

[Bushface]

The problem with bringing "sufficient force" is determining how much is indeed sufficient. For example, currently an opponent has a hill city with Walls and a Castle, in which are no less than 32 units including 9 catapults and 7 fortified longbowmen with CG2 or better, and it can be attacked from only one tile other than across a river. Bringing up a SoD means loads of collateral damage: trebs with Accuracy would bring the defence down by only 6% per shot: and I really want to take the dratted place because it's in a location highly inconvenient for my empire. Looks as if I must wait for Tanks and Bombers, if I don't want to suffer huge losses, and who knows what the defence will be like by then ?

 

[Dominico]

I never ever reload from mistakes like this, and i have made my fair share of them.

My worst habit is scouting out an area, thinking its safe, then sending out a settler unescorted who gets eaten. Or sending a settler who makes a city which is then captured by barbarians (since there is no defence).

Yes its annoying but like all negative things which happen in life it makes you stronger. Since i have done this several times it rarely happens to me now. Instead, i will make sure settlers have defenders clearing the way infront of them, cities are well defended and i have improved as a player. The other thing is those games where i lose a city or settler and get set back and still do well are far more satisfying then if i had reloaded and "cheated".

Saying all that i find it fun, if it winds you up that much that you lose the character, then reload the game. Its not multiplayer so you are not cheating anyone except the computer, who doesnt mind of course. In the end whatever you have fun doing is the right thing to do when there are no other people involved.

I do reload when something goes wrong out of game context though, like declaring war by accident, or giving something away by accident. But not ingame mistakes.