Please read: A reminder.

[LKendter]

Re: interturns, someone said it was calculating trade routes that takes up most of the processer time. Don't know if that's correct, but since the number of possible trade routes, unlike most other calculations, would increase exponentially with map size, it makes some sense.

Renata

Trade routes are one of the big problems. I play games beyond huge (255 x 204). As the game gets toward the end a minute or more to simply raze / capture a town is the norm. This is on a P3 1200MZ. This is one of the basic flaws of Civ3 and trade routes. Anyone whom has played one of my world map games knows how bad it gets at the end with 2+ hours for one turn + interturn.

 

[King Alexander]

@Offa: Every reload followed by a save adds to your total. Even if you do nothing, if you save again it counts another session.

I usually save manually 1-2 times(or even more) during a "big" turn, because I haven't any courage/time to replay any turns if my PC crashes(I can't know when my random crashes will occur, but they're often).

Apart from crashing, another reason that I may save/reload a lot, is that I don't always have the time to play; for example, I may be tired from work and then I may play 1-2 turns(or 1 1/2) or have to do something else, so I exit the game, and reload to play some more when I again have time.
Now, I don't say that I always can't find time to play my full-turns at once, but some times it just happens that I have to "steal" some time now and then to submit my save on time.

Some times, I may want to have a look at the save of my fellow Team-mates of SGOTM and I may reload their save up to 10 times to see if I missed something valuable to mention to the Team.

I guess that this saving/reloading habit would automatically disqualify me by participating in SGOTM's

 

[AlanH]

As has been said several times, saving to create a backup has no effect on your reload level. And loading up a save to look at it after you've played it has no effect. The sequence that creates a new session is:

- Save game
- Reload saved game
- Change something, play a turn, or do nothing
- Save game

The second save shows an increased session count relative to the first save. If you don't do the reload step then the second save doesn't show an increased session count. If you do the reload but don't do the second save, then obviously the second save doesn't show an increase because it doesn't exist, and the first save has not been changed. Does this make it any clearer?

Interesting that you should mention SGOTM, because we are also monitoring behaviour in the SGOTMs. Remember that they do play to the same rules as C/GOTM.

 

[King Alexander]

Ok, thanks AlanH. Then, I guess that I'm alright with my frequent saving-habit every few moments/minutes.

 

[Abegweit]

@QwertySoft & Ainwood.

Thanks for the tip about screen resolution. I'm going to try this for a while and see if I can get used how small everything is. It sure does give an awesome overview of the battlefield.

 

[LulThyme]

It would be nice if it was simply made impossible in civ4.

Dunno if many games have this feature, but in diablo2, there is no save game option. No matter how you end your game session, even if it is by a PC crash, the game will simply always save the last moment.

If this would be implemented, the whole thing would no longer be an issue and we could all play our favorite 10 minute sessions without worrying about a thing

In a turn based game with grid squares and where every action has a clear start and end, this should be very easy to implement.

This is a bit different because D2 only saves the state of your character which is not much information, so it can afford to save very often. (only when the state of the character is altered...)

 

[radek tbb]

Reloading is expressly forbidden.

Hello, I am new here
May I ask: why?
I understanad that PRS option is marked for GOTM games - so what is the problem/cheat you want to avoid?
Does it, for example, mean that players should play GOTM only once? Because only during the first time it is a mystery - in a second/third... attempt they would reach better result?

Sorry for asking stupid question but I would like to understand the restriction

 

[Redbad]

I think reloading is forbidden not primairly to avoid redoing battles, but it is meant as to avoid redoing your decisions based on what happens afterwards.

 

[Hannabir]

You can play it more than once, but you can only submit your very first try.

So what you can do is: play the game to the end, while you save at some critical points, submit, and then play the game or a part of it again to see what would have happened if you had made different choices.
But don't forget to read how other people did (once you qualify for the spoiler threads!), because it is very enjoyable and you can also learn a lot from other players, as they can from you. And by that time, the next game may be waiting.

 

[AlanH]

Hello, I am new here
May I ask: why?
I understanad that PRS option is marked for GOTM games - so what is the problem/cheat you want to avoid?
Does it, for example, mean that players should play GOTM only once? Because only during the first time it is a mystery - in a second/third... attempt they would reach better result?

Sorry for asking stupid question but I would like to understand the restriction

Welcome.

Reloading to replay *any* part of the game is forbidden for good reasons.

If you replay any activity you do so in the knowledge of what happened on your previous attempt. You could then make different choices based on new revealed information about the map, or of the AI strength, or of the outcome of battles you tried before ........ And PRS is not a perfect solution to ensure that a replay will play the same way even if you do take the same decisions. Please don't do it.

 

[Abegweit]

Under Cracker's reign, it was considered acceptable to reload in order to correct a mistake (mismouse or whatever). There are two that I occasionally make. Sometimes I give away a tech by accident (clicking on the wrong option in the diplomacy menu).

More frequently I'll zing a unit away into the void with the touch pad. This happens maybe a two or three times a game. In GOTM39, for example, I sent a Knight up a hill beside Zimbabwe instead of attacking the city. Without that error, I probably would have taken the city.

Is reloading for these purposes now illegal too?

I really wish that civ had an undo key which could be used to correct completely irrelevant actions. (although this example would probably not qualify, since I got new map info from the top of the hill).

 

[AlanH]

@Abegweit: Can I suggest, "Be more careful."?

 

[Abegweit]

Touch pads are pretty hard to be precise with. I'm not sure exactly how I do it but I manage to fling units off on wild adventures fairly often.

It's no biggie. Most of the time it just means a wasted worker move or something like that. Although the failed attempt to take Zimbadwe was pretty frustrating, it just means I'll have to re-group.

I notice you didn't answer the question

Although, reading between the lines...

 

[ainwood]

I'll skirt the question too....

It is a small jump from reloading because you "accidentally" moved a unit to the wrong place to reloading because you "accidentally" forgot to prevent a city rioting or "accidentally" forgot about a knight that had been dropped-off next to an undefended city.

I don't reload for this, and I am forever 'accidentally' moving the wrong units due to pre-engineering road movement across rivers. The "be move careful" solution really is the best one - perhaps you could invet in a mouse for your laptop?

 

[Abegweit]

perhaps you could invet in a mouse for your laptop?

When I'm playing civ, I sit in my Lazy-Boy and my laptop sits in my lap. No space for a mouse. Them's the rulz

So there will be the occasional unit who gets thrown across the world...

If the rulz also say that I have to live with that... well them's the rulz too. No problem I just wanted to know what they were.

Thanks for clarifying things.

BTW, welcome back. I hope your vacation was a good one.

 

[Dianthus]

If the rulz also say that I have to live with that... well them's the rulz too. No problem I just wanted to know what they were.

You could try using the keyboard to move units. It might take a bit of getting used to, but it works. My brother does this, though that's because he's running on my old computer and it's a bit slow (P3@400Mhz).

 

[Abegweit]

You could try using the keyboard to move units. It might take a bit of getting used to, but it works. My brother does this, though that's because he's running on my old computer and it's a bit slow (P3@400Mhz).

Thanks for the suggestion. l I do that quite a bit actually, but the keyboard layout of most laptops suck for this, and mine is worse than most. I always used the keyboard back when I played on a desktop. I'm not sure I used the mouse at all....

Now I generally use the keyboard to move left-right-top-bottom and the mouse pad to move diagonally (although I make exceptions both ways). I find that using the keyboard to move diagonally is both counter-intuitive and even more error-prone than the mouse pad (there are four tiny keys for it in the upper-right corner and it's easy to mix them up).

It's OK. I don't make mistakes often and when I do it's usually just a worker. I got about a hundred of the little buggers in my current game and how much difference does one error really make?

Even the Zimbabwe thing I referred to is pretty minor. Let's assume I would have won the attack (not certain, but probable) and that there weren't any surprise weakling defenders to prevent me from taking the city (not certain either). Even given that, I would be astonished that this setback cost me as much as a single turn.

Lesson: next time go in with overwhelming force so little errors won't make a difference.

 

[solenoozerec]

@Abegweit - when I make misclicks (and I do them often), I consider them as a part of the game. It is just like units have decided to act on their own will
Unfortunatly, their decisions always were contr-productive
The worst was when a stack of workers went directly towards barabarians and died in COTM3. I lost COTM3. I do not think it was because of this mistake.

 

[AlanH]

I notice you didn't answer the question

Although, reading between the lines...

It was a one line answer. You read between it correctly

 

[Abegweit]

Damn, I'm good!

One line and I found the message between it.