Re-loading Scale of Shame

Minou

King
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Apr 19, 2013
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When I play a GOTM/HOF game, I often make errors that I would usually undo by re-loading if I has playing just for fun. This made me think of a scale re-loading from harmless to evil, which I present below:

1. Game crashes. Re-load and make exactly the same moves to the best of your ability. No fault of your own and not fair to have to lose your entire game (but maybe get a better computer).

2. Misclick - e.g. finger slips or your kid takes the mouse and moves your unit the wrong way. Re-load to make the move you actually intended. No mental error but a physical one, which is a weird thing in a turn-based game. I have run into this one having kids who like to mash the keyboard. I usually re-load especially if it is a toddler walking my Builder out into nowhere by grabbing the mouse.

3. Make an unintentional move because you did not realize a setting. For example, chop a forest thinking it will go to City A where Magnus is rushing Pyramids but the forest was actually assigned to City B. Re-load to redirect the chop. This is careless but you intended to do the right thing, just didn't check all settings first. I try and live with this - in my HOF Teddy game I think I managed to pull this mistake off three times!

4. Accidentally forget to do something like change policies, move a Governor, or send a delegation before the end of turn. Re-load to do so since you intended to but forgot. You made mental lapse, but not bad decision like attacking a walled city with too few troops. I always live with this type of error. Probably forgot to send a delegation the first turn of meeting more often than I remember!

5. Re-load because you were moving a Settler or Builder on auto-path and it ends near a barbarian. You would have seen the barbarian in time but you were too lazy to move one tile at a time. Another mental lapse. I try and just move them one tile at a time, and sometimes you get killed out of the fog anyway.

6a. Re-load because you made a military blunder, like exposing an Archer than gets killed by a Sword. Trying to undo a bad choice. Military cheating.

6b. Re-load because you realize were building the wrong thing many turns later. For example going back in time to start a wonder you missed earlier or change the Campus you were building to a Horseman. Trying to undo a bad choice. Domestic cheating.

7. Re-load and make moves in different order to change the RNG to effect combat or rewards from a tribal village. Re-writing history until you like it! The filthiest of cheating.
 
Where does reload to get a better start go? There are two variants to this. First is the reload to just get more good stuff (IE a river). The second is the reload to get a better start specific to your Civ (you can dial that up to as far as maximizing the number of desert tiles that surround your settler starting hex)
 
One that I would put between 5 and 6 is when a civilian unit gets killed by a natural disaster. If it's a builder I'll generally roll with it, but if my settler is taken out by a volcano in a 1/1000 chance event, I reload the turn. I took the risk, but I also won't accept the loss.
 
You forget spawning in the Desert as Russia or Canada.
 
Hard to say. I guess I would put re-load to roll a better map somewhere in the middle, and that is the #1 re-load style I am guilty of. I like to try new Civs with a completely random map the first time, but after that, year, I am going to re-roll for tundra in Russia or mountains with Inca. And when I feel like making a HOF run I re-roll like a bastard until I get a good map.
 
A corollary to re-writing history - reloading because you got a surprise DOW and weren't prepared for it. If I spawn near an aggressive civ I usually know to build up forces and keep them ready, but sometimes you get caught off guard with your warriors away scouting (really, Kristina?).
 
Ultimately, in a single player game, you can play however you want!

Personally I think strategy games are more rewarding when you force yourself to live with mistakes and unforeseen occurrences and alter your plans accordingly. Especially when a common complaint against Civ 6 is that it is too easy... why give yourself more advantages? This is why I like GotM games.

There’s clearly nothing wrong with reloading in cases 1 and 2, though.
 
I only allow myself points 1 and 2, and 4 but only for policy changes I forgot to do and pressed next turn too fast. but to each his/her own limits in SP I say ;-)
 
I think I spent more time rerolling my starts than I do playing the game.

I definitely also save scum lots of things. Sometimes I intentionally don't let myself do it for a whole game (except for blatant misclicks/game unit cycled when I was doing something), but I get so annoyed sometimes that I often don't finish these games
 
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I do tend to reroll new sessions quite a bit, mostly to avoid starts with low production or loads of rainforests and tundra (when I'm not the right civs) :p

However, I never save scum nor reload just b/c I forgot something. If I end up in a position in which I can't win or basically lose any further interest, I just let myself lose or abandon the session altogether. I've ended up crashing a lot of sessions that had certain details I liked! But learning to just let go of sessions is something I've had to accept.
 
You forgot: Play on console, can't go more than an hour without crashing requiring an autosave to be reloaded.

You don't re-load for anything else on console because it takes several hours to load a save.

Sad, but very true.

I think I spent more time rerolling my starts than I do playing the game.

I do a lot of rerolling starts as well. Not because I necessarily need an amazing start each time (thought sometimes it is fun to spawn next to Mount Roraima with Australia), but because I find it more fun and it allows for a more varied style of play to have a good start. The worse the start, the more I find the path to success is through early warfare, which I often don't like to do. If I'm backed into a corner of tundra, there's not much to do other than build troops and take out a neighbor. I'd rather have the option of growing a productive city, building wonders, expanding peacefully, etc.
 
What about "I created by mistake some point(s) on Era score and I already have enough for Golden Age so I reload to save that action for after the age change"? :lol:




I think I spent more time rerolling my starts than I do playing the game.
Reminds me how much time I spent in Baldur's Gate creating characters and doing the prologue with them to see if I liked them instead of playing the whole game :rotfl:
 
I feel like 3, 4, and 5 in the OP all are basically the same thing: not taking the time to double-check your action before you commit to it, leading to a sub-optimal outcome. I don't consider it to be particularly egregious. Even in board games, I've found that most players are willing to let a player go back and change their last move so long as it doesn't cause a cascading effect that changes other players' turns. Like "Oh, and I meant to spend this resource", or "I meant to move this one piece last turn. Is it OK with everyone if I do it now, even though it's not my turn anymore?"

Where would the OP put "reloading to build a wonder sooner than the A.I. builds it."?

Hard to say. I guess I would put re-load to roll a better map somewhere in the middle, and that is the #1 re-load style I am guilty of. I like to try new Civs with a completely random map the first time, but after that, year, I am going to re-roll for tundra in Russia or mountains with Inca. And when I feel like making a HOF run I re-roll like a bastard until I get a good map.

I feel like this is one of the most innocuous re-loads. You've barely started the game, so it has minimal consequence.

You forgot: Play on console, can't go more than an hour without crashing requiring an autosave to be reloaded.

You don't re-load for anything else on console because it takes several hours to load a save.

I played Skyrim and Fallout: New Vegas on consoles. I remember the pain of spending mroe time in loading screens than actually playing the game because I had to reload several times an hour to undo bugs or crashes.

I also want to add that in a single-player game, save-scumming is a very good way to learn from your mistakes. You get to see the outcome of a sub-optimal move, then reload and see how much better the more optimal move was. Ideally, you actually learn from the mistake and don't repeat it. You're not hurting anyone, so you shouldn't feel shame in doing it. Annoyingly, I find that I do the most re-loading in the later eras of Civ. There's just so much more [micro-management] to do in those later turns (more cities to manage, more units to move, more frequent civics unlocks, etc.) that it's a lot easier to forget to do something that I intended to do. It's annoying, and I wish I didn't have to keep doing it, because reloading a late-game save takes longer, and turn-processing takes longer, and re-doing the actual turn takes longer, so it wastes more of my time, but also ironically has less impact on the game because of snowballing. :twitch:
 
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