when do you reload?

[buncheesy]

I was just reading the thread about 'personal rules' to make the game more difficult and more realistic.

I am going to make a confession. I am a complete abuser of the savegames (mainly quicksave) I wish I wasnt but even when I make up personal rules about when not to reload I find it hard not to. Even my wife looks and me with disgust when I tell her about a grand battle I lost and then dont respond when she says "did you reload?"

here are some of my reloading weaknesses:

1. Promising young commander I have big dreams for dies unfortunately in battle due to my error - If I didnt reload I would rage quit!!!
2. I have lost a couple of spies already this turn - there are limits
3. There is a prophet rated heretic in my realms - as if I would let him convert my preists? I just want him gone and +1 piety
4. I lose a battle that I could have won - may reload and try again if the battle was interesting (hasnt been a problem in my current campaign )
5. Damn I sent my agent the wrong way due to pathfinding error/random click!
6. How many people can I take out of the newly conquered Castle without loyalty levels dropping to far? - lets try a few times!
7. Oh no that damn army laden fleet came out of the FoW and will now obliterate cities I hadn't anticipated losing - cant let that happen without giving myself some preparation!!!

(Strangely I dont really care as much about merchants)

The problem is if I allow myself to reload on genuine mistakes i am already on the slippery slope to the above and worse

Do others share my weaknesses or if not tell me I am a big cheat and spoiling my own fun?

[Caesar Clivus]

You're spoiling your own fun IMHO. I remember in one RTR game I was playing as the Romans and was in the process of invading Greece. My army in Greece had taken some casualties so I was shipping over a full stack of reinforcements. Just before I could land them, a Greek fleet came out of nowhere and sunk my ships, taking my reinforcements down to Davius Ionus' locker. I could have reloaded but instead I kept playing. My army in Greece fought some very tough battles until I could raise another army to help them. Hair-raising but so much fun at the same time!

[Kabeloko]

dammit man, u r addicted already no offense XD
i understand pathfindig error in critical times, but the other stuff shouldnt take such extreme resources...

[Brunotaurus]

hey Buncheesy, i am with you. I'm a total reload addict. In my Genoa Campaign i made about 3 savegames per turn, in case some battle go totally wrong. I keep telling myself i'm doing it to prevent CTDs from killing my campaign. I find myself quicksaving and loading on almost every agent-mission, though i am working hard on stopping that. The Problem is that i also start new campaigns all the time being unable to stick to one. Though i have been playing M2TW a lot over the years, i never reached gunpowder in vanilla. Said Genoa Campaign left me with 48 provinces after 110 turns but being unwilling to kill off the HRE which is a vassall of norway at this time, or Venice which has 4 provinces left and is still fighting a losing battle against the Byzantine.

Well, trying to stop myself from doing all that i startet a late Sicily campaign which i just tabbed out of, after seeing that my king wouldn't win that battle on auto-resolve ...
maybe i better continue my game now :-)

[Lord Baal]

I only reload the game after a crash to desktop (almost never now thanks to SS) and when I'm resuming the game. That's all, I've lost kings in battle, important agents on stupid missions and great battles. It's all part of making the game fell alive, those are the details that set this game apart of the rest.

[Vespasian92]

I only reload the game after a crash to desktop (almost never now thanks to SS) and when I'm resuming the game. That's all, I've lost kings in battle, important agents on stupid missions and great battles. It's all part of making the game fell alive, those are the details that set this game apart of the rest.

QFT

[MedievalDragoon]

I only reload the game after a crash to desktop (almost never now thanks to SS) and when I'm resuming the game. That's all, I've lost kings in battle, important agents on stupid missions and great battles. It's all part of making the game fell alive, those are the details that set this game apart of the rest.

Same here.

[buncheesy]

@Ceasar Clivus - Thanks for your reply. You are right. Time to man up!

@brunotaurus - If I can do it you can (errr I havent started yet....)

@liandro - I think my only allownace will be for heretics - they are just ridiculous in this mod!

Am playing venice H/H ReallyBadAI. I am friends with everybody I am not fighting, the pope loves me, I whupped Genoa and am now kicking Byzantium like buttering my toast (I just seiged a city for 28 lost 480 killed! and have armis swarming everwhere!) and I have money falling out of my ears.

Time to get serious a quit playing with the replay Live by the sword and die by the sword

[Liandro]

Usually just heretics, cause I just love when my best Priest or Imam turns heretic without any previous unorthodoxy in his trait list and then goes on to convert a town that had 95% or better to about 30% of my original religion, and of course I can't get this guy, who then converts all of my priests and maybe just maybe 12-14 turns later after getting a Cardinal, Patriarch or higher up Imam there I can take another 12-14 turns to try and execute this guy... it's stupid and annoying.

[meese]

Hmm...I don't reload much anymore because I tend to either just quit or am too lazy to reload and just keep playing.

I mean, one which I definitely would have reloaded before I stopped playing for a few months was when I just very recently (last week) lost my very first campaign. I was playing as the Crusader States and was going really well, it was year 1410ish, and then I realised "oh...I only have three family members left..." two soon died of old age, then the last was assassinated and so I lost and was like "what...just...happened?"

I probably could've reloaded and reloaded until the assassin failed but I just started a new campaign as England instead :/

That said, I have cheated quite heavily in this new English campaign. I went through a period where I tried getting rid of this damn heretic with full piety in England, and subsequently lost four bishops to his pagan ways. These five multiplied to I think I got to a peak of 16 heretics/prophets at one stage and after about 30 turns of trying to assassinate them since priests were just turned into heretics themselves, I gave up and send them all over the place. I mean, seriously, 16 pagans with full piety on an island is just not what you want I believe there are still a couple because I was up at about 70% pagan in London at one stage.

[Brunotaurus]

I'm still at it ... i play sicily on H/H or was it VH/VH ... can't recall actually with ReallyBadAI and i haven't done my usual addictive reloading yet. Turns out i lost both of my starting princesses to disgracement and my heir's only "son" is his adopted men of the hour. He's got a daughter though. That makes my family tree so small and poor i feel like restarting again.

Some things about Sicily along the way. First off, wow, they don't have light men at arms? And second: are those Pavise Spear Militia really an improvement to Urban Spear Militia? I mean their starting offense of 1 is really poor compared to castle retrained, armored Urban Militia with 3 offense and 12 armor. At least i got that feeling when i fought the Byzantine Spear Unit in a Siege Battle ... (the one with 101 units and 4 attack?) found them to be super strong enemies.

[Aquila SPQR]

I reload only when I don't want to fight manually (fifth huge battle in the same turn can be quite boring), choose "resolve automatically" and my army, because of stupid AI, is defeated. Then I reload, play manually and win :]

[Dahoota]

I usually only reload after a ctd during a large battle.

Depending on my level of rage/the size of the battle that might be followed by an auto win console cheat (for me it seems ctd's are most likely to happen returning to the campaign map after winning very large battles)

[Kameraden]

for me it seems ctd's are most likely to happen returning to the campaign map after winning very large battles

Yes, very often imo.

I used to sin as a novice player, but got rid of the vile habit. Almost that is Few times happend that after battle, doing some sweeping with Speed-of-Light, my super general dies on my own stakes.. Oh the irony.. reload or ragequit.

[Vasterion]

Rarely these days. I have more fun figuring out my own mistakes, making up reasons for misclicking. In the end I spend more time planning actions than I do playing. For example, playing as genoa, giving all conquered land (aside from the two islands, florence, milan and marseille to the pope, and having him shield your flank (being able to start wars with catholics for fun is nice for a change. As is calling on crusades to destroy factions, then stab the nearby crusading armies in the back.

But there's just one occasion when as a 5 settlement faction, you annoy pope abit too much, and get 3 veteran crusading armies in your face. Even so, fighting against it is excellent fun, and I'm hoping to break his crusade, and re-ally with him.

Good, good fun, and the apocalypse feeling can be fairly edge of the seat stuff. It allows you to keep the small faction desperate measures feeling going; as well as also having the opportunity to save spam if you want as every maneuvre is important.

[jukeness]

I only reload when something absolutely unacceptable happens.

[loony]

i reload after
a) CTD during battle
b) a battle where enemy unit gets stuck and i cannot get to them
c) after a crushing defeat in a battle so easy i was too lazy to finght and autoresolved.

anyway, there is always a temptation... that is why i love legendary mode on Shogun2. YOU DO NOT EVEN HAVE AN OPTION.

[Kaidonni]

b) a battle where enemy unit gets stuck and i cannot get to them

Ouch! The other week, I had a problem like that (no reloading, though). Bloomin' Welsh Spearmen just stood in the street of the settlement, doing nothing. My men also appear to have a problem in zoning in on them and eliminating them. A bunch of the Welsh Spearmen were stuck behind a wooden post at the side of the wall... Suffice it to say, just walking a unit of my guys to them led to combat, and after the first Welsh Spearman was dropped, the rest began to rout back to the centre square (did I mention the entire unit was routing? For a majority of the battle? ).

I did reload a battle to take Rennes from the rebels. I sort of...disliked my tactics. It was one of those Teutonic hill-top settlements, and the enemy had two units of crossbowmen and a unit of Mailed Knights. I positioned my Levy Archers and Peasant Crossbowmen (one unit each) so that they could shoot at the enemy crossbowmen without being hit themselves. The enemy proceeded to do something that can only be described as trying to fire at my guys. They kept shooting through buildings, not scratching one of my men! I slaughtered them with flaming arrows and a well-positioned unit of crossbows. I also felt guilty, as part of the issue must have been skirmish mode. Some of the enemy crossbowmen wouldn't even fire, they just didn't know what to do. I redid the battle, luring the enemy crossbowmen down and smashing into them from both sides with my two General's Bodyguard units (sure, they were slaughtered much the same, but I then entirely engaged in melee combat with the Mailed Knights, no ranged attack). Felt better for letting the AI kill a few more of my guys.

[Irishpsycho]

In my current campaign I think I've reloaded twice, once after losiing Ioannes Vatatzis (but I lost almost the exact same way the second time so I don't really count that) and another for some princess who got disgraced. Besides that I've lost a whole royal family (not the whole tree, just the baselius and all his sons) to Mongols, so I'm pretty happy with my resistance this time.

[philipjd]

I must admit that at times when I suffer from 'combat fatigue' - ie too many managed battles in a turn - and try to autoresolve and something goes badly wrong with it, then I tend to reload and refight it myself.

Pathfinding errors etc - I tend to put down to 'incorrect instructions given to the army/agents etc in question and play along with it as mistakes and wrong directions were taken (And are taken still) by subordinates .

Ref the enemy fleet appearing from nowhere and sink your re-inforcements, have to admit that I do enjoy the game more when the AI does something sensible

::coughs:: I did break my own giuides once.. was with a Byzantine campaign and I had my first army with a decent amount of scholarii in... tried to fight the mongols with it and came out badly a couple of times (after reloading) finally gave up on 'my' gameplay and shipped the army west where I knew how to field it.