I wouldn't care at all as long as there was say for instance a limit to the amount of saves allowed for a Metaverse submission. Cheating yourself is one thing, cheating others is another

How many saves would be "fair" could be arguable though

I've played at least one game, which one I forget, that simply logged how many times the game had been saved... doesn't stop the reloading of an event until there's a favourable outcome, but who'd want to submit a game that had been saved 50/70 times! Especially if it was a Medium Galaxy! LOL

No it wouldn't. Even a game like Nethack has a recover option. Sure you CAN cheat, it only makes it harder.


If you play alone you can do whatever you want. If you play with someone else, and compare with others, then you don't save and restart the game in the middle of a MP game. When submitting to the metaverse, you compare apples and pies. Some people reload, some don't. The result is the scores are quite meaningless.
I see it thus: You can either use skill (good games) or dedication (many games) to earn points. If someone reloads, he gets good scores faster than someone who plays even hard games, thus beats them on both counts. This effectively means that people who want to play every game, who never consider themselves beaten, are actually handicapped versus those who use cheap tactics.

The problem is that you're making reloading out to be something far more problematic than it is. The only thing that repeated reloading will get you (and the reason it was originally brought up, I think) is to reload until you get a big +PQ on every colony. And in my opinion, the only reason to ever reload such is not for the PQ--there are many mods for +PQ improvements that are far easier to get and use--no, the only reason is to nudge your morale into the area you want when you're playing on a tiny or small map (where there would not naturally be enough events to even get you out of Neutral). That's it. And in the end, alignment has little real effect on your score--it's just a matter of what alignment you want to be listed as on the MV.

Otherwise, such as with invasions and etc., reloading is not some massive crutch that will allow people to easily play beyond that which they are able. At best, it can let you slip past on some particular thing that you were very close on, as I posted earlier, and that is NOT going to have any discernible effect on your final score, because it isn't something that you wouldn't be able to do by other means without too much trouble. The only way that reloading could possibly give someone a better score than they deserve is if someone were playing way beyond his skill and was reloading every turn to make sure he did everything just right to keep from getting his rear handed to him--even then it is debatable whether playing in such a way would even be possible.

Yes it is because it saves time. You can save 1 hour by reloading. You can submit 3 games where you reloaded instead of 2 where you didn't reload. I think this is unfair.
Reloading also allows to uncover the map 'for free'. This allows you to have a better expansion, and removes all tough choices of 'where to send colony ships?', 'should I build a scout' and 'is stellar cartography worth researching?' (well, probably noone researches that anyway). All these decisions CAN affect the game. If you get to a PQ26 before the Drengins, it can make a lot of difference.
You can also reload to get trade goods and wonders completed early. Civ2 had found a way to circumvent the problem, by telling the player a wonder would be finished next turn. It was unrealistic and all, but it allowed players to rush buy without saving/reloading. What I really mean is the reasons for saving reloading should be removed. Having a seed for events and fight outcome saved in the game makes most of the points moot. Providing the player knowledge of yellow stars at the start of the game would also remov another hassle. Using the same trick as civ2 for wonders would also remove another hassle. With these modifications, the game would be the same for everyone, and those who save and reload wouldn't have to do it, and thus everyone would end up playing more and enjoying themselves more.

(This thread has turned really off-topic...)

I beg to differ kryofx. It has an enormous difference. Set all your opponents to pure good and play purt evil, you will see a difference, I promise hehe.

Using default alignments, Max. Of course you'll have quite a different game if you've got all the AIs allied against you...



This seems to be the heart of our argument. You are talking about casual reloading whenever you hit a problem, and I am talking about reload spamming.

As for casual reloading, I'm on your side. Unfortunately this only entails a reload every now and then so there's no way a reload trap can stop you from doing that. Although some ways to stop people from doing it would be welcome.

I know I've never cared for the AI being able to see all yellows and humans not being able to. Hell, we've got telescopes already and we can tell what COLOR a star is at least. As such I've modded my techs so that all civs get stellar cartography for free right off the bat (not quite sure why it gets pre-researched, but that's actually better IMHO).

As for reloading every time you miss a TG/wonder, that's just cheese, plain and simple. You don't need every damn one--heck, the biggest ones I care about are propaganda center and hyper distribution center, and you've got to screw up pretty bad to miss those even on maso since the AI doesn't go for those techs. TGs you can trade for to get the bonuses, so there's no need to sweat missing some of those either.

Anyhow, what I was arguing against is a reload trap, because this would prevent you from saving before a difficult move and trying over a couple of times, that's all. The trouble was that the problems that we both agree on wouldn't be stopped by a reload trap since you'd only be loading once per while instead of repeatedly in quick succession.

Agreed. I agree that a reload trap actually ends up harming players in order to prevent some cheese. Since the game is first a single player game, there is no reason to penalize people who don't care about the metaverse.