Ironman save games in the cloud: "save after every decision"

Lessing · Aug 7, 2013

Manual says:

Ironman mode – If you dare. When set to Yes, you don’t get to run back and
reload every time a decision goes against you. You have only one save game, saved
to Steam Cloud, which is overwritten at every decision point so you cannot go
back on your choices. You can save, yes, but only by exiting the game (so you can
go to bed). Iron man mode is the only time when Steam Achievements are active.

Does anybody know what a decision point is? Every click that changes something? I wonder how this works... savegames are pretty large, and upload speeds are bad. Incremental saves?

Apparently autosave is off during ironman mode because it gets saved all the time anyway....?

Mixxer5 · Aug 7, 2013

Lessing said:
Manual says:

Does anybody know what a decision point is? Every click that changes something? I wonder how this works... savegames are pretty large, and upload speeds are bad. Incremental saves?

Apparently autosave is off during ironman mode because it gets saved all the time anyway....?

And more importantly- what if for some reason I don't have internet (for a while of course)? Will my disk be overflowing with EU4 saves...?

hyeondrugs · Aug 7, 2013

I wouldn't bother with Ironman mode. Some cheese is bound to happen like EU3 where you accidentally accept some cruddy peace deal or comet sighted.

bob2alien · Aug 7, 2013

I assume that by decision they probably mean events and such, and maybe declaring war and making peace. Probably choosing an idea group as well. Things like these. I also doubt you'll have a ton of save games because it overwrites so you'll only have one, and Steam syncs with the cloud whenever it goes online.

Mixxer5 · Aug 7, 2013

TOK3S said:
I wouldn't bother with Ironman mode. Some cheese is bound to happen like EU3 where you accidentally accept some cruddy peace deal or comet sighted.

Comet sighted is simply bad luck that should be accepted (with or without cursing person who invented this event

), but some accidental choices are seriously annoying. For example, what if accidentally I accept peace offer from some minor I just DOWed, which wants me to pay him all my money, become his vassal and change faith? Even in Ironman mode there should be possibility to revert last decision.

Dutchling · Aug 7, 2013

TOK3S said:
I wouldn't bother with Ironman mode. Some cheese is bound to happen like EU3 where you accidentally accept some cruddy peace deal or comet sighted.

Haha! Embrace Ironmande mode! It was made for people like you

Danny-Dynamita · Aug 7, 2013

The cloud synchronizes after exiting the game, not after every save. And if they do this well, then yes, there will be a quick save after every change in the game (mission selected, decission, action, etc.).

Mixxer5 said:
Comet sighted is simply bad luck that should be accepted (with or without cursing person who invented this event ), but some accidental choices are seriously annoying. For example, what if accidentally I accept peace offer from some minor I just DOWed, which wants me to pay him all my money, become his vassal and change faith? Even in Ironman mode there should be possibility to revert last decision.

Just be careful. Ironman XCOM doesn't forgive missclicks! (I hope) Neither does EU4.

Maccius · Aug 7, 2013

The idea of that mod is very, very nice

Olligarchy · Aug 7, 2013

What I am worried about is that will I have to play for another half an hour when I want to go to bed since I can't save the game.

Mixxer5 · Aug 7, 2013

Danny-Dynamita said:
Just be careful. Ironman XCOM doesn't forgive missclicks! (I hope) Neither does EU4.

Considering how easy is to misclick something in EU4, I'd prefer it forgive though. Only consciously made decisions should be punished.

Illanair · Aug 7, 2013

I could have sworn we had already had a long and fruitful thread on the subject... Guess nobody bothers to search anymore. :closedeyes:

Olligarchy said:
What I am worried about is that will I have to play for another half an hour when I want to go to bed since I can't save the game.

You seem to misunderstand the concept of Ironman. One save - one load. You can save the game at any time you wish - by closing the game. As we have already discussed to death in the old thread, this is not a foolproof system and nor is it intended to be. It is still very much a gentleman's system with plenty of holes for exploitation.

Uploading shouldn't be a problem either - judging by how the cloud works, uploading will only happen when you close the game, so you'll only have a single savegame upload per session (And most likely heavily compressed, since savegames are entirely plaintext and easy to compress down to 10%)

Cymsdale · Aug 7, 2013

The worst misclick I've ever had in a Paradox game was pretty much closing a pop up message before I could read it.

Vrahn · Aug 7, 2013

Play Ironman, and if you want an emergency backup before anything drastic happens you can take a manual backup of the savegame when it's sitting around in your folder (assuming it is still there and not entirely out of reach in the cloud) while the game is paused. Granted this would negate the fun of it but yes with a lot happening on the screen sometimes you push that wrong button which results in hellish consequences.

Mixxer5 · Aug 7, 2013

Cymsdale said:
The worst misclick I've ever had in a Paradox game was pretty much closing a pop up message before I could read it.

Mine was accepting peace deal ceding half of my territory to OPM and changing my faith to Catholic (from Orthodox). I don't know what I'd do if not possibility to load a game.

Illanair · Aug 7, 2013

Vrahn said:
Play Ironman, and if you want an emergency backup before anything drastic happens you can take a manual backup of the savegame when it's sitting around in your folder (assuming it is still there and not entirely out of reach in the cloud) while the game is paused. Granted this would negate the fun of it but yes with a lot happening on the screen sometimes you push that wrong button which results in hellish consequences.

It won't be anywhere to back-up. It is entirely in memory and then the cloud.

qbln · Aug 7, 2013

The problem is size of savegame files. If it will be around in EU3's files, sadly i won't give a shoot about ironmod because i can't wait for saving and uploading every a few minutes.

addition: save and exit won't work. *cough* *cough* alt+f4 *cough*.

FRodrigues · Aug 7, 2013

qbln said:
The problem is size of savegame files. If it will be around in EU3's files, sadly i won't give a shoot about ironmod because i can't wait for saving and uploading every a few minutes.

addition: save and exit won't work. *cough* *cough* alt+f4 *cough*.

In windows:
ctrl+shift+esc > processes > EU4 > end process

But I think this is not going to work for decisions/peace deals miss clicks because the game auto-saves (you could actually corrupt the save file so don't do it immediately after a decision).
So the best way is to create a script that automatically back-ups the save if you press a keyboard shortcut or an icon in the desktop and if something happens you simply change the save files.

jcinq4 · Aug 7, 2013

...and upload speeds are bad.

I'm pretty sure you won't upload your save to the steam cloud the second you do something, in all other steam games that use the cloud, it stores your save then uploads it when you stop playing.

a4rino · Aug 7, 2013

Mixxer5 said:
And more importantly- what if for some reason I don't have internet (for a while of course)? Will my disk be overflowing with EU4 saves...?

The whole point of the Ironman mode is that it does not save multiple copies. It overwrites the same file.

Lessing · Aug 8, 2013

Danny-Dynamita said:
The cloud synchronizes after exiting the game, not after every save.

Except the manual says the oppsoite. Unless you have other sources, I will assume you're just making it up.

Ironman save games in the cloud: "save after every decision"

Field Marshal

General

Second Lieutenant

Private

General

General

Captain

Second Lieutenant

Grand Prince

General

Space Duck

High Warlord

Sergeant

General

Space Duck

Captain

-1/12

First Lieutenant

First Lieutenant

Field Marshal