Autosaving Issue in Ironman Mode

[lordboy54]

Question. Could you not just buffer the saves? I mean like, as a new month occurs, instead of pausing the game and waiting until the autosave is uploaded, couldn't the game just take a quick snapshot, save the game as a temporary file, then upload it as you keep playing, and not pausing whilst you play. If another autosave happened whilst another older one is being uploaded, finish uploading the current save, then make the game upload the latest save. This would avoid any incredibly long stacking of saves that needs to be uploaded, as you just jump to the most recent one after finishing uploading a previous save.

 

[lordboy54]

What kind of rigs are you guys using that you run into this problem? What speed internet connection? I'm not getting any stutter at all on ironman, I can't even tell when it's saving.

It's the internet connection. And there are several factors included too, like how long you've played etc. Anyways, i get minimal freeze too, but still worse than having no issue at all(takes about <1 sec, but 1sec * Every month, becomes lots of seconds. And I have it much better than some others here.


I got 100/10 connection, but my upload speed is usually more around 12-14mbits rather than 10 or less.

 

[unmerged(781890)]

Saving one game of mine takes about 7 seconds now. It's pretty much unplayable.

 

[unmerged(221873)]

Is there a way to turn ironman game into a regular one? I started an ironman campaign but got tired of the constant saves, can I just convert the game into a regular game, of course with no possibility of going back to iron?

 

[Andrew4250]

Not saving battles with natives would be nice if you have the troops required to win, because it gets annoying having to save at the start of an uprising and two days later when all 1500 of them die to the 3 guys on my side.

It would make me much happier if you did that

 

[calvinhobbeslik]

Not saving battles with natives would be nice if you have the troops required to win, because it gets annoying having to save at the start of an uprising and two days later when all 1500 of them die to the 3 guys on my side.

It would make me much happier if you did that

Speaking of that, has anyone else noticed that if the natives rise on their own (i.e., you haven't directly attacked them), and they all "die" in battle, every single native remains in the colony?

 

[Demon Firebrand]

I am not having the issues others are, and as a result I find it hard to sympathize. I play at nearly max speed all the time unless I think a war or event requires more attention, and the saving takes maybe a second tops, if that. It's nice to have my default playstyle be its own special mode: Ironman all the way!

Not crazy about Lucky Nations though...

 

[Nefaro]

I love the concept of Iron Man mode, but one could argue that some decisions and events just really don't need auto-saving. For example, when you win battles or deny another nation military access. And I don't think the monthly auto-saves are needed either, there will be enough save games without them.

Agreed.

I don't know how much work it would be to differentiate autosaving after battles in which the player is victorious, but that's a good idea. Perhaps doing likewise in other advantageous outcomes could be accomplished, too.

With all the saves that take place any time we give a significant order, I don't see the need for purely time-based autosaves at all. If it's still in the cards, I hope it at least gets bumped up to yearly, or maybe even 5 years, as a long-term saftely measure.

I've not crashed yet, but the constant freezes from all the saving & cloud uploading (probably the main culprit - Steam's cloud saving has always been slow in my experience) is a bit frustrating. Perhaps this would cut down on their frequency somewhat.

 

[wertu234]

I don't have an issue with the autosaves, but its the saving at other times than can bug me

 

[unmerged(758421)]

I came on the forums specifically because of this.

I like playing Ironman, however the amount of saves happening in real time when playing anything above +2 is way too much. At the beginning it isn't so bad, but go in about 200 years and the sheer amount of deals going on and not to mention wars induce so many autosaves it's driving me nuts. I'm playing as Aragon and I have really strong allied relations with Portugal, Norway, Austria and Burgundy (France is no longer in Europe ) and a couple of vassals. Every time I end up in a war with Castile (which is a lot) her allies Great Britain, Papal States, (France in the colonies) all join in as well and between Castile and Britain they share a ridiculous navy and quite a sizable ground army. It has come to a point where I don't look forward to getting any cassus belli because the sheer amount of autosaves happening in real time completely destroy my patience and fun.

Also lucky nation buff needs a slight nerf, as it is it gives them even greater advantage beyond the ones they already posses. Generally, starting off with the amount of provinces as they do is big enough and the defense and moral boost they get is just too good.

 

[Wrathe]

Really wish I knew what you issueless people are doing to make the saves not noticeable. My desktop costed around 2,5k euros when it was built and the OS and EU IV is on a SSD, I even tried to move the steam cloud to the ssd but that didn't do anything at all. The first 100 years go by without issues but at some point the game will start 'stalling' for 2-3 seconds on each save. Basically goes like, see event, hit pause, wait 2-3 seconds and then the game unlocks. Internet is 100/10 but I really doubt it waits for the sync to finish because that would take like 15-30 seconds depending on the age of the game, it just stores it in the steam userdata so I'm pretty sure you could easily fool ironman mode by just copying that file and replacing it prior to exiting the game or something.

Here's a question tho, all you people who seem to have no issues past 200 years at least, is your steam installed on the SSD? Or just the games from steam, because I tried making a symbolic link for the userdata folder and installed EU IV onto the SSD from the steam folder and that did nothing at all.

Sadly Paradox's answer to this is, Buy a dedicated 2k euro machine with nothing except EU IV on it (With no guarantees of working well) AND then we won't call you a savescummer and allow you to get achievements.

 

[unmerged(1584)]

I have a 3-year-old rig, and I hardly notice the autosaves. I suppose it does help that I have a wired internet connection, not wireless.

I like the monthly saves. If they were yearly, say, wouldn't that tempt some people to kill the game after a bad turn of events, and then revert to a 6-month old save? The point of Ironman is to remove such temptations.

 

[goofyballer]

I'd like to chime in as someone who likes the every-decision autosaves, it makes me think about the game and my choices much more deeply. In EU3 I was a habitual reloader when something went wrong, and I like that I have a way to force myself to not do that now.

Although there was the one time last night when my enemy won a siege on my province on January 3 right when I was about to offer peace, and it totally messed up my warscore, so I alt+f4'd and reloaded the January 1 save to re-negotiate the peace I wanted. I'm still a cheater at heart

edit: also occurs to me that you can probably alt+f4 when a crappy decision like comet sighted pops up since it only saves when you select something in the dialog. I haven't yet been tempted to do that on one of these screens, but maybe we should autosave when they first pop up just to be sure!

 

[Glory22]

The devs said it won't change and it's good this way, drop it.

You just said that you won't try to cheat then why need you ironman ? You can do the exact same things in normal mode with yearly save and just don't cheat no ?

...

 

[Bard of Reveran]

I have a 3-year-old rig, and I hardly notice the autosaves. I suppose it does help that I have a wired internet connection, not wireless.

I like the monthly saves. If they were yearly, say, wouldn't that tempt some people to kill the game after a bad turn of events, and then revert to a 6-month old save? The point of Ironman is to remove such temptations.

I can't say it's the connection. Because I have a fairly good internet connection.

The devs said it won't change and it's good this way, drop it.

You just said that you won't try to cheat then why need you ironman ? You can do the exact same things in normal mode with yearly save and just don't cheat no ?

...

From the look of your post, I can clearly say you haven't even bothered reading the other posts. It's the achievements! And besides devs didn't give a feasible answer, so yeah, people don't seem like dropping this. But if you're bothered by it, you can just not look and write in this thread no?

 

[Doctor_Teeth]

I liked Ironman, until my game began crashing every time I reached May 1544. It's crashing when it tries to save the game. Any ideas how to fix a savegame when it's stuck in a cloud?

A lot of people have been having this problem around that general time period. It seems to be related to the Teutonic Order forming Prussia for many of us. Load up your game and see if Prussia is formed just before the autosave that crashes your game.

 

[Bard of Reveran]

In my game Prussia is formed. I am having huge lags but no crash for me.

 

[beckermt]

The Paradox stance on this is really puzzling. Ironman was made for the fans, and . We're not going to cheat if we get a bad event, if so we would play normal. If we really wanted to cheat we could just steamhack to get all the achievements.

SOME fans. I, for one, am pleased with Ironman. Yes, it's slow and yes, the saving happens a lot, but it's worth it because the game experience is more pure.

I would be happy with a technical improvement to the saving features, but mechanically, saving every month and after every decision, is fine with me. (although, saving every time I start a siege is a bit irritating)

 

[Thetitan]

I find the combination of saving on every decision AND every month to be the killer here. I can get up to 5 saves per month, for over a year in a row, and that year takes about 25 min to play. If the game only saved on the events, it would still be Ironman, no reloading if something goes wrong, but the monthly autosave combined with monthly calculations lag, I get to sit 50-75% of my game time loading. That is not playing a game, that is waiting a game.

Keep the saves on decisions as now, but autosave every 6 or 12 months instead.

 

[unmerged(221873)]

Sorry to be annoying but no one replied to this, probably because it cannot be done?

Is there a way to turn ironman game into a regular one? I started an ironman campaign but got tired of the constant saves, can I just convert the game into a regular game, of course with no possibility of going back to iron?