Autosaving Issue in Ironman Mode

[Hetzerr]

Because you can close the game without saving with good old ctrl+alt+del and erase that bad war you started

There are plenty of games that can save if you force-close the game or if it crashes.

 

[Gnufan]

I'm almost finished with my ironman Oman game. It is the last time I will play ironman because of the constant saves. It just gets so damn annoying in the mid and late game were saves take 1-3 sec and there are events popping up everywhere.

@Samsonov: I'm pretty sure that's impossible.

 

[unmerged(787246)]

Im playing on quite an old machine, so the saves didn't really matter to me (my games run like half as fast as on the brand new rig of a friend anyway, ironman or not). If a month took 1 or 2 sec longer because of that autosave or the occasional save after an event/battle, oh well, so be it. I need the mode to stop me from reloading (it became a really bad habit in EU3 for me).

But right now, i don't think i will ever start another ironman game again. It was around 1600 when it started to become really annoying (colonial wars, more events, etc). A lot of events pop up on the first of a month, so you get 2 saves subsequently after each other, then maybe on the 4th of that month a battle ends, after that you realize you need to spend papal influence before its capped at the max, then you get another event somewhere right before you win a siege, and before you are halfway trough the month the game saved like 5 or 6 times already (yes this is a bit exaggerated, but it happens sometimes). It comes to the point that in a big war, you have to hit pause after almost every action you take, just to circumnavigate the lag from the constant saving. Obviously it takes more time on my poor PC, but its not like you dont notice it on a state of the art one either.

While i can understand that this makes cheating (reloading) harder, i think its also a bit over the top, as it breaks the flow of the game.

I really don't think the majority of players kill the game after they lost a battle or an unexpected nation honors a call to arms (or one of the other various reasons i used to reload in EU3). A "save on exit" (like in Mount and Blade for instance) would probably suffice for 97,6% of the people that play in ironman mode. And the other 2,4% will cheat no matter what anyway, as soon as they figure out how, some just seem to need that to stroke their ego's. And it feels (i know that's not the intention but it's still really annoying) like we're all punished to make the life for this 2,4% harder.

 

[Skyhunteren]

The entire point is at saves at each decision so you can't quit out and return to an earlier save when something goes wrong. If you don't want that, why not just play in non-ironman mode and save whenever you like?

But sometimes it simply gets out of hand. My computer take a few seconds to save each time. Normally not a big deal, but quit irretating when I want to speed 5 a few years to just improve my country, wait for my diplomats and whatsnot.

The really crazy thing though happened when I got into a war betwen two coalitions. I had a 3 small stacks fighting different American tribes, a small and a big stack in Brittain, a few stacks in Denmark and northen germany and a couple of stacks in eastern europe. All fighting at once. Autosaving when each engagement starts and stops -.-' It was the never ending battle of save gaming.

 

[HawkSeraph]

I tried out Ironman, but the constant autosaves are too much. I can't take sitting around 4/5 of the time staring at "Autosaving..."

Shame about the achievements though.

 

[Atris]

Just posting to support the current Ironman mechanics, dont change it.

The constant autosaving can be annoying at times, but overall I am absolutely loving it. Good Job!

 

[Checco]

In Ironman mode, unless I play in Asia (where you make less monthly deals), I saw that the time spent autosaving is actually longer than the time spent playing the game, and this looks like a nonsense to me. Not to mention how frustrating it is.

I agree that Ironman wishes to keep track of each and every deal and decision taken, otherwise there is little point in calling them 'achievements'.

But if you realize that most of the time you are watching a hourglass symbol rotating upon itself, you get tired quickly.

I started an Ironman yesterday with Burgundy, and stopped after few minutes and 3 months of game, not to use it ever again unless it actually allows you to play.

 

[unmerged(781890)]

I tried playing my France game again today... it saves every 5 seconds or so, and every save takes 5-7 seconds. Sometimes it saves multiple times on the same day. I like Ironman, but I like the game more. It would be great if I could have both.

 

[arcain]

Had to stop playing a great game as england today because as soon as i reached the year 1700 the game became unplayable: every autosave after every single action takes around 4 to 5 seconds upload-time. Change something!!

 

[Zironic]

There are plenty of games that can save if you force-close the game or if it crashes.

There are? I haven't come across any.

While it's reasonably trivial to save on close or alt+f4, it would be very very difficult to implement saves on crash or process termination.

I agree that Ironman wishes to keep track of each and every deal and decision taken, otherwise there is little point in calling them 'achievements'.

I feel that you're terribly misunderstanding the purpose of achievements.

 

[pileofkyle]

I support Ironman mode as is, otherwise its not ironman.

 

[arcain]

I like the concept and idea of Ironman aswell. But obviously you haven't played a late-game with a big save-file yet.

 

[DSwann]

You also have to remember that calculations for everything also happen on a month to month basis IIRC so the monthly autosave itself may not be the culprit for the 1-3 sec pause each month

 

[coldsteel]

The further along I'm getting the more it's been lagging. My iron-man game has become quite unplayable at this point.
It's clearly an issue with the frequency of auto-save because I'm not seeing the same lag in my non iron-man game.

 

[arcain]

I guess the lags occur because every save-game needs to be uploaded into the steam-cloud (every single auto-save with every single action). My current save-game is about 24mb, definitely too much for an acceptable game-flow.

 

[zedyue]

What I want is a feature that is a mini-ironman so I can play my games in a normal fashion but just disables the console. That's all I ever wanted.

 

[Bard of Reveran]

What I want is a feature that is a mini-ironman so I can play my games in a normal fashion but just disables the console. That's all I ever wanted.

Exactly! That's what I thought of Ironman in the first place.

 

[unmerged(781890)]

I like the automatic saves very much in principle actually, if saving took less than 2 seconds it would be great.

 

[MCam]

I think the biggest problem is that the game creates a whole new save file every time, rather than just patching the existing one.

 

[anomalacaris]

I think the biggest problem is that the game creates a whole new save file every time, rather than just patching the existing one.

Indeed! :rofl:
That's an optimization that will greatly help.