[IDEA]: Fewer Ironman saves; save yearly, and every time the menu is opened

[TheBloke]

Someone just raised a change request, asking for Ironman to save less frequently: [1.4.1.8] (Change request) Ironman saves too frequently.


The OP of that thread asked why it had to save so much, and couldn't it just save only on game exit. I pointed out that it was to avoid you cheating by reloading when something bad happened; with the current system, you can at most reload to the start of the current month.

Then I had a thought: how about if Ironman only saved once yearly, but then also saved whenever you open the Menu? The yearly saves would be for protection against crashes and so on. The Menu save would prevent you ever reloading in case of something bad happening.

So the behaviour would be: Whenever you open the menu, the Autosave message pops up, and the menu does not appear until the Autosave completes.

The result:

1. It saves the game nearly twelve times less frequently
   1. So it runs a lot faster when played at high speed.
2. You can cheat even less than you can now - you can never reload to avoid bad stuff, because as soon as you open the menu to load, it saves again!

Perhaps one optimisation, to prevent annoyance: only autosave when the menu is opened if the last autosave happened in this same load and was more than a week ago. That would prevent endless saving if you keep opening the menu to change settings.

The key part of the optimisation is 'in this same load'. This optimisation would allow the user to open the menu a few times in succession, even across a few days, without it saving every time. It would thus allow him to cheat once to reload back to nearly one week ago, in case of bad event - but only once, it would not let him keep cheating over and over, and that's because the "don't save if last saved less than a week ago" part only applies until he reloads.

Example:

1. Nov 11 1444: User starts a 1444 game
2. Jan 1st 1445: Yearly autosave
3. Oct 20 1445: User opens the menu = SAVE
4. Oct 23 1445: User opens the menu again, = doesn't save, because it's <7 days since last save
5. Oct 26 1445: User gets a bad event!
6. Oct 26 1445: User opens the menu again (= doesn't save, still <7 days since last save) and reloads; he loads Oct 20 1445
   1. He can only load back 6 days, not to start of month (26 days in this example) like he can currently in Ironman
   2. He can avoid this bad event.. but only once, as you will see:
7. Oct 20 1445: User plays again from reload
8. Oct 26 1445: User gets a bad event again!
9. Oct 26 1445: User opens the menu to reload... = SAVE, because although it's still <7 days since last save, he has since loaded the game again - this is a new load
   1. So he cannot avoid the bad event a second time, only once, and he can only load back 7 days at most.
   2. This is even more secure than current Ironman, but it uses far fewer save games to achieve it.

 

[Mortheim]

Love this idea. Monthly saves are annoying.

 

[glennbob]

People will just ctrl+alt+delete out of the game and manually end task if this was the case.

 

[Alerias]

Right. Thats why we need monthly save. Aint no game code that will autosave on Alt+F4 or a killed process.

 

[TheBloke]

People will just ctrl+alt+delete out of the game and manually end task if this was the case.

Right. Thats why we need monthly save. Aint no game code that will autosave on Alt+F4 or a killed process.

Well the reason I am excluding that possibility is that I thought people can already do that? The game only syncs with the Steam cloud when you exit the game properly. I am sure I have read that if you force-close the game, it doesn't sync to the cloud and you can thus load back to when it did last sync?

Is that not the case?

 

[glennbob]

It syncs regardless, unless of course you fully close steam, but if you do this, you risk your game losing its ironman status, so nobody really does it. ctrl+alt+del will allow you to close eu4 with your idea and go back 11 months and 30 days if they never open the menu. Great masses of bad gameplay can be replayed, at least monthly saves a are a total necessity. I have no problem with the current ironman situation, its already been streamlined, any further streamlining would just be extreme and may as well have the option removed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It syncs regardless, unless of course you fully close steam, but if you do this, you risk your game losing its ironman status, so nobody really does it. ctrl+alt+del will allow you to close eu4 with your idea and go back 11 months and 30 days if they never open the menu. Great masses of bad gameplay can be replayed, at least monthly saves a are a total necessity. I have no problem with the current ironman situation, its already been streamlined, any further streamlining would just be extreme and may as well have the option removed.

The yearly scum thing would let you scum for PUs with enough patience. The potential amount you could get if you're willing to reload until a 20 year old king dies without an heir is incredible. WC with literally all majors in Europe in PU gogo.

That said, an encrypted local file would prevent most cheating, and be a lot less annoying.

 

[Casadoom]

People will just ctrl+alt+delete out of the game and manually end task if this was the case.

So what?

If someone wants to go through the constant annoyance of save scumming in such a unorthodox way, I say let them. Personally, I think it is more worth making Ironman more enjoyable for normal players than making sure no achievement hunter gets an undeserved achievement. While I love the concept of ironman, I find it hard to rationalize playing ironman when months take so long.

 

[TimurLank]

You can solve this problem by two things:

- autosave WHEN you get event and autosave after clicking event option only if option is based on random chance (50% chance for heir to die)
- autosave when battle starts and autosave after battle ends only if battle lasted too long (preventing autosave on pointless carpet battles)

Autosave should be disabled when:

- doing any kind of diplomacy. This is so obvious that it's completely ridiculous it does autosave. For example when you ask for peace, military alliance, or prety much anything you know outcome of this on screen (yes or no before you send the diplomat). So give me 1 good reason why should this stay as this.
- you reach 1st of the month. If you follow those 2 simple rules, there is just no way for player to cheat. It's even harder to cheat than it is now plus makes it MUCH more enjoyable especially with ppl who doesn't have extremely powerful machines.

 

[grommile]

Right. Thats why we need monthly save. Aint no game code that will autosave on Alt+F4 or a killed process.

Actually, a non-zero number of Windows games - EU4 being the example of which I am immediately aware - will autosave on Alt+F4, because Alt+F4 in Windows-speak does not tell a process "die now", but rather "please close yourself gracefully", and EU4 ironman includes "save the game" as part of closing itself gracefully. (You're quite correct about process kill, of course.)

 

[Sairoh]

Actually I would enjoy a small window to fix some dumb mistakes like forgetting to assign a leader to your army and such. It's really fustrating that you can't go back a day to correct an stupid error.

What I really would like is the choice for ironman to be local so I can use my SSD. Cloud just isn't fast enough.

 

[delpiero1234]

The monthly saves are not that bad. Paradox should fix more important stuff like unlocking idea groups 7 & 8 earlier or fixing CoP.

 

[Casadoom]

The monthly saves are not that bad. Paradox should fix more important stuff like unlocking idea groups 7 & 8 earlier or fixing CoP.

Last time I checked they can fix more than one issues at a time. Plus, this is a relatively easy fix.

 

[delpiero1234]

Last time I checked they can fix more than one issues at a time. Plus, this is a relatively easy fix.

Each time Paradox attempts to fix something the game gets worse.

 

[DDRJake]

On release, ironman saved:

At the start of every battle
At the end of every battle
Every time you reacted to a diplomatic request
Every month
Every time a revolt happened
Every time you sent a diplomat

And many other times that I'm forgetting.

Honestly, we're spoiled by monthly autosaves.

None the less, I like the idea of yearly + menu opening. I think savescum prevention is a non-issue. Those who want to get around it will find a way.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On release, ironman saved:

At the start of every battle
At the end of every battle
Every time you reacted to a diplomatic request
Every month
Every time a revolt happened
Every time you sent a diplomat

And many other times that I'm forgetting.

Honestly, we're spoiled by monthly autosaves.

None the less, I like the idea of yearly + menu opening. I think savescum prevention is a non-issue. Those who want to get around it will find a way.

No joke. At some point, people will just hack their achievements directly sigh.

 

[quickclay]

Agree with you totally (I'm the original request OP). I'd rather have an enjoyable, faster Ironman mode than worry about someone scumming for achievements in a very slow and awkward way.

So what?

If someone wants to go through the constant annoyance of save scumming in such a unorthodox way, I say let them. Personally, I think it is more worth making Ironman more enjoyable for normal players than making sure no achievement hunter gets an undeserved achievement. While I love the concept of ironman, I find it hard to rationalize playing ironman when months take so long.

 

[TheBloke]

No joke. At some point, people will just hack their achievements directly sigh.

Yeah exactly. There's already a sophisticated cheating utility available - Cheat Engine or something? - where people can do it easily: much more easily than save scumming. So yeah, no need to put in complicated checks to stop people determined to cheat; they can already do so much more easily.

I can understand a purpose in preventing save scumming in general. It's the psychological benefit of knowing that not only won't you reload, but you can't.

But I think my solution handles that - the default, normal game behaviour is you can't save scum. And it prevents that even more effectively than current once-a-month Ironman does. The user could only do so, potentially, by bringing up Task Manager and killing the game. I believe that will be enough of a step to stop most people doing it.

What's required is for there to be a bit of a hurdle, and for that hurdle to require doing something outside the normal game systems. Enough of a hurdle that the player feels "I'm cheating here. I don't want to be a cheat."

That's why normal players never use the cheating engine thing I mentioned to unlock any Achievement in Ironman. They don't want to cheat. But they will reload a save if they're not prevented from doing so, because that kinda doesn't feel so much like cheating - it's standard game mechanics. So they appreciate Ironman removing that ability from them. If there's still ways out-of-game ways around that, that's OK - so long as there's a hurdle, and the method feel like cheating, like Force Killing the game.

 

[glennbob]

Just fix something else, this issue isn't an issue. DDRJake is right, we are truly spoilt with monthly saves, and I genuinely feel that more streamlining would just negate the usefulness of Ironman completely. Feel free to repeatedly shoot me down, but I'm just giving my opinion.

 

[Wagonlitz]

Just fix something else, this issue isn't an issue. DDRJake is right, we are truly spoilt with monthly saves, and I genuinely feel that more streamlining would just negate the usefulness of Ironman completely. Feel free to repeatedly shoot me down, but I'm just giving my opinion.

I agree with you.

Well the reason I am excluding that possibility is that I thought people can already do that? The game only syncs with the Steam cloud when you exit the game properly. I am sure I have read that if you force-close the game, it doesn't sync to the cloud and you can thus load back to when it did last sync?

Is that not the case?

It is indeed possible - and it is even possible to scrap the entire session. If you cut the internet connection before exiting steam won't sync I think. What does work though - or at least used to - is to revind the entire session by crashing the computer; why anybody would do that on purpouse to get achievements is beyond me though. After booting the system again make sure to move the local ironman save outside the steam folder before starting steam; when EU4 is started steam lets you start from where the crashed session begun. If you move the removed local savegame back, you regain your progress. So it is possible, but who is going to intentionally crash their system just to correct something? Why not play without ironman instead then?