posted 04-03-99 01:37 PM ET            

saving an IM game should negate the bonus. if you cant play the thing in one sitting, your not really "iron" anyway. this would make IM worth the +100%. if your game crashes and you have to reload? oh well.

BTW, I play as "Iron" anyway. that save reload concept of playing is boring. so you didn't get enought minerals to complete granny rocker next turn. kill the mindworms and get on with the game.

ALL my statements are IMHO. if you don't agree, well your statements are also IYHO.

posted 04-03-99 06:48 PM ET            

As I see it, the whole point of Ironman is that the game won't let you save the game, try out a flimpsy strategy (or roll the dice multiple times) and then go back if it didn't work out.

If so, couldn't the game keep track of previous savegames, and then mark each predecessor as obsolete when a new one is saved? Wouldn't this keep the original spirit of the Ironman rule? (or are there some timelimits involved here?)

posted 04-03-99 06:58 PM ET            

Hope that helped,

posted 04-05-99 02:57 PM ET            

I think you will find the game much more enjoyable played straight IM, but if not... just don't play IM. Can you cheat IM? Sure. That's not the point though. IM is to keep the honest ppl honest. If you really think it's about trying to impress ppl, then just take a save game and hex edit the score and save yourself some time.

posted 04-06-99 02:33 PM ET            

Don't play IM. IM can't make someone not save/reload. It just acts as a sort of reminder for those ppl that really do want to play it straight. It's like giving your keys to the bartender. It gives you an opportunity to think do you really want to do this. The bartender WILL give you the keys, they are yours after all, You CAN save/reload it's your computer and game, after all.

They could delete the previous saved game when you successfully save a new one. This way it would not be necessary to close the game, and would address part of the issue you are concerned with, that of not having to close the game. And they could also do some tricksy stuff to make sure that the save file was not copied off. (but if you do that then you are raising the red cape of challenge to hackers)

But the reason that they don't write games with P90's in mind is the same reason they don't write DOS games anymore. The assumption unspoken assumption is that anyone who cannot afford a more currnet machine will probably not be the person that is going to be able or willing to buy new games. And it's a generalization, but those people will more likely be pirating the game anyway. (I'm not accusing you of this)

So rather than banging on Brian, why not do what you will have to do eventually anyway.

1) Admit to yourself you are a gamer.
2) Realize that you are taking one turn when everyone else is taking ten.
3) Go buy that racehorse you want and be done with it. Or better yet build it yourself.

I.E. I just got a brand new server speed u2scsi cheetah for my pc, GOD is it nice. Is a $500+ hard drive worth it? When I consider what _my_ time is worth, then yes.

Accept what you are. Don't skimp on your joy just because gaming isn't considered serious. You don't have to go crazy, but you can get a celeron/mb/64MBpc100ram/case for under $500 and use all your old peripherals.

Hell you only have one life... do you really want to be on your deathbed knowing that other ppl got to play ten times as many turns of SMAC in their life as you did?

posted 04-07-99 12:02 PM ET         

This issue is this: the point of Ironman is *not* to penalize the user for saving, but to change the concept of saving from "I wonder what will happen if I..." to "I have to go to bed now."

The game is not penalizing you for saving, onepaul, it's just fulfilling the point of Ironman: NO SAVING FOR RESTORE PURPOSES IS ALLOWED AT ALL. Firaxis might have has a "no saving at all" option, but people do need to get some sleep. So Firaxis wisely made an option that allows you to play the game in "do or die" mode, but allows you to take a break for other things.

If you use Ironman saved game files for other purposes, then call it what it is: cheating. I'm not saying it's good or bad, but it's clearly against the intent of the Ironman rule.

posted 04-07-99 12:27 PM ET            

"I can resist to anything, except temptations"
(Oscar Wilde?)

I thought they made IM for consistent scoring comparisons sake, in the first place.
Of course you can use it to enforce to yourself a honest behaviour, or if you can't help to harm yourself (YOU countlessly reload even if you know that's boring!).

I played IM in CivII, w/out the need of the bonus, but only after I (thought I) squeezed every drop of juice from the game, and could cruise auto-pilot singlehanded through early and mid game tricks.

There's another point to it.
I used to play chess. Now I sometimes enjoy gambling at the roulette (no consequential meaning intended).
In chess, a lot of after-analyzing is needed to improve, you must test and check any (significant) variant that comes to your mind. But when you play, no regrets, you could have foreseen it, no random events. You're not even allowed to change your mind once you touched a piece.

Here in SMAC, pods contents and battle results ARE a result of random dice-rolling.
Of course a self-accepted experienced IronMan can and has to take the odds into account in his strategy. But it is also natural to say 'hey, my perfect game ruined because of a single hit of pure sheer bad luck!', while really you were running on a razor edge. (but then if you succeeded you could show a legal top rating, so where's the black and where's the white?)

In Civ I developed tactics to face the possiblity of barbarians coming out of a goody hut and to minimize the damage.
Here I can't resist yet to pop a pod with my backlines unguarded, and if eight angry boils pop up? For now I'm still in the "OK, I'll learn it and do it right. Next time" phase.

It was said IM is made to HELP you straighten your back, but if you cheat you get the scoring anyway, and scoring is just exactly the mean they devised as incentive to avoid reloads, so something went the wrong way with it.
I'd agree with the cousin, if only we all weren't experiencing that crash wave lately!
He proposes to nullify the bonus if you save, and that's ok (milder and gradual one could be decrease it for every reload), but you'd simply use AutoSave1.
And I think it's also good to deter, thus I was wondering to enforce a reboot, not a simple game restart, even if I'd label onepaul's ideas cute, not silly.

One thing I do now is customize rules with No scattering=NO pods.

In CivII if you activate the Edit mode during the game, you got a (CHEAT) tag in the hall of fame. Here the number of reloads could just be recorded along with your score, maybe taking out of the count the loads that occur a given number of hours after the save, for the ones who can't afford hours of countinuous gameplay (is anyone willing to repeatedly tamper his system's date?).

Can you really hex edit the score in a savegame? Or is it rather calculated from game values, standings and parameters and recorded when you finish? You should edit the population, commerce, techs, etc. you have, that should be evident and easily spotted.
So if I reload, I still consider my scoring fair, I simply biased the random and took the bad luck out of the game.

Of course in the long run I'll get far more satisfaction in a honest and really fair gained score. But since you can get the real value of your skills only in comparing them with others, or you go MultiPlay, or you need a reliable scoring system (or you play the hermit). In this perspective, thrash the bonus, and simply mark the score as saveless (alas, that can be easier to edit...), provided they also eradicate the bugs and give us a crashsafe program.

Alchemist MariOne
(trying to convert iron into gold)

posted 04-07-99 01:47 PM ET            

OK, maybe there is a better way to do it. But when I suggested it, (yes it was me) the way I painted it so that it would more likely be done was that really it didn't need much to do it, since we were really just trying to keep the "honest people honest". In other words a LOW COST HIGH VALUE feature. (in fact I toyed with the idea of offering to implement it for nothing, but figured people probably do that all the time) Which I think it is. You have to admit IM is an easy feature to implement if you don't go to too much trouble to prevent hackers. The score bonus is ok, but that wasn't the original idea. In fact without the score bonus, I think you may not have ever asked this question. I just though to mark the save file IRON MAN like Brian had marked save files CHEATER in civ2. Personally that would have been enough, and not tempted people who really didn't want to play IM, but did anyway for the score bonus; forcing, as you noticed, people to exit the game in order to reload. I infer that he wanted to encourage people to play IM which is fine, but maybe with the score bonus, it should have been tightened up little more bit to discourage save/reload workarounds. But basically I'm just ecstatic that the game has the feture at all! (I mean, seriously, I'm generally a curmudgeon, but this is one hell of a game!)

MoSe:

Exactly right. If you play IM it forces you to think and be careful. EG Wait a turn so you have all your movement and can run from a pod boil. Better yet have a second unit to hit the boil or provide a way out in the case of a full 8. It also keeps you in the right frame of mind for multiplay. Mostly though, and most importantly, it's more FUN.

I don't know if you can hex edit the score easily, I haven't looked. Clearly it's possible though.

posted 04-09-99 03:29 PM ET         

Up until last night, I'd never had any major problems with the "missile range bug". Oh sure, I�d have the odd city get nailed by a couple of conventional missiles, but it was usually nothing serious. Usually I�d think, "now where did they come from?" and assume some nearby ship had launched them.

So last night I�m working on my first Ironman game, and feeling all very proud of myself, when out of nowhere comes a planet buster and takes out my best city! You know the one I�m talking about: WonderWorld, the production capital of your empire, where you build all your wonders.

Immediately I�m suspicious. It was nailed by the Spartans, who are waaaaay on the other side of the globe � and I�ve never seen a Spartan naval unit. Suddenly I realize that I�m a victim of the infinite range missile "feature"!

It�s then that I remember playing Ironman. My last save game would be quitting time the night before, maybe 40 years ago. Now I�m faced with the dilemma: play on or restore?

Restoring would defeat the purpose of Ironman, not to mention having to replay 40 game turns just to compensate for one grossly unfair (not to mention tactically impossible) event. But wait, I say to myself, just grit your teeth and play on. After all, they had ICBMs in the 60s that could nuke a city from the other side of the world. All right, I say, but then I should be able to nuke their cities from infinite range too! Good point, I concede to myself.

It is at this point that two more options present themselves. Firstly, I can stop playing this &*%#ing game altogether. The appeal of this option is surprising. Secondly, I can run my OWN �Ironman� game. I�ll just turn the Ironman feature off in the game and let the autosave proceed. I will then ONLY restore if something grossly unfair like this happens.

Right now I�m stuck between the final two options, leaning towards an uninstall.

Anyhow, to those who have never experienced the infinite range missile �feature�, let me give you fair warning: if it happens to you in Ironman mode, you will NOT be happy. Take it from me, run your OWN Ironman game by exercising self-discipline with your saved games, only restoring when presented with a gross travesty of injustice.

posted 04-09-99 05:46 PM ET            

It would be REALLY nice if firaxis would list the bugs they know about, and are/are not working on, or those that they actually consider features. It makes a difference to IM since we don't want to _cheat_ but if our game is ruined because of a BUG, then reloading is the proper response, IMO. Also which FAVORABLE bugs (prototype cost workaround, etc) are intended... so we know whether it legit to use them as well. This is important for MP as well.

It would also stop the endless complaints about the same thing over and over. People just wan't to know they are heard.

posted 04-14-99 08:39 AM ET            

I don't care showing off or boasting.
I play for my own fun, take the challenge try to improve.
But then, since I don't think I'm the best player around, I'd like to say
"that's my best so far, can anyone show me better or faster or smarter way to play (or to win)?". And I'd like to compare my games with others, skipping all cheating achieved scores.
Coz finally score is the first sintethic (I mean brief, concise(sp?)) mean to compare success where so many different strategies may be followed.