Not using the cheat menu.

ie Saving a game before a specific event.

In my current game, I'm 2nd in tech but was 15 or so behind the chinese.
So, I got a boat load of spies and a settler off to China, set up a city near a small town, and then, merrily stole tech's with my spies. Regular tactic, eh?
Before each attempted theft I saved. If the spy stole a tech and returned to my nearby city, great. If she stole and was captured, OK. But, here's the dodgy bit, if she was captured before stealing, I reloaded the game and tried again.

Have I bent the rules, or wrecked the whole game ?
I'm interested in your opinions.

Also if you read the manual the designers expressly point out that you can do this and encourage players to do so.

What I think you'll find though (because it seems to happen to us all after a bit) is that a time will come when you will stop re-loading after a bad outcome. That is for two reasons. First, civ is a long game. For it to be fun it has to stay pacey. It is one of the weaknesses of the basic design that turns progressively take longer and longer. Re-loading takes bags of time and slows the game a lot.

Secondly, once you get to a certain level of skill it starts to spoil your enjoyment of what you achieve if you have re-loaded bad outcomes.

This all runs side by side with another phenomenon. Early on, virtually everyone stops playing if they get badly behind. It is seductive to start a new game free of the drag of remembering all those set-backs and with hope of an easy victory renewed. Thing about this one is it slows down your development because you don't get the chance to face new challenges.

Similarly with only accepting good starts.

I remember with pleasure the first time I accepted a polar location for my capital. And that was the game I learned the power of the Lighthouse (which I'd rarely built before, never mind as WoW of choice). Afterwards I played for a couple of months ONLY ever building the Lighthouse and Magellans (turns out to be a powerful strategy by the way).

So what happens in the end, is that you abandon all this. The temptation remains, though, and what I do is switch of the automatic save feature, which helps with that quite a bit. (Just exactly at this minute I might switch it back on if I can't find a way to stop forgeting when I delay going into revolt until the right year comes along. It's sooo bloody irritating).

Anyway, you'll find your own answers.

I can sort of tell from your posts that what you wouldn't do is to employ re-loads or other obvious "cheats" and then post record scores or comparative games without acknowledging the methods used. That is not so much "cheating" as deceiving the other people posting scores or comparison games. That would certainly be pretty remote from the ethos of Strategy/General and indeed, from what I have seen, of Apolyton boards generally.

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Scouse Git[1]

I'll just ditto what has always been said. In Single Play mode, you are playing for your own enjoyment... do whatever you enjoy.
If you want to post competitive records, that is indeed a different story

If you want to prepare for the REAL CHALLANGE of playing other players, cheating only teaches you bad habits that will come back to haunt you in MP games against smart opponents.

i do save a lot, since my playing time is often interrupted, and this does give me the benefit of a glance at the powergraph, but i avoid the save and reload thing for huts or combat outcomes. seems to me that misses the point of hut popping and combat, which is that they are supposed to be risky. OTOH i will save and reload if i am trying something new which i dont really understand, or if i had a really interesting start position and i want to try it again with a different stategy ( what would have happened if i had gotten that particular set of starting techs, but had NOT gone to war with the Mongols in 2500 BC?) Of course every one (playing SP and not reporting a high score or whatever) can play any way they want but some ways of playing will cuase you to miss certain aspecs of the game. ( i am guilty here too - i tend to enjoy real world maps, but this tends to reduce some of the exploration aspects of the game, and certainly gives me an unfair advantage over the AI, who doesnt start out with my lifetime of knowledge of real world geography)

Because IA tend to have more luck when difficulty increase (she's isnt more smart).

I've "cheat" again, with the cheat menu, to help IA few time...

I used some trick too some time, like using a spy to allow military unit to move throught square controlled by foreign units. But rarely.

I like to play logicaly.

quote: Originally posted by johnmcd on 03-29-2001 05:50 PM Lord, I don't play real world maps, but I know there is the reveal map feature on the cheat menu as I've used it a couple of times when giving up or winning to see what else was going on. Can you not, right at the start, give all the other civs a full world map to compensate them for your education? Would they take advantage of your generosity?

Thats an idea. Of course my knowledge of geography doesnt give me full kwonledge of a civ2 world map (unles ive just played it recently )IIRC reveal map will show huts, resources, as well as detailed terrain. I dont know huts (obviously - although i am aware there is a pattern) resource specials, or teh detailed way civ2 handles real world terrain (abstracted from actual physical geography) so doing reveal maps would be different from sharing with the AI's my actual state of geopgraphic knowledge (and of course there are some areas of the world - like Siberia and Central Asia where my knwoledge is weaker)

I'll think about what you have said, but my inclination is not to do it, (or perhaps just to share my unrevealed map - whic should help the AI's a bit) but to shift to random maps as I get better.