Nifty information, as well as `atmosphere', even in the save game files would be cool.

It would be nice to specify a folder for all the saves in a game.

One nit to pick relates to my own style of saving games. If I want to keep more than one save from a given year I usually just modify the year in the second save, i.e. "1602" and "1602a". The minor irritation I have is that the next save defaults to the modified year, for example "1604a", "1606a," etc., so that unless I manually change it back it keeps going like that. I would prefer it if it defaulted back to the regular year. I'm not sure if that made sense in the English language, but there it is.

A general preference would be to keep the saved game names relatively short, the way SMAC does. It tells you what you need to know but doesn't take up too much space. Joe Bourque's suggestion is well taken, but if you go that route maybe you could have a toggle: "Verbose savegame names" vs. "Terse savegame names" or something like that.

Games could be saved with either text, date or text, civ, map date or whatever..

Saved games should be placed in a subdirectory in the main savedgame directory.

Also, why bother about selecting a name for the savegame. Simply press ctrl+s and everything is done automatically.

How about complete statistics? In an explorer-like interface you could pick just to see the files, or to see the files with the Civ used, the in-game turn, any mods used, the date last modified and maybe the current number of points. Then you could sort them by any of these values, so you could get them alphabetically, by date, by mod used and so on.

(1) As a stertup option, let ME choose the pathname and the first part of the file name, e.g.:
c:
my\romans\pi

(2) The file names should be named so that they will mostly list alphabetically in chronological order, e.g.:
pi_a4000.sav
pi_a0800.sav
pi_b0001.sav
pi_b0500.sav
pi_b0925.sav etc.

Note that I use 'a' for the first age and 'b' for the second, and all dates produce FOUR DIGITS. (It might be even better to use 'f' for first age and 's' for second age.)

My approach still leaves the first-age dates listing in reverse order, but that seems an inevitable result of the way the game models dates.

- toby

Player's name and game year. like this:

"Stuffman 1728 AD"

Then, inside that folder, save the actual games. You could then just save it as a_190.sav or b_3500.sav

I like the 'list of statistics' idea by tniem, although what information to list could be debated about until Civ IV arrives.

It would also be very nice if one could specify a deffault save folder in the game options, with maby optional subfolders for each game.

As for the filenames, the deffaults of CivI
and II worked OK. No need to make them any longer. Very long filenames would only make a mess in explorer. And of course, you could always supply your own filenames the way you like them. Maby even make it possible to specify your own deffault format in the options,ie. _. or whatever.

The extra game info in explorer or the load-game dialog idea is a must.

Please, make on the first game screen the default button "Load last saved game" (with the related name or info showed in a small box).
I hate on SMAC to have to wait every time the loading of INTRO, then press "ESC" to stop it, then hit "LOAD", then (thank you is the current underlined file ) hit enter to load the game I'm currently playing.
And I have skipped the screen "Play the game/Install/Uninstall" that I get if I insert the SMAC CD ROM with autorun ON

Please, make some shortcut!

Each game has its own sub-dir (CIV3\Saves\Gamename\), and the program should know which is the most recent save. Then when you click Open Game, you will receive a list of all the games. Now, the list should have the foll.:-

A little screen shot of the map on the left, which can be enlarged..
Info on the right, like tniem's.
Button to load game (most recent one)
Button to load older save (brings up a list)
User comments..

The saved games themselves therefore can have v. minimalistic names, probably just date and civ..

example:
2000-04-12-Russians-1800AD

example:
2000-04-12-Russians-1800AD

I agree with Silva, as long as it doesn't make the savegames too big. Not more than half a meg.

Autosave: I think you should be able to select how far back the game keeps the autosaves. Now it is 2 turns, maybe having the option for a few more turns. What is more important there, however, is that the autosaves show you which year they were saved. Rather than Auto1, Auto2 etc, they would be Auto1900AD, Auto 1901AD etc.

Some software (like photoshop and microsoft office) adds a new tab to their registered files with information like a thumbnail if it's an image and summery informaiton for office doc's.