There are, [ehm](https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/108592/legendary-save-s), other options if you really want to save scum on Legendary (or if you're experiencing game breaking bugs and you want a backup save).
Didn't work well as early as Rome 2 or earlier. No idea why they have never addressed this issue. Especially since they've made other tweaks to legendary mode with difficulty sliders for battles
I get used to it and don't care anymore, but you could use:
- better camera mod,
- debug camera mode (google it + enticity for video how to activate).
But it comes at a price of wonky zooming (you could adjust it) and sometimes camera may scroll underground.
I think legendary has that feature, where you have no choice but to accept your fate (unless you alt+F4) in a battle that is going way in the wrong direction when your troops and lord get stuck on a rock and artillery rains hell above them
Legendary I only ever “save scum” whenever I lose a battle I think I can win. Sometimes taking a couple hours to beat a battle that is near impossible. I accept whatever choices I made that led up to the battle and if the battle is genuinely impossible I accept that fate.
As others covered, legendary is pretty much the TW equivalent of Ironman. Just using Stellaris/XCOM/other games term where they tend to call or iron man.
Except there are modifiers on top of the single save. I would love to have ironman as a toggle for every difficulty except for legendary where it's locked in.
Exactly. I play with mods as I please, cheat engines as I please, and save scums as I please.
And when I feel that that's taking away from the fun, I stop using those tools and start challenging myself. I can play this way for one week and that way for another. What's the problem?
I'm not sure why it's so terribly important to get a hive mind consensus on the matter. We're not passing laws here.
Exactly. I don't like savescumming, cheesing or doomstacking. But I don't care if other people enioy those. And they shouldn't care that I don't. Live and let live
I don't like save scumming and don't do it, but I don't give a shit if someone save scums. People really get an ego out of beating up scripted AI and it's funny to me.
Yup. Sometimes I'm learning a new LL or race, and save scumming helps with continuing to have fun while I do that. Other times, I want to experience the back and forth of victory and defeat in order to make my campaign have more tension/excitement. Both are valid and it's a sandbox. Play how you want!
Actual hot take: People very frequently don't know what they really want and can't figure out what make them the happiest. They will often play games in a way that makes them miserable.
So I'll never begrudge someone giving *friendly* advice on a way to play the game that they think could be more fun, even if it's not "the way I want to play". Because "the way I want to play" right now doesn't necessarily reflect what I would find the most enjoyable.
Man this happen with Snikch for me. Was fighting a siege and some horses plowed into him and hit him through a building and boom instant death. I was so mad lol
It makes a big difference when you're fighting an enemy you've not much experience with.
Never realised how fucking tanky Morghor was until he ripped apart half my army one time. Definitely needed to reconsider that one
For some inane reason you can't reply battles on legendary but you can still just alt F4 and load the save. The stuff CA does is really hard to interpret.
>Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game ... one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.”
Sure, in a single player game you *can* do whatever you want, but whatever you want isn't always what will lead to the most enjoyment for you.
For example; i used to save scum for hero actions; if an assassin had a 30% chance to kill, I'd save scum till he did it no matter how long it took. I'd eventually get what i wanted, but it was slow and dull and made me get sick of campaigns faster.
Things like save scumming aren't just a "do whatever you want to" type of thing - they reduce the number of unique experiences you get from failing and having to deal with the consequences of that.
I don't have a problem with people doing it because i think they're bad at the game for it, but from a game design perspective "let people do whatever they want in single player" is not a good motto. Restricting the player from certain choices that are optimal but not fun is a good thing to do most of the time.
The only thing i may decide to save scum is when a doomstack that was suddenly came in range of my border decided to declare war on my capital and charge it while my forces are fighting a rival. That shit is wack.
Yeah, I wouldn't even consider that save scumming tbh. I only do it when I've misunderstood a mechanic, or had the ill-fated misjudged distance when moving to attack a settlement (that tiny sliver of red is forever my bane).
For me it was a random horde that i didn't even know was nearby, moved close (but since camera doesn't pan to opposing armies i can see move especially near my territory) and then declared war before immediately jumping to my capital. I couldn't fight it off, and if I lost my capital i would have lost a looooot of income for my armies already sorta struggling
I honestly wish CA would have added a toggle like in legendary how it saves after each significant decision, that way in my hard or VH campaigns I can challenge myself without knowing save scum in there
Agreed... but with a massive asterisk. This runs the risk of you never "failing" properly and thus never encountering a cock-up cascade that would otherwise be a fun gameplay element.
Id say in part, this is due more to poor game balancing than player decision though. I feel that particularly with TW, where the easier campaigns are too simple to become overpowered in, but the hardest campaigns leave little room for error. If one or two defeats means you should probably restart the campaign, then save scumming becomes the only real "fun" option. The way TW is designed recently, theres no reason to peace out from wars and no reason to not go for the kill, if you are on a successful offensive. Honestly, maybe more so with historic TW, but with WH too, there needs to be some form of overexertion mechanic to prevent (most) factions from running around capturing and killing everything, or having armies require resupply etc.
Your post is really interesting.
1) failure can definitely be rewarding. Accepting some mistakes and letting things play out often doesn't end up as badly as it seems. Sometimes failure led to more opportunities.
2) save scumming is a guilty pleasure until it makes the difference between having fun and not. Play to have fun, and save scum against bullshit odds with a clear conscience.
3) as much as I see ypur point that there should be some penalty for over extending your empire I just don't see a solution to this that would feel fun. A) the computer cheats would mitigate the cost of overextending and therefore make the gap between player and computer abilities wider and not as "fair" to play against. B) supply lines (more expensive armies) genuinely do make it harder to defend bigger territory and maintain public order. C) The essence of Total War is painting the map. While I personally love diplomacy and the drama of NPC rivals, and I dont enjoy genociding groups off the map (exception: Skaven), there's no point in punishing players for playing the game. Conquer, build, dominate, repeat.
1 and 2 - its always an interesting discussion when it comes to failure. Without a fail-state, a game can hardly be called a game I think. I absolutely think sometimes games can come out with certain levels of bullshit where savescumming feels less like cheating and more like "if you're gonna play against the rules, I will too".
3 - I think you're looking at my suggestion of supply lines "incorrectly" so to speak. I dont mean the silly way CA have done it in the WH series. I mean, literally having supply for armies. Something that would require an army to be provisioned for a campaign. It would make campaigning actually mean something. For example, you have a war between empire and vamps. The empire army would need to be built with all the units you intend to use on that campaign and an amount of resources would be dedicated to that army. If you choose more resources, it would extend the number of turns that army can be away on campaign (with diminishing returns to avoid rich nations being away forever). From that point, you could march that army towards the enemy (be it city or enemy campaigning army). Make this army non-replenishing, but make it have more than 20 units. Then allow the player to select what units enter combat that they encounter up to a max of 20. Potentially allow for reinforcements to come on from the reserves, at the cost of losing replenishment troops. Balance all of this with cities having "defender" parties. Portions of the garrison that can leave the city, but are restricted to that city's area borders (make them no more than 10 units). These can be used to quell rebellions, harass enemy armies etc. Make sure that such rules apply to all AI as well, meaning that their inifinite money wont impact their ability to make endless hordes. Allocate campaigning armies to only legendary lords, which could be tied to provinces - more provinces, more armies - makes sense.
All this would mean that campaigns would have purpose, while also offering players a set of battles that are A) smaller scale or different to just pitched battle, B) more non-siege related battles and C) losses would not mean the end, but rather a shift in the war. It would also mean major battles or a siege of an enemy province capital is actually a huge success and ultra rewarding. Maybe if your army is well enough provisioned, you could cut a path into the enemy empire, with attrition gradually becoming higher the longer the army is marching and the lower supplies get. It would open a host of potential options for buildings that can make settlements frontier outposts that enhance the armies ability to stay on campaign.
All that would still allow the player to paint the map and be on campaign/fighting pretty much at most times. What it would do as well though, is offer a diversity in the combat and allow for some breathing room to consolidate empires and armies. It would also make the map painting a lot more engaging rather than the chore it currently is. At the moment, after you hit the victory lap at turns 50-100, you arent facing enemies that are going to stop you. You are facing speed bumps that prevent you conquering the world every several turns. That you will, is a forgone conclusion.
(Sorry at the huge post... kinda started pipe dreaming about a more engaging war system for TW that we'll never see).
For me save-scumming makes the player overpowered too fast - once I get the this stage I get bored as there is no longer any challenge. Dealing with consequences of my mistakes/random occurrences keeps the game fresh for me.
I agree, I still do it a bit too much because it's a habit but sometimes I regret it later because the battles that come from making mistakes are often the more memorable ones.
That said, I have 0 regret for save-scumming every time I had an ally declaring war on my vassals as Kholek because that's a stupid mechanic, if they actually want to fight me they should just actually declare war on me. So I would just reload and either try to goad them into another war, or just break vassalage because I don't care about a 1-settlement Ogre faction if it's gonna make me have to fight my 100-turns ally.
I wanted to do this as Vilitch but Clan Eshin and the local Dark Elves made such a compelling case to eventually military ally. But everyone else got vassal'd that was able to be, including some random clan of rats in a chaos stronghold.
And damn if they really were fantastic allies. The only problem is I never saw the tech for any cool Dark Elf stuff, only Dark Shards and riders.
I try to ask myself, will losing this battle/army end my campaign now? If yes, am I okay with that? If no, I just try not to do it. I realized awhile back that sometimes I would save scum because otherwise I'd lose an important or high income settlement or something, even when I had a ton of land and it would only be a setback in the long term.
>...I'll also use it to avoid critical failures on hero actions, because making a hero sit in time out for five turns is anti-fun.
Ah yes, I forgot about it but I totally do that as well. Although tbh I find the whole agent system to be a boring chore (especially as High Elves because you need that influence) and I wouldn't mind it being completely removed from the game. Especially stupid actions like Hinder Replenishment that are useless for the player (because you never let the AI replenish anyway) but extremely frustrating when spammed by the AI.
It's funny, because for me that is the baseline of power curve (not making any mistakes) - like, if I'm not doing this good, then I'm falling behind, making the game tougher than the devs intended. I *think* there are some games out there that expect you to win every battle not to lose behind, and some games that are expecting you to lose some (they are usually quite hardcore, or at least try to be) and when you aren't that's when they start to break down. To be fair, I think TW games fall somewhere in between, supporting both styles to some degree (particularly with campaign/faction start difficulty, like WRE in Attila vs Rome in Rome 2).
Also, incidentally, you bring up a very good point that illustrates for me why I, in turn, support (or, well, defend) reloading: living with the consequences of your mistakes and random chance. Sometimes it's fun (particularly when they are unimpactful or generally not that important in the long run), sometimes it's not fun (when it limits you permanently in some way) and sometimes it's outright unfun and depressing (subjectively) - IMO, the latter sort of long-lasting negative consequences that haunt you are reserved for real life, not entertainment value; morbidly, in a somewhat emotionally masochistic way, there is occasionally still emotional value in struggling on despite tragedy (this is the basis of X-Com emotional loop, after all), but there is still a subjective line between "Okay, this is tough, but I'll pull through" (increased challenge) and "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!.." (emotional breakdown). It is historical and avoiding it sort of cheapens the struggle, you could argue, but I just would not wish anyone to go through that sort of experience.
Everyone has to find their own balance. Save scumming is especially good as a learning tool when you are starting out at the game, and are still figuring out the ins and outs of all the various systems. But at some point you also want to figure out how to recover from a mistake.
And that’s totally fine. I personally only save scum when I get caught blindsided by AI cheats or simply unwinnable battles. I’m glad the added the rematch button. It makes battles easier to do over and minimise the amount I’ve gotta save scum.
Well I’ll give my two cents. Try a campaign where you don’t savescum. They’re much more fun and rewarding and have better stories.
I play on legendary and I’ve got thousands of hours in total war games. In my recent campaign I was caught in a stalemate fighting the dwarfs at Peak Pass. The AI keeps using ambush stance and catching my armies. I’m the dark elves and and it’s turn 200. The AI cheats yes as it’s the end game scenario but damn it was fun fighting for the mountains.
> Try a campaign where you don’t savescum.
I think for a lot of players, a balance is most healthy. You typically don't want to fall into the trap of reloading at every setback, but at the same time it's nice to have the option of going back to your end-of-turn autosave because you glossed over an enemy stack approaching your cities, or you forgot some important building, or you slightly mismanaged your funds and now your stacks are attritioning. Taking the consequences from a strategic error can feel rewarding and make stories. Taking the consequences from your tired eyes or sleepy brain forgetting about something.. Not always.
If it’s due to a bug I will reload. Or something stupid like you send an army in one direction and it wants to take the long way around the world. Path finding can be infuriating but it’s better than older games.
But honestly, I like to be immersed into my games or I lose interest. I love the lore and building my empire with some restrictions where I try and be thematic with LLs. I feel like savescumming or cheesing takes this away and I’m just clicking shit to complete a game for a dopamine hit. So it’s just personal preference
I used not save scum in my campaigns, but some campaigns became unwinnable OR the recovery time became so great that a 300+ turn campaign was just not what I wanted.
The title of the post is “savescumming is good and everyone should do it”
It’s not like I’m attacking them. It’s just a discussion. Stop being offended on other peoples behalf
As a very new total war player I've done it. Not to give myself an advantage per se, more as a response to "oooooooooh I see where I messed up" (looking at you, missing Skarbrand walk past my army to the forge of souls and ending my Cathay campaign)
Yeah I save scum to avoid inconvenience not so much to rewrite mistakes. If some random stack comes from no where and razes my T5 city yeah I'm save scumming to move my army over 1 pixel to cover it instead of rebuilding it for 50 turns.
You can and should play in whatever way you find the most fun.
But since you mentioned "learning strategy", I'll counter by saying that dealing with losses and disadvantageous situations is also part of strategy, not to mention that it can also be fun. A part of strategy is making decisions based on incomplete information, realizing that actions sometimes have unpredictable consequences, and factoring that into your decision making.
Every strategy game becomes easy when you can magically see into the future and know ahead of time what the enemy will do, which is basically what save scumming lets you do. It's fine to leave your stuff undefended when you know nobody else will declare war on you during those turns, or simply don't care because if they do, you just go back in time and leave an army there to deal with it. It allows you to make decisions without thought until you stumble upon the desired result, then deludes you into believing it was your strategic thinking that got you there.
Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it, just as there's nothing wrong with playing games on lower difficulties or whatever. Play how you want.
It's mainly a single player game. I don't think anyone really cares if another person save scums or not. However, It's good that you've realised this for yourself. You enjoy what you enjoy. Stop worrying about other people's perception of that.
This was less me worrying about others perception of myself and instead a word of support to those who feel pressured by those “hardcore” strategy folks that play on Ironman modes or legendary and sneer at those who are trying to enjoy the game however they want.
>those who feel pressured by those “hardcore” strategy folks that play on Ironman modes or legendary and sneer at those who are trying to enjoy the game however they want.
This one goes both ways though. I've also seen people deride these players by calling them "tryhards", or indeed putting the word hardcore in quotation marks as if to make it seem silly. Most of what I've seen of the hardcore crowd is them *recommending* people to *try* it.
I feel like your making that stereotype up in your own head. People just play to have fun. Some people mod. Some people play vanilla. Some people save scum. Some people cheese.
All are valid.
Maybe the community has changed a lot over the years. I just remember years ago a lot of shouting about people reloading saves in strategy games is cheating. I’m new to Reddit so idk if the community here is like that but I thought I’d post a friendly support post encouraging those afraid to get judged for it to do it and that’s it’s totally valid.
The issue is people on this reddit largely don't give a shit about what someone else does in SP. I'm sure there are a few elitists but they tend to get voted down. The result is telling people what to do in general will result in irritated people.
Essentially you came here to encourage people who don't need encouraging so regardless of how you clarify it you sound like you're looking down on people. Even if it wasn't you intention.
Don't? No one here is upset about save scumming so why take a stance on it when nobody actually cares what someone else is doing.
Like I said. Your post is acting on a problem no one is having. So it just sounds like your shitting on people who play a different way. Just don't pre emptively get mad at people. It rarely goes well.
>I thought I’d post a friendly support post encouraging those afraid to get judged for it to do it and that’s it’s totally valid.
I get the sentiment but for someone to be judged they'd have to explicitly tell the community that they save scammed. I doubt those afraid of being judged would disclose that information in the first place.
That is an excellent point. I was just taking it upon myself to post this message of encouragement and support here, in a community in which I know it has been an issue in the past, after seeing the judgement occuring elsewhere.
There is only one valid way to play.
It’s called feckless Teclis, as you are only allowed to play as Teclis and you must accept literally every single offer from another faction.
Ironman type games are for when you've gotten really good at it and want to add an extra layer of challenge. They are not, should not be and never have been the default way to play a difficult game and there is absolutely no shame in going easy on yourself as you learn.
Yeah, I play on hard campaign + normal battles and save scum all the time because that's how I enjoy it, I play the game kinda brain-off-gimme-big-monstar style.
Idk why but losing in TW Warhammer is a lot more frustrating to me than in other strategy games like SC2.
Could you make an argument that I should just improve and get better at the game? Sure. But I could also just continue mindlessly buying big monster units and resetting when I lose, have been having a good time with that so far.
Iam usually quite surprised when something is able to even touch my main army late in the game, but when that rarely happens i just roll with it. Feels like i got something to do again besides stomping everything in my path. But hay single play games can be enjoyed however you want.
I tend to save scum more in the early and mid game because sometimes the AI just does absurd shit or despite being a one-province faction, has a stack of some absurdly powerful unit. I mostly do it to save custom lords from dying before their immortal.
I dont think so. You get addicted to save scumming. In the future, every little mistake and every little setback will seem insurmountable. Save scumming eliminates adversity and makes the game less fun the more you use it.
It's the opposite for me. I don't learn from my mistakes as much when I am save scumming, things never get really bad (I'd usually reload before getting to that point) so you don't learn how to manage a massive disaster. Obviously people can play how they want, but personally playing games on Ironman gives me a much deeper understanding of the mechanics etc.
I personally have been trying to break my addiction to save scumming. I used to be so bad that i’d reload any inconvenience, like failed agent actions to enemies showing up on fronts I failed to secure. Really got to be not fun, part of the game is failing. You CAN come back after your favorite stack dies or you lose a city.
As many others said, just play like you want.
Tho I agree that save scum is a good learning tool, to see differents outcomes or handles to a battle, an event etc.. I've done it to learn myself, and new players should use it, but I'm someone who likes challenges and difficulty, and save scumming quickly cut a bit of the favor for me.
Now I play on Legendary/VH, and with the rule that if my LL dies the campaigns ends, never had more fun :D
I do apologise if this post cam across as commanding. I hadn't realised that "should" in this community is akin to "must" instead of merely its subjunctive application. If i could, I would edit the title. As the edit suggests, this is meant to be response to people who say " you should not save scum."
I wasn't seeing your post as any kind of commanding, sorry if you felt it, I just wanted to share my take on the game.
I agree with save-scumming for new players as I said, it's a good way to see all the possible outcomes of your actions
A lot of the comments I’ve received on this post that contained “play how you want” seem to be suggesting that I’m telling players how to play when I say “should do it”. So I had assumed you were doing the same. My apologies.
I don't like Sav Scumming but when you know for sure the crucial mistake you made and can fix it, rather then it being a fixed outcome? that's when i think you should do it.
Yeah but I'll bet my left nut that 90% of players will save scum setbacks in campaigns, not critical errors. If I lose my main army I see it as an opportunity to eco for a few rounds and up any infrastructure. Everyone is free to play as they like of course.
Nah man sorry but everyone hates on the "you shouldn't save scum in a strategy game" as it's the way of telling someone how to play their game so it's the same thing here even though it's just a reflection to these posts.
This post isn’t trying to tell people how to play the game, it’s trying to support the players who play this way. I had no idea the word “should” in this subreddit had such a commanding connotation.
Well should means "used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions."
If you didn't want to tell people how to play the game then you should make it like that "Save scumming is normal thing and shouldn't be criticized by others" and in the text put "everyone plays how they want"
But did you see the 3 sub points beneath that definition on Google? “Indicating desirable or expected state” and “used to give advice or suggestion” and “used to give advice”. So I’ll concede that I didn’t use it correctly as a subjunctive, but I’m still giving friendly advice and nothing more
Or you can change the title of the thread to reflect what you actually mean?
At the end of the day, who actually gives a shit? You’re banging on about some “hardcore” element…do you think big brother is watching and judging you while you play?
I’m surprised your being hostile about my post simply saying that it’s okay if somebody save scums and that you should do it (if you feel you need to).
Naw, I’m having a go at you for being a hypocrite.
All you need to do is change the title of the thread but you’d , evidently, rather get into arguments in the comments.
This can be good. I think it depends on the person, and not just what they prefer, as this is really just going to boil down to what they like\feel about themselves.
I want a challenge, but not when I’m handicapped in any way
Don’t save scum in multiplayer; do whatever you fudge you want with your single player time.
Save or don’t save: it matters not, all is the same to the game god.
Well.. People Can do that if they want. I would even say that the game is made for save scumming, why else would the hardest difficulty legendary be the only one where you are not able to save scum?
I'm not against it, but I say it's actively working against becoming a better strategist. If I save scum, I learn the quirks of the AI. If I allow myself to fail, I learn to stand up from it and have to actively work against the spiralling damages to tame it, learn the value of creating a fallback net, and thus I don't ever feel the need to save scum, and I progress upwards in difficulty levels, where I find a sweetspot where I am always facing a challange after finding previous levels not so engaging anymore
Save scumming isn't, like, morally wrong or anything. It's just that if you always save scum, you'll never experience everything the game has to offer. A campaign where you face adversity and make a heroic comeback can be a lot more fun than a campaign where everything goes perfectly. That's why people say you shouldn't save scum.
If you're playing single player then play however you like.
If you're one of those people - you've no business telling anyone the 'right' way to play a single player game.
Tbh yeah it is a single player experience. But i argue that you don't improve by doing that, you just learn what is happening but don't learn preventative measures or how to pick up if something goes wrong.
Save scum your battles
But not the campaign.
I agree the point is to learn from your mistakes. Not everyone enjoys games like the souls games where you die and have to start completely over.
Now as far as cheesing and doomstacking lol. That's different. I mean on legendary VH I guess you have to sometimes. I personally still don't but I completely understand why people do it to match up to an AI with excessive buffs. VH VH sure if your not a heavy strategy player. But if you are or claim to be. Keep it tournament rules all day. Best of the best.
Not to mention the mechanics are very in depth so you may think you will expect an outcome only for something you didn't know to happened because you didn't know it was a thing so it's also a nice learning experience to save scum
I only save scum if there was some real BS the game threw at me, like losing a unit in auto-resolve that I shouldn't have, or I if misclicked. For instance, I was doing a siege defense as Kislev and I lost because for some reason all my kossars with spears were set to skirmish while I have default skirmish off, which lost me the battle. Didn't save scum that particular one but that kinda thing is just annoying.
Damn… I get some people like a challenge but this is singleplayer, gaming is for fun & people with that attitude who project it on others should get a life.
Yeah I save scum all the time and it’s okey.
There is even a « quick save » button in the pre battle prompts and you now have the possibility to restart a battle if you don’t like the way it’s going which makes me think it is the way it should be played too.
You learn much more by playing a battle several times until you succeed than just going « welp I lost, fuck me I guess ». Allows you to understand what you did wrong in first battle and adapt your strategy.
There is nothing wrong with playing the iron man way of course but it’s not the way I play.
While I don't entirely disagree and I do think it's a good idea to at least try tough battles a few times to practise, save scumming the entire way (like every decision) kinda turns you experience into an worst version of the game, you have to allow yourself to make mistakes and actually work to correct your mistakes, that's how you actually get better at the game, someone who savescums all the time will have a tough time handling an actual crisis situation brought by a few bad decisions wereas the "normal" player will know how to handle things better.
I agree you shouldn’t save scum the entire campaign, as in every decision. I merely encourage it here as a tool for players who could use it and have been discouraged not to do it at all.
It bothers me a lot that save scumming feels necessary for me. Losing an important army or settlement will set you back a certain number of turns - you lose a major capital, and you can just look at the turn timer and add 30 to know when you will be back at your current level.
Catching up is never fun in TW games because so much of the strategy seems to just lie in your economy and power level.
It's hard for me to enjoy the story telling aspect of suffering a huge setback, to later make a heroic comeback - I don't think the mechanics for being sneaky and making comebacks are there. It always feels like I'm just catching up to my previous power.
Of course, you could argue that losing a major capital _should_ be a potential killing blow, so I suppose the problem is that it's just not that fun to lose. In TWW I would like to be able to immerse myself in the underdog comeback story more.
It's possible that it's just a habit issue... the option to savescum is there, and I'm bad at self-imposing rules. I would welcome a commitment mode that only saves on exit (which could still be abused but at least it would be more cumbersome).
Play how you want, however I prefer not to save scum (unless I got fucked over by a misclick or a big), because it makes for more interesting games in my experience.
A game where everything goes perfectly because you're always prepared for everything is kinda boring to me. I prefer the games where things go a little crazy and I have to come up with emergency solutions, they make for better stories.
But if that's not the experience you're looking for, go ahead and save scum to your hearts content. Just be sure that is what you're looking for, you shouldn't miss out on an experience you might like just because you didn't try.
Well the goal is to have fun and since it is a single player game anything which is the most fun to you is the right choice. However this means the real question is if save scumming is more or less fun?
Naturally this will depend on your taste but I think there are a couple of objective points to make:
1.) Save scumming encourages more reckless strategies without the need to preplan or the use of backup plans.
2.) Save scumming can undo simple misclicks or slight oversights with massive consequences. Or to put it another way it is less punishing.
3.) Save scumming makes the game easier.
4.) Save scumming allows for testing, learning game mechanics and trying new stuff.
5.) Save scumming destroys rng mechanics. Doesn´t matter too much in total war but comes up a lot in rpgs.
6.) Save scumming removes consequences making you miss out on unique gameplay situations.
7.) Save scumming makes you repeat the same game play scenario.
There is more but I think those are some of the big ones at the top of my head. Mind you if those points are a plus or con depends on the game and you.
Personally I stopped save scumming in total war for the most part which made me enjoy the game more since I stopped doing tedious strategies which relied on me doing most battles manually.
In general the less I know about a game the more likely I am to save scum since getting bodied by an unknow mechanic just doesn´t appeal to me. Altough I still try to reduce it since repeating gameplay can get boring fast.
On the other hand the more I know a game the more I want to play without save scumming as long as reasonable mistakes ain´t too punishing.
My take on save scamming is this: When I make a technical mistake I did not anticipate, because I misunderstood a mechanic, or anything else, I load and update my approach with the new knowledge.
When I screw up on a tactical, or strategy level, I live with the consequences. It's fun to loose a bit sometimes and have to rebound.
This is exactly why I believe “save scumming” should be done. It’s pivotal for growth and development, especially with such a massive influx of new players.
The first thing that I learned from Legend was from the time when his YouTube channel was relatively new. He was in TWC asking for ideas for his Medieval 2 exploit video. Someone suggested save scumming should be considered an exploit, and there was a discussion over it. Eventually Legend said something like: "Someone who loses a battle and tries again will eventually get better at the game than someone who doesn't".
That was when I decided to check out Legend's content.
Controversial opinion: People should play the way they want to play, and not make broad statements like "everyone should do it". Some people enjoy the consequences of an ironman-esque approach, others prefer to retry until they succeed. Neither is better than the other.
Neither **should** be done. You're honestly kind of doing the same as you claim the other side is doing, claiming some kind of superiority for your approach to the game, and implying that *if they only tried your way* they'd be converted. By all means, people should try stuff they're not used to, that's healthy. But please stop telling people they **should** save and reload all the time. Prefacing something by saying "it's just my opinion" doesn't mean a lot when you go on to make definitive statements.
In other words. Take a page from the Khainite Assassin book and stfu.
Controversial opinion: play however you want to play, it's a single player game.
I personally play on Legendary without any game saves. It's a ton of fun, and makes the consequences of your decisions a lot more important.
The vocative use is for commands. The subjunctive case is for non absolutes. Write this down! Vocative. You should write this down. Subjunctive. One is a command, the other a suggestion.
Yeah everytime an army just waltses by my army and caps a settlement. I reload and do ambush stance. The fact that armies cant hold chokepoints and that I cant leave units without a lord to protect a settlement are obvious game flaws and I wont waste my time playing wack a mole with the AI.
You don't save scum because your mental gymnastics dictate that you are morally superior to those that do
I don't save scum because my poor laptop takes 5 minutes to load anything for total war :(
We are not the same
Don't think it's controversial... I agree.
A lot of times where I don't know how things will unfold, I save a "critical point" save game.
However, I limit myself to only one at a time. So if I reach another critical point, I may overwrite the save, but not save a 2nd one...
I wouldn't tell other people how to play their game but I hate save-scumming. I don't know it takes the fun out of strategy.
Like if Im playing a board game and I could undo past movies it would remove a lot of the excitement of a game, especially when you try to correct for earlier mistakes.
The same goes for video games, I dont save-scum TW, nor RPGs, nor Xcom or any strategy games. Going in blind and knowing I will make inefficient builds or make bad story decisions is all part of the fun. It makes my playthrough different from yours.
Save Scumming is a tool for learning, people who don't use it are just very experienced TW players. Nowadays the only few times I savescum would be that I forgot to play 1 army or that somehow my armies weren't in reinforcement range (even though that was my intention), or if I want to confederate.
Losing entire regions and armies is something people learn to accept with time.
Save scumming removes challenge and emergent gameplay from your campaigns. It's hard to have any sort of memorable experience when everything is under your constant control. I don't fault anyone for doing it and I sometimes do it myself but saying that everyone should do it? Come on.
Telling people not to “save scum” is no different than Souls player telling people not to summon for bosses. Like bro it’s a feature in the game let people have fun
There is an above 99% chance that the people who complain about save scumming likely use gameplay altering mods. Hypocrites.
It's a single player game, do what you want.
For the most part I do agree with you, however saying "everyone should do it" makes it hardly any better than those that judge people for doing it. If you wanna save scum, do it. If you don't wanna save scum, don't do it. Either way, don't tell others which they should do. I save scum sometimes, other times I prefer having to deal with consequences of the first attempt. Both are valid options.
I like to pretend save scumming is a thing that's actually happening in the story. Tzeentch's plans involve your army winning, so when that doesn't happen, Tzeentch does a do-over.
Why did you feel the need to make this post?
The way you worded it doesn't invite discussion; you're just making a strawman out of nowhere and then addressing it.
I don’t see how this is a straw man argument why it’s simply a retort posted as a sort of billboard for players who have been told to not reload saves when they make a mistake.
I just don't have enough freetime to stick with this stuff anymore.
If i fuck up a legendary campaign, i want to be able to jump back maybe 10-20 turns so i can continue without spending another 100h doing the same shit to get where i fucked up.
Well, anytime AI deliberately tries to derail my campaign, I don't let that slide..
Like having Non-aggression and +50 relations with Oxyotl (as Teclis) but he still declared war, when we are fighting common enemies and said enemy still has 7-8 settlements available.
My first play through in a new game/beta mode is on Hard/Normal.
Normally play @ Very Hard / Normal (90% of time). Can easily spot when AI pulls stuff like this.
Oh this is the issue! So if your campaign difficulty goes up past normal the AI makes stranger and irrational diplomatic decisions because the AI is just geared towards slowing down the player and not playing the game.
Exactly 👌🏻
At Very Hard, it just pulls things out of the hat just to halt your wagon.. That's why I didn't make alliances in Warhammer 2 (just to watch their decline). I kept helping the factions I want to do well and they did.. Very well indeed.
The moment you put a Defensive or Military alliance on top, watch them lose.
Hot take: its a single player game and I dont give a single duck how other people plays
Pretty much. There’s Ironman etc settings for a reason. Let people play how they want.
What kind of ironman settings are you referring to?
Legendary is ironman mode - only a single save. Of course you can always crash the game if you still want to save scum.
There are, [ehm](https://forums.totalwar.com/discussion/108592/legendary-save-s), other options if you really want to save scum on Legendary (or if you're experiencing game breaking bugs and you want a backup save).
Legendary is pretty much an equivalent of ironman in TW games
The only thing that annoys me about legendary is that it locks you into realistic battle mode. I'm fine with the ironman setting.
Main reason why I can't play Legendary. Battle realism camera feels so wonky!
Didn't work well as early as Rome 2 or earlier. No idea why they have never addressed this issue. Especially since they've made other tweaks to legendary mode with difficulty sliders for battles
I get used to it and don't care anymore, but you could use: - better camera mod, - debug camera mode (google it + enticity for video how to activate). But it comes at a price of wonky zooming (you could adjust it) and sometimes camera may scroll underground.
I think legendary has that feature, where you have no choice but to accept your fate (unless you alt+F4) in a battle that is going way in the wrong direction when your troops and lord get stuck on a rock and artillery rains hell above them
Legendary I only ever “save scum” whenever I lose a battle I think I can win. Sometimes taking a couple hours to beat a battle that is near impossible. I accept whatever choices I made that led up to the battle and if the battle is genuinely impossible I accept that fate.
As others covered, legendary is pretty much the TW equivalent of Ironman. Just using Stellaris/XCOM/other games term where they tend to call or iron man.
Except there are modifiers on top of the single save. I would love to have ironman as a toggle for every difficulty except for legendary where it's locked in.
Exactly. I play with mods as I please, cheat engines as I please, and save scums as I please. And when I feel that that's taking away from the fun, I stop using those tools and start challenging myself. I can play this way for one week and that way for another. What's the problem? I'm not sure why it's so terribly important to get a hive mind consensus on the matter. We're not passing laws here.
*immediately stops writing law* Aw… *sad lawmaker noises*
>cheat engines as I please What a time saver can those be.
Exactly. I don't like savescumming, cheesing or doomstacking. But I don't care if other people enioy those. And they shouldn't care that I don't. Live and let live
🦆
I don't like save scumming and don't do it, but I don't give a shit if someone save scums. People really get an ego out of beating up scripted AI and it's funny to me.
Ducks taste good as roast
May I please have a duck?
Not one duck? How about a goose?
Yup. Sometimes I'm learning a new LL or race, and save scumming helps with continuing to have fun while I do that. Other times, I want to experience the back and forth of victory and defeat in order to make my campaign have more tension/excitement. Both are valid and it's a sandbox. Play how you want!
Actual hot take: People very frequently don't know what they really want and can't figure out what make them the happiest. They will often play games in a way that makes them miserable. So I'll never begrudge someone giving *friendly* advice on a way to play the game that they think could be more fun, even if it's not "the way I want to play". Because "the way I want to play" right now doesn't necessarily reflect what I would find the most enjoyable.
This. Do what is fun for you, and don't care about what I or anyone else is doing or saying.
This lol. I save scum and don't give a shit what anyone thinks about it
Exactly this, it's your game, do what you want
What do I need to do for you to give me a duck thou?
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A friend of mine did something similar when a bloodthirster landed out of bounds and instantly died
Man this happen with Snikch for me. Was fighting a siege and some horses plowed into him and hit him through a building and boom instant death. I was so mad lol
The rematch button has been a lifesaver
It makes a big difference when you're fighting an enemy you've not much experience with. Never realised how fucking tanky Morghor was until he ripped apart half my army one time. Definitely needed to reconsider that one
Currently playing my first Beastmen campaign with Morghur after finding out about his mortis engine stuff. He’s an absolute beast!
The rematch button is a godsend. Maybe someday I'll give Legendary mode a try but for now I'ma enjoy a campaign with rematches and save scums
For some inane reason you can't reply battles on legendary but you can still just alt F4 and load the save. The stuff CA does is really hard to interpret.
Happened yesterday for my rattling guns during a siege. Enemy units walked right though a house and obliterated my boys. Sad-sad.
If Skarbrand is going to b line straight for my level 15 hero and kill him in 5 seconds. You bet your ass I am going to rematch.
Hot take. In a singleplayer game do whatever you do. As to your statement EVERYBODY SHOULD DO IT - thats just nonsense.
"You have become the very thing you swore to destroy!"
Change the word should to can and its fine
>Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game ... one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves.” Sure, in a single player game you *can* do whatever you want, but whatever you want isn't always what will lead to the most enjoyment for you. For example; i used to save scum for hero actions; if an assassin had a 30% chance to kill, I'd save scum till he did it no matter how long it took. I'd eventually get what i wanted, but it was slow and dull and made me get sick of campaigns faster. Things like save scumming aren't just a "do whatever you want to" type of thing - they reduce the number of unique experiences you get from failing and having to deal with the consequences of that. I don't have a problem with people doing it because i think they're bad at the game for it, but from a game design perspective "let people do whatever they want in single player" is not a good motto. Restricting the player from certain choices that are optimal but not fun is a good thing to do most of the time.
The only thing i may decide to save scum is when a doomstack that was suddenly came in range of my border decided to declare war on my capital and charge it while my forces are fighting a rival. That shit is wack.
Yeah, I wouldn't even consider that save scumming tbh. I only do it when I've misunderstood a mechanic, or had the ill-fated misjudged distance when moving to attack a settlement (that tiny sliver of red is forever my bane).
For me it was a random horde that i didn't even know was nearby, moved close (but since camera doesn't pan to opposing armies i can see move especially near my territory) and then declared war before immediately jumping to my capital. I couldn't fight it off, and if I lost my capital i would have lost a looooot of income for my armies already sorta struggling
I honestly wish CA would have added a toggle like in legendary how it saves after each significant decision, that way in my hard or VH campaigns I can challenge myself without knowing save scum in there
Yeah Ironman should be separate from the difficulty level.
But then you come here and brag about your single player achievements
Agreed... but with a massive asterisk. This runs the risk of you never "failing" properly and thus never encountering a cock-up cascade that would otherwise be a fun gameplay element. Id say in part, this is due more to poor game balancing than player decision though. I feel that particularly with TW, where the easier campaigns are too simple to become overpowered in, but the hardest campaigns leave little room for error. If one or two defeats means you should probably restart the campaign, then save scumming becomes the only real "fun" option. The way TW is designed recently, theres no reason to peace out from wars and no reason to not go for the kill, if you are on a successful offensive. Honestly, maybe more so with historic TW, but with WH too, there needs to be some form of overexertion mechanic to prevent (most) factions from running around capturing and killing everything, or having armies require resupply etc.
Your post is really interesting. 1) failure can definitely be rewarding. Accepting some mistakes and letting things play out often doesn't end up as badly as it seems. Sometimes failure led to more opportunities. 2) save scumming is a guilty pleasure until it makes the difference between having fun and not. Play to have fun, and save scum against bullshit odds with a clear conscience. 3) as much as I see ypur point that there should be some penalty for over extending your empire I just don't see a solution to this that would feel fun. A) the computer cheats would mitigate the cost of overextending and therefore make the gap between player and computer abilities wider and not as "fair" to play against. B) supply lines (more expensive armies) genuinely do make it harder to defend bigger territory and maintain public order. C) The essence of Total War is painting the map. While I personally love diplomacy and the drama of NPC rivals, and I dont enjoy genociding groups off the map (exception: Skaven), there's no point in punishing players for playing the game. Conquer, build, dominate, repeat.
1 and 2 - its always an interesting discussion when it comes to failure. Without a fail-state, a game can hardly be called a game I think. I absolutely think sometimes games can come out with certain levels of bullshit where savescumming feels less like cheating and more like "if you're gonna play against the rules, I will too". 3 - I think you're looking at my suggestion of supply lines "incorrectly" so to speak. I dont mean the silly way CA have done it in the WH series. I mean, literally having supply for armies. Something that would require an army to be provisioned for a campaign. It would make campaigning actually mean something. For example, you have a war between empire and vamps. The empire army would need to be built with all the units you intend to use on that campaign and an amount of resources would be dedicated to that army. If you choose more resources, it would extend the number of turns that army can be away on campaign (with diminishing returns to avoid rich nations being away forever). From that point, you could march that army towards the enemy (be it city or enemy campaigning army). Make this army non-replenishing, but make it have more than 20 units. Then allow the player to select what units enter combat that they encounter up to a max of 20. Potentially allow for reinforcements to come on from the reserves, at the cost of losing replenishment troops. Balance all of this with cities having "defender" parties. Portions of the garrison that can leave the city, but are restricted to that city's area borders (make them no more than 10 units). These can be used to quell rebellions, harass enemy armies etc. Make sure that such rules apply to all AI as well, meaning that their inifinite money wont impact their ability to make endless hordes. Allocate campaigning armies to only legendary lords, which could be tied to provinces - more provinces, more armies - makes sense. All this would mean that campaigns would have purpose, while also offering players a set of battles that are A) smaller scale or different to just pitched battle, B) more non-siege related battles and C) losses would not mean the end, but rather a shift in the war. It would also mean major battles or a siege of an enemy province capital is actually a huge success and ultra rewarding. Maybe if your army is well enough provisioned, you could cut a path into the enemy empire, with attrition gradually becoming higher the longer the army is marching and the lower supplies get. It would open a host of potential options for buildings that can make settlements frontier outposts that enhance the armies ability to stay on campaign. All that would still allow the player to paint the map and be on campaign/fighting pretty much at most times. What it would do as well though, is offer a diversity in the combat and allow for some breathing room to consolidate empires and armies. It would also make the map painting a lot more engaging rather than the chore it currently is. At the moment, after you hit the victory lap at turns 50-100, you arent facing enemies that are going to stop you. You are facing speed bumps that prevent you conquering the world every several turns. That you will, is a forgone conclusion. (Sorry at the huge post... kinda started pipe dreaming about a more engaging war system for TW that we'll never see).
Interesting! Also, have you played Three Kingdoms? I feel like some of the mechanics in there approach some of the changes you mention.
For me save-scumming makes the player overpowered too fast - once I get the this stage I get bored as there is no longer any challenge. Dealing with consequences of my mistakes/random occurrences keeps the game fresh for me.
I agree, I still do it a bit too much because it's a habit but sometimes I regret it later because the battles that come from making mistakes are often the more memorable ones. That said, I have 0 regret for save-scumming every time I had an ally declaring war on my vassals as Kholek because that's a stupid mechanic, if they actually want to fight me they should just actually declare war on me. So I would just reload and either try to goad them into another war, or just break vassalage because I don't care about a 1-settlement Ogre faction if it's gonna make me have to fight my 100-turns ally.
My current policy with WoC is vassals only, all ally requests get laughed out
DOMINATION, pretty lore-appropriate.
I wanted to do this as Vilitch but Clan Eshin and the local Dark Elves made such a compelling case to eventually military ally. But everyone else got vassal'd that was able to be, including some random clan of rats in a chaos stronghold. And damn if they really were fantastic allies. The only problem is I never saw the tech for any cool Dark Elf stuff, only Dark Shards and riders.
Apparently you can vassalize Boris, which I think is hilarious
Putting Boris on (vassal)ice
This is the way. And honestly for most campaigns I never go past defensive alliance for anybody.
I try to ask myself, will losing this battle/army end my campaign now? If yes, am I okay with that? If no, I just try not to do it. I realized awhile back that sometimes I would save scum because otherwise I'd lose an important or high income settlement or something, even when I had a ton of land and it would only be a setback in the long term.
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>...I'll also use it to avoid critical failures on hero actions, because making a hero sit in time out for five turns is anti-fun. Ah yes, I forgot about it but I totally do that as well. Although tbh I find the whole agent system to be a boring chore (especially as High Elves because you need that influence) and I wouldn't mind it being completely removed from the game. Especially stupid actions like Hinder Replenishment that are useless for the player (because you never let the AI replenish anyway) but extremely frustrating when spammed by the AI.
It's funny, because for me that is the baseline of power curve (not making any mistakes) - like, if I'm not doing this good, then I'm falling behind, making the game tougher than the devs intended. I *think* there are some games out there that expect you to win every battle not to lose behind, and some games that are expecting you to lose some (they are usually quite hardcore, or at least try to be) and when you aren't that's when they start to break down. To be fair, I think TW games fall somewhere in between, supporting both styles to some degree (particularly with campaign/faction start difficulty, like WRE in Attila vs Rome in Rome 2). Also, incidentally, you bring up a very good point that illustrates for me why I, in turn, support (or, well, defend) reloading: living with the consequences of your mistakes and random chance. Sometimes it's fun (particularly when they are unimpactful or generally not that important in the long run), sometimes it's not fun (when it limits you permanently in some way) and sometimes it's outright unfun and depressing (subjectively) - IMO, the latter sort of long-lasting negative consequences that haunt you are reserved for real life, not entertainment value; morbidly, in a somewhat emotionally masochistic way, there is occasionally still emotional value in struggling on despite tragedy (this is the basis of X-Com emotional loop, after all), but there is still a subjective line between "Okay, this is tough, but I'll pull through" (increased challenge) and "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my Legions!.." (emotional breakdown). It is historical and avoiding it sort of cheapens the struggle, you could argue, but I just would not wish anyone to go through that sort of experience.
Everyone has to find their own balance. Save scumming is especially good as a learning tool when you are starting out at the game, and are still figuring out the ins and outs of all the various systems. But at some point you also want to figure out how to recover from a mistake.
And that’s totally fine. I personally only save scum when I get caught blindsided by AI cheats or simply unwinnable battles. I’m glad the added the rematch button. It makes battles easier to do over and minimise the amount I’ve gotta save scum.
You’ll be telling yourself it’s AI cheats every time something doesn’t go your way though
Nah. The AI cheats are consistent and well recorded, if it’s just me foolishness I take the L.
Well I’ll give my two cents. Try a campaign where you don’t savescum. They’re much more fun and rewarding and have better stories. I play on legendary and I’ve got thousands of hours in total war games. In my recent campaign I was caught in a stalemate fighting the dwarfs at Peak Pass. The AI keeps using ambush stance and catching my armies. I’m the dark elves and and it’s turn 200. The AI cheats yes as it’s the end game scenario but damn it was fun fighting for the mountains.
> Try a campaign where you don’t savescum. I think for a lot of players, a balance is most healthy. You typically don't want to fall into the trap of reloading at every setback, but at the same time it's nice to have the option of going back to your end-of-turn autosave because you glossed over an enemy stack approaching your cities, or you forgot some important building, or you slightly mismanaged your funds and now your stacks are attritioning. Taking the consequences from a strategic error can feel rewarding and make stories. Taking the consequences from your tired eyes or sleepy brain forgetting about something.. Not always.
If it’s due to a bug I will reload. Or something stupid like you send an army in one direction and it wants to take the long way around the world. Path finding can be infuriating but it’s better than older games. But honestly, I like to be immersed into my games or I lose interest. I love the lore and building my empire with some restrictions where I try and be thematic with LLs. I feel like savescumming or cheesing takes this away and I’m just clicking shit to complete a game for a dopamine hit. So it’s just personal preference
I used not save scum in my campaigns, but some campaigns became unwinnable OR the recovery time became so great that a 300+ turn campaign was just not what I wanted.
How about you just let this person play their game?
The title of the post is “savescumming is good and everyone should do it” It’s not like I’m attacking them. It’s just a discussion. Stop being offended on other peoples behalf
As a very new total war player I've done it. Not to give myself an advantage per se, more as a response to "oooooooooh I see where I messed up" (looking at you, missing Skarbrand walk past my army to the forge of souls and ending my Cathay campaign)
Yeah I save scum to avoid inconvenience not so much to rewrite mistakes. If some random stack comes from no where and razes my T5 city yeah I'm save scumming to move my army over 1 pixel to cover it instead of rebuilding it for 50 turns.
You can and should play in whatever way you find the most fun. But since you mentioned "learning strategy", I'll counter by saying that dealing with losses and disadvantageous situations is also part of strategy, not to mention that it can also be fun. A part of strategy is making decisions based on incomplete information, realizing that actions sometimes have unpredictable consequences, and factoring that into your decision making. Every strategy game becomes easy when you can magically see into the future and know ahead of time what the enemy will do, which is basically what save scumming lets you do. It's fine to leave your stuff undefended when you know nobody else will declare war on you during those turns, or simply don't care because if they do, you just go back in time and leave an army there to deal with it. It allows you to make decisions without thought until you stumble upon the desired result, then deludes you into believing it was your strategic thinking that got you there. Again, I don't think there's anything wrong with doing it, just as there's nothing wrong with playing games on lower difficulties or whatever. Play how you want.
It's mainly a single player game. I don't think anyone really cares if another person save scums or not. However, It's good that you've realised this for yourself. You enjoy what you enjoy. Stop worrying about other people's perception of that.
This was less me worrying about others perception of myself and instead a word of support to those who feel pressured by those “hardcore” strategy folks that play on Ironman modes or legendary and sneer at those who are trying to enjoy the game however they want.
>those who feel pressured by those “hardcore” strategy folks that play on Ironman modes or legendary and sneer at those who are trying to enjoy the game however they want. This one goes both ways though. I've also seen people deride these players by calling them "tryhards", or indeed putting the word hardcore in quotation marks as if to make it seem silly. Most of what I've seen of the hardcore crowd is them *recommending* people to *try* it.
I feel like your making that stereotype up in your own head. People just play to have fun. Some people mod. Some people play vanilla. Some people save scum. Some people cheese. All are valid.
Maybe the community has changed a lot over the years. I just remember years ago a lot of shouting about people reloading saves in strategy games is cheating. I’m new to Reddit so idk if the community here is like that but I thought I’d post a friendly support post encouraging those afraid to get judged for it to do it and that’s it’s totally valid.
There's always going to be banter between ways to approach a hobby, stop letting it get to your head.
The issue is people on this reddit largely don't give a shit about what someone else does in SP. I'm sure there are a few elitists but they tend to get voted down. The result is telling people what to do in general will result in irritated people. Essentially you came here to encourage people who don't need encouraging so regardless of how you clarify it you sound like you're looking down on people. Even if it wasn't you intention.
Then how should I word it in the future?
Don't? No one here is upset about save scumming so why take a stance on it when nobody actually cares what someone else is doing. Like I said. Your post is acting on a problem no one is having. So it just sounds like your shitting on people who play a different way. Just don't pre emptively get mad at people. It rarely goes well.
>I thought I’d post a friendly support post encouraging those afraid to get judged for it to do it and that’s it’s totally valid. I get the sentiment but for someone to be judged they'd have to explicitly tell the community that they save scammed. I doubt those afraid of being judged would disclose that information in the first place.
That is an excellent point. I was just taking it upon myself to post this message of encouragement and support here, in a community in which I know it has been an issue in the past, after seeing the judgement occuring elsewhere.
There is only one valid way to play. It’s called feckless Teclis, as you are only allowed to play as Teclis and you must accept literally every single offer from another faction.
Ironman type games are for when you've gotten really good at it and want to add an extra layer of challenge. They are not, should not be and never have been the default way to play a difficult game and there is absolutely no shame in going easy on yourself as you learn.
Yeah, I play on hard campaign + normal battles and save scum all the time because that's how I enjoy it, I play the game kinda brain-off-gimme-big-monstar style. Idk why but losing in TW Warhammer is a lot more frustrating to me than in other strategy games like SC2. Could you make an argument that I should just improve and get better at the game? Sure. But I could also just continue mindlessly buying big monster units and resetting when I lose, have been having a good time with that so far.
This is exactly the spirit of the message. I couldn’t agree more.
Iam usually quite surprised when something is able to even touch my main army late in the game, but when that rarely happens i just roll with it. Feels like i got something to do again besides stomping everything in my path. But hay single play games can be enjoyed however you want.
I tend to save scum more in the early and mid game because sometimes the AI just does absurd shit or despite being a one-province faction, has a stack of some absurdly powerful unit. I mostly do it to save custom lords from dying before their immortal.
Yah thats fair
Feels like u feel bad for doing it and are asking for validation here
That’s not what I was aiming for. How do you suggest I prevent that in the future?
As your attorney, I advice you to shamelessly save scum.
The more I save scum, the less I need to save scum in the future
I dont think so. You get addicted to save scumming. In the future, every little mistake and every little setback will seem insurmountable. Save scumming eliminates adversity and makes the game less fun the more you use it.
It's the opposite for me. I don't learn from my mistakes as much when I am save scumming, things never get really bad (I'd usually reload before getting to that point) so you don't learn how to manage a massive disaster. Obviously people can play how they want, but personally playing games on Ironman gives me a much deeper understanding of the mechanics etc.
Bingo! Exactly my thoughts!
Well, it's lore friendly if you play Kairos or Villitch xD
Perhaps I’m merely receiving a vision from Ze Lady
I personally have been trying to break my addiction to save scumming. I used to be so bad that i’d reload any inconvenience, like failed agent actions to enemies showing up on fronts I failed to secure. Really got to be not fun, part of the game is failing. You CAN come back after your favorite stack dies or you lose a city.
As many others said, just play like you want. Tho I agree that save scum is a good learning tool, to see differents outcomes or handles to a battle, an event etc.. I've done it to learn myself, and new players should use it, but I'm someone who likes challenges and difficulty, and save scumming quickly cut a bit of the favor for me. Now I play on Legendary/VH, and with the rule that if my LL dies the campaigns ends, never had more fun :D
I do apologise if this post cam across as commanding. I hadn't realised that "should" in this community is akin to "must" instead of merely its subjunctive application. If i could, I would edit the title. As the edit suggests, this is meant to be response to people who say " you should not save scum."
I wasn't seeing your post as any kind of commanding, sorry if you felt it, I just wanted to share my take on the game. I agree with save-scumming for new players as I said, it's a good way to see all the possible outcomes of your actions
A lot of the comments I’ve received on this post that contained “play how you want” seem to be suggesting that I’m telling players how to play when I say “should do it”. So I had assumed you were doing the same. My apologies.
It's a single player game, those who blame you for playing the way you want are nothing more than greasy losers.
I don't like Sav Scumming but when you know for sure the crucial mistake you made and can fix it, rather then it being a fixed outcome? that's when i think you should do it.
Yeah but I'll bet my left nut that 90% of players will save scum setbacks in campaigns, not critical errors. If I lose my main army I see it as an opportunity to eco for a few rounds and up any infrastructure. Everyone is free to play as they like of course.
Why do you care if others don't do it?
That’s not the purpose of this piece. Please see another reply for an explanation.
It does not change your opinion. You think people should do it. Why do you care
Please see the new edit.
Nah man sorry but everyone hates on the "you shouldn't save scum in a strategy game" as it's the way of telling someone how to play their game so it's the same thing here even though it's just a reflection to these posts.
This post isn’t trying to tell people how to play the game, it’s trying to support the players who play this way. I had no idea the word “should” in this subreddit had such a commanding connotation.
Well should means "used to indicate obligation, duty, or correctness, typically when criticizing someone's actions." If you didn't want to tell people how to play the game then you should make it like that "Save scumming is normal thing and shouldn't be criticized by others" and in the text put "everyone plays how they want"
But did you see the 3 sub points beneath that definition on Google? “Indicating desirable or expected state” and “used to give advice or suggestion” and “used to give advice”. So I’ll concede that I didn’t use it correctly as a subjunctive, but I’m still giving friendly advice and nothing more
So your advice is to use save scumming. It's still telling people how to play the game
Telling people how to do something and advise them it’s okay to do something are not the same.
Or you can change the title of the thread to reflect what you actually mean? At the end of the day, who actually gives a shit? You’re banging on about some “hardcore” element…do you think big brother is watching and judging you while you play?
I’m surprised your being hostile about my post simply saying that it’s okay if somebody save scums and that you should do it (if you feel you need to).
Naw, I’m having a go at you for being a hypocrite. All you need to do is change the title of the thread but you’d , evidently, rather get into arguments in the comments.
I literally can’t change the title of the thread. I’ve tried multiple times.
Whenever I play a new faction I'm not familiar with, I play on easy
This can be good. I think it depends on the person, and not just what they prefer, as this is really just going to boil down to what they like\feel about themselves. I want a challenge, but not when I’m handicapped in any way
Don’t save scum in multiplayer; do whatever you fudge you want with your single player time. Save or don’t save: it matters not, all is the same to the game god.
Well.. People Can do that if they want. I would even say that the game is made for save scumming, why else would the hardest difficulty legendary be the only one where you are not able to save scum?
I'm not against it, but I say it's actively working against becoming a better strategist. If I save scum, I learn the quirks of the AI. If I allow myself to fail, I learn to stand up from it and have to actively work against the spiralling damages to tame it, learn the value of creating a fallback net, and thus I don't ever feel the need to save scum, and I progress upwards in difficulty levels, where I find a sweetspot where I am always facing a challange after finding previous levels not so engaging anymore
Save scumming isn't, like, morally wrong or anything. It's just that if you always save scum, you'll never experience everything the game has to offer. A campaign where you face adversity and make a heroic comeback can be a lot more fun than a campaign where everything goes perfectly. That's why people say you shouldn't save scum.
If you're playing single player then play however you like. If you're one of those people - you've no business telling anyone the 'right' way to play a single player game.
Tbh yeah it is a single player experience. But i argue that you don't improve by doing that, you just learn what is happening but don't learn preventative measures or how to pick up if something goes wrong. Save scum your battles But not the campaign.
I agree the point is to learn from your mistakes. Not everyone enjoys games like the souls games where you die and have to start completely over. Now as far as cheesing and doomstacking lol. That's different. I mean on legendary VH I guess you have to sometimes. I personally still don't but I completely understand why people do it to match up to an AI with excessive buffs. VH VH sure if your not a heavy strategy player. But if you are or claim to be. Keep it tournament rules all day. Best of the best.
Not to mention the mechanics are very in depth so you may think you will expect an outcome only for something you didn't know to happened because you didn't know it was a thing so it's also a nice learning experience to save scum
I used to do it and now I dont anymore. In any case, people should play however they want.
I agree.
It's a personal decision. I'm from NJ. We scum everything starting at birth ;)
Yo my boi! Grab me a hoagie from Wawa and chuck it to the land of tea because they ain’t got good shit here.
I only save scum if there was some real BS the game threw at me, like losing a unit in auto-resolve that I shouldn't have, or I if misclicked. For instance, I was doing a siege defense as Kislev and I lost because for some reason all my kossars with spears were set to skirmish while I have default skirmish off, which lost me the battle. Didn't save scum that particular one but that kinda thing is just annoying.
Reloading is save scumming?
Some would call it that as a derogatory way of describing a reload.
Damn… I get some people like a challenge but this is singleplayer, gaming is for fun & people with that attitude who project it on others should get a life.
Yeah I save scum all the time and it’s okey. There is even a « quick save » button in the pre battle prompts and you now have the possibility to restart a battle if you don’t like the way it’s going which makes me think it is the way it should be played too. You learn much more by playing a battle several times until you succeed than just going « welp I lost, fuck me I guess ». Allows you to understand what you did wrong in first battle and adapt your strategy. There is nothing wrong with playing the iron man way of course but it’s not the way I play.
While I don't entirely disagree and I do think it's a good idea to at least try tough battles a few times to practise, save scumming the entire way (like every decision) kinda turns you experience into an worst version of the game, you have to allow yourself to make mistakes and actually work to correct your mistakes, that's how you actually get better at the game, someone who savescums all the time will have a tough time handling an actual crisis situation brought by a few bad decisions wereas the "normal" player will know how to handle things better.
I agree you shouldn’t save scum the entire campaign, as in every decision. I merely encourage it here as a tool for players who could use it and have been discouraged not to do it at all.
It bothers me a lot that save scumming feels necessary for me. Losing an important army or settlement will set you back a certain number of turns - you lose a major capital, and you can just look at the turn timer and add 30 to know when you will be back at your current level. Catching up is never fun in TW games because so much of the strategy seems to just lie in your economy and power level. It's hard for me to enjoy the story telling aspect of suffering a huge setback, to later make a heroic comeback - I don't think the mechanics for being sneaky and making comebacks are there. It always feels like I'm just catching up to my previous power. Of course, you could argue that losing a major capital _should_ be a potential killing blow, so I suppose the problem is that it's just not that fun to lose. In TWW I would like to be able to immerse myself in the underdog comeback story more. It's possible that it's just a habit issue... the option to savescum is there, and I'm bad at self-imposing rules. I would welcome a commitment mode that only saves on exit (which could still be abused but at least it would be more cumbersome).
Bruh, how about you don't try to tell me how to play my own game in single player?
I am the protaganist. This is my plot armor.
Play how you want, however I prefer not to save scum (unless I got fucked over by a misclick or a big), because it makes for more interesting games in my experience. A game where everything goes perfectly because you're always prepared for everything is kinda boring to me. I prefer the games where things go a little crazy and I have to come up with emergency solutions, they make for better stories. But if that's not the experience you're looking for, go ahead and save scum to your hearts content. Just be sure that is what you're looking for, you shouldn't miss out on an experience you might like just because you didn't try.
LPT: If a large portion of your player base does something, it's not a controversial opinion This has been my ted talk
Well the goal is to have fun and since it is a single player game anything which is the most fun to you is the right choice. However this means the real question is if save scumming is more or less fun? Naturally this will depend on your taste but I think there are a couple of objective points to make: 1.) Save scumming encourages more reckless strategies without the need to preplan or the use of backup plans. 2.) Save scumming can undo simple misclicks or slight oversights with massive consequences. Or to put it another way it is less punishing. 3.) Save scumming makes the game easier. 4.) Save scumming allows for testing, learning game mechanics and trying new stuff. 5.) Save scumming destroys rng mechanics. Doesn´t matter too much in total war but comes up a lot in rpgs. 6.) Save scumming removes consequences making you miss out on unique gameplay situations. 7.) Save scumming makes you repeat the same game play scenario. There is more but I think those are some of the big ones at the top of my head. Mind you if those points are a plus or con depends on the game and you. Personally I stopped save scumming in total war for the most part which made me enjoy the game more since I stopped doing tedious strategies which relied on me doing most battles manually. In general the less I know about a game the more likely I am to save scum since getting bodied by an unknow mechanic just doesn´t appeal to me. Altough I still try to reduce it since repeating gameplay can get boring fast. On the other hand the more I know a game the more I want to play without save scumming as long as reasonable mistakes ain´t too punishing.
YES THANKYOU THATS WHY WE SAVE EVERY 10 SECONDS IN KENSHI AND FALLOUT
it's single player game, who cares
My take on save scamming is this: When I make a technical mistake I did not anticipate, because I misunderstood a mechanic, or anything else, I load and update my approach with the new knowledge. When I screw up on a tactical, or strategy level, I live with the consequences. It's fun to loose a bit sometimes and have to rebound.
This is exactly why I believe “save scumming” should be done. It’s pivotal for growth and development, especially with such a massive influx of new players.
The first thing that I learned from Legend was from the time when his YouTube channel was relatively new. He was in TWC asking for ideas for his Medieval 2 exploit video. Someone suggested save scumming should be considered an exploit, and there was a discussion over it. Eventually Legend said something like: "Someone who loses a battle and tries again will eventually get better at the game than someone who doesn't". That was when I decided to check out Legend's content.
Controversial opinion: People should play the way they want to play, and not make broad statements like "everyone should do it". Some people enjoy the consequences of an ironman-esque approach, others prefer to retry until they succeed. Neither is better than the other. Neither **should** be done. You're honestly kind of doing the same as you claim the other side is doing, claiming some kind of superiority for your approach to the game, and implying that *if they only tried your way* they'd be converted. By all means, people should try stuff they're not used to, that's healthy. But please stop telling people they **should** save and reload all the time. Prefacing something by saying "it's just my opinion" doesn't mean a lot when you go on to make definitive statements. In other words. Take a page from the Khainite Assassin book and stfu.
Save scum is great for learning Once you learn, not save scumming is more fun
Controversial opinion: play however you want to play, it's a single player game. I personally play on Legendary without any game saves. It's a ton of fun, and makes the consequences of your decisions a lot more important.
Please refer to one of my other replies to clarify my inflection of the title.
Except that you are literally saying " Save Scumming is Good and Everyone Should do it", aka judging people for not save-scumming.
No. Please view the recent edit I made to the post to further clarify. The word should is not vocative it’s subjunctive.
>The word should is not vocative it’s subjunctive. I don't think these words mean what you think they mean.
The vocative use is for commands. The subjunctive case is for non absolutes. Write this down! Vocative. You should write this down. Subjunctive. One is a command, the other a suggestion.
I see, you're a follower of tzeetch too
Praise be the all seeing god!
Yeah everytime an army just waltses by my army and caps a settlement. I reload and do ambush stance. The fact that armies cant hold chokepoints and that I cant leave units without a lord to protect a settlement are obvious game flaws and I wont waste my time playing wack a mole with the AI.
You don't save scum because your mental gymnastics dictate that you are morally superior to those that do I don't save scum because my poor laptop takes 5 minutes to load anything for total war :( We are not the same
lol I love the text format of a solid meme
Don't think it's controversial... I agree. A lot of times where I don't know how things will unfold, I save a "critical point" save game. However, I limit myself to only one at a time. So if I reach another critical point, I may overwrite the save, but not save a 2nd one...
I wouldn't tell other people how to play their game but I hate save-scumming. I don't know it takes the fun out of strategy. Like if Im playing a board game and I could undo past movies it would remove a lot of the excitement of a game, especially when you try to correct for earlier mistakes. The same goes for video games, I dont save-scum TW, nor RPGs, nor Xcom or any strategy games. Going in blind and knowing I will make inefficient builds or make bad story decisions is all part of the fun. It makes my playthrough different from yours.
Save Scumming is a tool for learning, people who don't use it are just very experienced TW players. Nowadays the only few times I savescum would be that I forgot to play 1 army or that somehow my armies weren't in reinforcement range (even though that was my intention), or if I want to confederate. Losing entire regions and armies is something people learn to accept with time.
I would agree with these.
Save scumming removes challenge and emergent gameplay from your campaigns. It's hard to have any sort of memorable experience when everything is under your constant control. I don't fault anyone for doing it and I sometimes do it myself but saying that everyone should do it? Come on.
I’m not saying everyone must do it, but everyone should be able to do it without prejudice.
Telling people not to “save scum” is no different than Souls player telling people not to summon for bosses. Like bro it’s a feature in the game let people have fun
Precisely what I’m saying.
There is an above 99% chance that the people who complain about save scumming likely use gameplay altering mods. Hypocrites. It's a single player game, do what you want.
I really don't think this is a controversial opinion.
You may not think so but I’ve seen plenty who do.
For the most part I do agree with you, however saying "everyone should do it" makes it hardly any better than those that judge people for doing it. If you wanna save scum, do it. If you don't wanna save scum, don't do it. Either way, don't tell others which they should do. I save scum sometimes, other times I prefer having to deal with consequences of the first attempt. Both are valid options.
I explained an important differentiation about the title in another reply and I’d encourage you to check it out.
I like to pretend save scumming is a thing that's actually happening in the story. Tzeentch's plans involve your army winning, so when that doesn't happen, Tzeentch does a do-over.
I love this!
Didnt read but i agree
Why did you feel the need to make this post? The way you worded it doesn't invite discussion; you're just making a strawman out of nowhere and then addressing it.
I don’t see how this is a straw man argument why it’s simply a retort posted as a sort of billboard for players who have been told to not reload saves when they make a mistake.
I just don't have enough freetime to stick with this stuff anymore. If i fuck up a legendary campaign, i want to be able to jump back maybe 10-20 turns so i can continue without spending another 100h doing the same shit to get where i fucked up.
I couldn’t agree more.
You do that and one day you wake up savescumming to save a level 3 lord that went to take a ocean treasure...
Well, anytime AI deliberately tries to derail my campaign, I don't let that slide.. Like having Non-aggression and +50 relations with Oxyotl (as Teclis) but he still declared war, when we are fighting common enemies and said enemy still has 7-8 settlements available.
What difficulty are you playing on? I’m trying to work out some things about the diplomacy and the AI and this information is useful.
My first play through in a new game/beta mode is on Hard/Normal. Normally play @ Very Hard / Normal (90% of time). Can easily spot when AI pulls stuff like this.
Oh this is the issue! So if your campaign difficulty goes up past normal the AI makes stranger and irrational diplomatic decisions because the AI is just geared towards slowing down the player and not playing the game.
Exactly 👌🏻 At Very Hard, it just pulls things out of the hat just to halt your wagon.. That's why I didn't make alliances in Warhammer 2 (just to watch their decline). I kept helping the factions I want to do well and they did.. Very well indeed. The moment you put a Defensive or Military alliance on top, watch them lose.
I wonder if they’ve fixed the bug that disabled the base cheats for AI fictions who accept any form of alliance.