Do you save and reload? If so, why?

[Elfarion]

I think, one of the reasons that so many beginners save and reload, is the low difficulty of the short beginner campaigns. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying, I want them to be harder. But even for someone who just finished the tutorial, it's possible to beat AOI or TSG with very few losses of level 1s. Thus beginners are likely to get a 'false sense of security'. And when they play a longer campaign or an intermediate campaign they experience more casualties and unevitably lose veterans. For me another factor was that I highly overestimated the value and importance ov levelled units. I tried to protect every levelled unit from dying, often causing frustration and reloads.
I think it's somehow part of the learning process. Beginners tend to make stupid mistakes. Reloading allows them to learn from these mistakes without the necessitiy to restart a whole scenario. Additionally, if someone's more into the story than into gameplay (as I am, whenever I play a campaign for the first time) saveloading is an opportunity to continue the story without coming up with a sophisticated strategy. Later, when someone has completed the campaigns and has obtained a deeper understanding of strategy and game mechanics, one might like to beat a campaign in a more "elegant" way. (So am I currently) So I think, saveloading prevents a lot of frustration for the new players.

[Jabie]

I do save-loading almost every time when my leveled unit or loyal dies.

This is kind of my little dread in the game, the loyals units- they are great because they are loyal, but when I get a bunch of them I become neurotic about them dying. I think my new strategy is to sacrifice all non-story loyals asap.

Because they don't cost upkeep, players value their Loyals and use them in most scenarios. As a result, this tends to level them up. It's fun to see your old reliable level 3 who you've nurtured through the entire campaign, he's part of the family now. This emotional attachment can lead to save-reloading, which you would not apply to your level 1 cannon-fodder unit.

Extra Loyal units might make an interesting bonus to earn as a side-quest in a scenario. For instance, the main scenario might have you defeating the orc warlord, but if you send some soldiers and stop the goblins stealing the harvest, you might earn a few loyal peasants who, with the correct care and attention, can ultimately be fashioned into new heroes for your retinue.

[Kirsten]

What is RNG (heaven/hell)?

Whether one reloads is being treated as quite the ethical and aesthetic issue! I can relate to the pleasantly pure feeling that comes from holding oneself to standards, but refraining from reloading is one of those standards that affect no one but the one making the choice. I see no real superiority in someone who abstains from reloading; that person just enjoys his/her Wesnoth differently than I do, which should be no surprise. I play Wesnoth for fun, as, I'm guessing, do the rest of you; only I can notice and respond to what choices make the play the most fun for me.

I save/reload often, via "Back to turn x." I don't deliberately save before risky maneuvers; if an exchange goes unbearably, I'll probably take the whole turn over, mostly because that way I can reassess my intentions. Reasons I reload include both that consequences revealed to me what a dumb mistake I've just made, and I thus go back a turn wiser and more alert, and that luck goes against me so much that I suddenly am not having fun anymore. That's pretty much the key for me; if I notice I'm not having fun after a loss, I'm not going to thrash myself into maintaining a standard that is counterproductive to my learning and enjoyment. (And it would prevent learning, because the game would be too frustrating for me without reloads.)

I would like to play MP someday, and I realize that I'd better toughen up in the face of heavy losses before I try it. Even if it were possible for someone as tech-unsavvy as I am to cheat on MP, I do sense my obligations to other players, obligations I do not have to AI.

Different people learn and enjoy themselves differently. I do learn a lot, while reloading turns. I learn different things than I'd learn if I never reloaded, and maybe the day will come when I'm ready to learn those other things. I'd like to be so emotionally robust that I could countenance the consequences of the choices I make within the game, but for me, for now, that would be too much like real life. For me, BfW is a needed escape from real life.

I do mark the words of those who find that playing without reloads is much more fun. Maybe someday I'll find that that's true for me as well. But perfection is not for me, this lifetime, I think, even in this tiny arena.

[perseo]

Random Number Generator.
BTW I avoid reloading as much as I can, but when I do I always use the automatic saves the game makes. Some times, when your level 4 magi misses the 4 shots and then a little grasshopper, let's see a fencer, hits him with all his attacks and kills him you may think the game is cheating you. I know this feeling.
But now I have a way to avoid this feeling, whenever something really bad happens to me in wesnoth, I try to remember the scenario where I was favoured by the RNG, a footpad once resisted 3 draughts without taking any damage... this kind of things.... it helps me a lot.
On the other hand I also suffer the "Haldiel syndrome" when I have unit I've levelled, I AMLAed and I used it in every single scenario... yes I suffer when he dies in a stupid charge. Sometimes they're not even loyal, I even rename some units. In HttT I used to have (every single time I played) a Elvish Marshal called "Maedhros" and when he died (he eventually died) I raised another one, now called Maglor.
See ya!

[Kirsten]

Thanks, perseo, for RNG.

Re your grasshoppered level 4 mage and your undamaged footpad: I would like to become more able to appreciate and remember the times when my luck was extremely good, and to invoke those memories when things look bleak. I do often notice the spectacular successes, but the notice is fleeting. I think it's a dynamic that happens a lot in life: Losses tend to feel more vivid and memorable than successes.

I've gotten a lot of life lessons from Wesnoth, such as, "Oh, look, this is how it feels (ouch) when I encounter random bad luck." When I get that same feeling in real life, I tend to interpret it as much more meaningful than random bad luck. The game, because I trust it to be random, shows me that random back luck can feel irrationally personal — so I begin to grasp that I shouldn't give those reactive feelngs the status of actual information about the world. It's a dose of rationality, effective against depression!

I've also learned not to attack at night. I seem to be a lawful unit, much more effective during daytime, and if something goes wrong in the evening, if it can wait until morning to be dealt with, I will postpone it until then. Wisdom can be learned in Wesnoth!

P.S. What's AMLA? : ^}

[Paulomat4]

after maximum level advancement

[Kirsten]

Merci, Paulomat4.

I really ought to have known that.

[Crendgrim]

For future reference: Glossary
A very handy page listing all the common terms used here.

[Kirsten]

Thanks for this reference, Crendgrim. It's the first time I've seen it; it should cut down on the questions I ask.

I just acquainted myself with the site map, which should also should help. I've been relying on the links at the top of the pages to find my way around, but there are a lot of resources, such as the glossary, that are hard to find that way.

I appreciate y'all's patience.

[oaq]

Elfarion is right in my view: saveloading prevents a lot of frustration for new players.

To answer the question nevertheless: I saveload to correct misclicks of the mouse, but do not saveload to recover from random-number misfortune. For example, when my leader Konrad recently wanted a single hit to kill a grunt, to advance a level, and to stabilize my wavering front -- but the grunt hit twice at 6.3% odds, killing Konrad instead -- I resigned and restarted.

Indeed, I restarted not the scenario but the entire campaign.

I might of course have saveloaded. After all, Konrad's maneuver had clearly been the proper one to try under the circumstance, and it should have worked. However, not all maneuvers work that should, as this one did not. Especially galling was that Konrad needed only 1 XP to advance, which means that he need not even have killed the grunt; but c'est la vie, that's how it goes. Do you remember Humphrey Bogart's unflappable reaction, playing the proprietor of Rick's Cafe Americain in the 1942 film Casablanca, when the agonized croupier informs him that a guest has just won big at the roulette table? "Forget it, Emil. Things like that happen all the time." Well, I prefer to play it like Bogart, for Bogart would not have saveloaded even had the odds been 0.1%. (Of course, Bogart as the cafe's proprietor would have cheated at roulette, and did. That is another matter.)

In my experience, the game is more fun when one submits to such permadeath discipline, since it forces one to consider unlikely contingencies, which over the course of a lengthy campaign must occasionally arise. You don't play a permadeath campaign as you would play a saveloader, or even as you would play a conventional scenario reloader. The game is harder under permadeath, of course, which I like.

The advice has been offered in these forums repeatedly: if the game is too hard sans saveloading, then try an easier difficulty setting! Naturally, no one could (and few would) stop a player from playing however he likes; but, if you asked what I think, I think the advice good. It is the nature of random numbers occasionally to run very good, occasionally very bad. Odds of 6.3% or even 0.1% sometimes come off, after all; and sometimes you cannot avoid the risk. If I saveloaded in such a circumstance, why, I should be converting an inherently risky situation to an inherently safe one -- and of course I play safe situations differently than risky ones. See the problem?

What of misclicks of the mouse, then? Answer: I will indeed saveload misclicks and the like. To the extent to which accuracy with the mouse and such is a goal of the game, it is not a goal I enjoy, so I do not seek it.

At any rate, I do not otherwise saveload.

[Poison]

Yes , I do for some (or all) of the reasons mentioned above. I am a new player (and I play on the highest level of novice and intermediate campaigns which I probably shouldn't) and I am trying to be completely safe ( I count the maximum hits to calculate the damage I'll take, except saurians in LoW of course, that would be pointless ) and avoid doing it. It became inevitable a few times though. I choose some turns before, the previous turn or even the start of a scenario or a campaign. I'd like to know if there's a way to know whether a unit will advance or not when you kill an enemy, sometimes in some turns I try to kill the computer unit with a near dead unit of my own to fully heal it at the start of the turn, if there's still some xp to advance I reload and protect it intead. I think there should be an indicator for this (if there isn't one already).

[beetlenaut]

I think there should be an indicator for this (if there isn't one already).

I remember being confused by this myself. There is no indicator, but there is an easy rule.
Fighting a unit earns you experience points equal to the enemy unit's level. (Which means you get nothing for fighting level-0 enemies.)
Killing a unit gets you XP equal to the enemy's level times 8, except for level-0 units which are worth 4XP to kill.

[mattsc]

I'd like to know if there's a way to know whether a unit will advance or not when you kill an enemy [...] I think there should be an indicator for this (if there isn't one already).

Maybe I misunderstood the question, but isn't the color of the experience bar just that (except for the kill-L0-enemies case). In the screenshot below, the grunt on the left has a white bar, indicating it's 8 XP or less from leveling (killing an L1 enemy is sufficient). The next two over have light blue bars meaning they are between 16 and 9 XP from max, with the two on the right having (slightly) darker blues indicating they need even higher level enemy kills to advance. Granted the differences between the blues are hard to make out, but at least the bright white is pretty clear. The differences are a little easier to see in the unit table.

[Drakilian]

I dunno about the others but the reason I save-loaded when I started the game was because I had no idea what any of the cool new units were like at higher levels and I wanted to see/use them all. This carried/carries over into add-on campaigns too. I like to use the new units and there are only so many things that you can level to max in a playthrough.

Once I know what everything does then, depending on the campaign, I usually don't really care anymore, haha

[Inky]

Wow, how is it that I've played Wesnoth all this time without realizing that the shades of blue correspond to which level enemy you needed to kill in order to level?!

There's actually another easy way to tell, which I use - look at the damage calculation graph (the button at the bottom of the attack dialog), and look at the chance of your unit ending up with 100% HP. If your unit is wounded then this equals the chance that your unit will level from this attack, so you can plan accordingly. (Though if you have a dying unit on the verge of leveling, I would definitely recommend trying to retreat and heal it and level it later when you can guarantee its survival, instead of doing a risky attack which might end up killing it.)

I dunno about the others but the reason I save-loaded when I started the game was because I had no idea what any of the cool new units were like at higher levels and I wanted to see/use them all.

I felt the same way, I think it's annoying that the game hides the higher level units when you need to know their stats/abilities in order to plan. Fortunately, there's an option in advanced preferences called "show all unit types in help" which does just that!