My Documents - Save Path - Why Why WHY!

[I Am Jeff]

I hate the My Documents folder. I am the only person who uses this computer, no one else will ever use this computer. I have no use for the My Documents folder.

I have a dedicated hard disk that holds my OS and anything I do not care about (such as the installs of office and a number of other things). I have a separate very large disk that holds my game installs (as they tend to be large). In this day and age the operating system is prone to attacks and crash and the chance of not being able to access what is on the disk with your OS. This happend to me last March and I lost everything on that disk and had to format and reinstall the OS. This has happend to me before of course, the other time about 2.5 years before that one.

On another disk, I have a folder where civ4 is installed, is it too much to ask to have any saves, mods, etc go there. My OS is installed on a relativly small drive (~26 GB). I plan to get and use a lot of the mods over time. They will take space and it would be a good idea to group them with the Civ4 install folder which is on a disk that holds ~111 GB.

Is it really that hard for the developers to create another variable (1 c-string is all that is needed) that holds the path to where all this stuff that is in the wretched My Documents folder. The first time you start a game, it does to the default spot, fine. But it should remember where you have been saving your games.

I was looking at .ini file and it does have this:
; Save Path - relative to working (Civ4) folder
FileName = 0

I am not quite sure of the format of that, but you SHOULD be able to use ".." to get up to the path C:\, I just would not know how to switch to the F drive (my other disk). I have tried to do this, just to see how it would work on the C drive, but I have not been able to figure it out.

At least copy and paste works in this version of Civ, at least I can copy the path of the save directory and I guess that will have to do for now.

[Petek]

Here's how to change the location of your save files (and everything else in the Civ 4 portion of the My Documents folder):

Find the Civ4 shortcut (for example, on your desktop). Right-Click on it, and choose "properties". On the form that appears, click on the 'shortcut' tab, and find the box that says 'Target'.

Click in the box, and add the following to the end of it:

/ALTROOT=pathtosaves

For example, to get it to put the saves in the C:\Games\Civ4_Saves directory, change it to:

/ALTROOT=C:\games\Civ4_saves

Note: If you want the saves stored in the base Civ4 directory, change it to:
/ALTROOT=.

If you want to set it to a path that contains spaces, you need to enclose the path using quotation marks:
/ALTROOT="C:\Data\Civ 4 Saves"

(Courtesy of the Civ Fanatics Civ4 Unofficial Tech Support FAQ at http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=135019)

[I Am Jeff]

AWSOME!!

Thank You so much, would be nice if Firaxis documented some of these features.

[Cambo67]

You could also move your "My Documents" folder onto your second hard drive.

Right-click the "My Documents" icon on the desktop, select "Properties", and press the "Move.." button ;-)



Cambo