Major dysfunction: units disappeared

[guermantes]

Hi all, I ran into a heck of a problem today and would appreciate any feedback.

Yesterday I played a lot and came to AD1800. I fought off simultaneous invasions from Catherine and Alexander and that really sapped my strength which I needed to go to war against Hatshepsut instead who is crowding me in.

Therefore I was glad to make peace with both while keeping my territory intact, and I started the rebuilding of my empire. IRL I saved my game at (AD1800) and went to bed.

I had noticed that during the last 15 turns or so my work boats, the ice blocks in 'Antarctica' as well as images in the unit preview pane only showed blacked out graphics, but thought this was just that I was running out of memory.

But today when I loaded my savegame I saw to my dismay that:
- 3 workboats are gone;
- My navy is decimated. 2 galleons, 1 caravel, 1 frigate and 6 ironclads are gone and the stretch where I had positioned them in a maritime maginot line is in the black as if I had not even sailed past those tiles;
- Improved sea resources are not improved anymore;
- I had traded the world map with Louis and could view the territorial partition of my neighbouring continent as well as plenty of sea tiles. Now all that is in the black again.

It seems to be only naval units that are gone but honestly I have no idea whether I had 13 or 15 riflemen etc. Very annoying.

1- Has anyone else experienced this situation?
2- Is it a known failure that has a known fix or work-around to prevent it from happening?
3- I presume I can replace the lost naval units with the world builder, but what about the fog of war?
4- I don't have much experience with the world builder, should I think about something special so that I don't ruin the rest of my game.

Thanks a lot!

[guermantes]

Here is the savegame if that can be of any help.

[Tiberius]

I think it's helpful if you could posted a previous savegame as well, when you still had all those units.

[guermantes]

I cannot since it appears that all my SHIFT-F5 quick saves during the last 200 years have vanished as well. I know that I saved a lot of times during the wars with Cathy and Alex but they are not there. Apparently only the 'real' save that I made before exiting the game last night remains.

Furthermore, when I looked closer on my cities I realized that I had lost all my postwar cannon production as well. At this stage I am beginning to think I have lost other units as well. And going into the tech tree I was back 3 techs. My workers were building railroads before I quit last night but in my save I don't have the tech to do so.

How weird is this??? It is no longer major dysfunction but total mayhem!

I think I will go back 200 years and replay from that point on. Of course I know I will be invaded but it is too much guess-work trying to replace all the units and techs and I wouldn't be surprised if other things are screwed up as well.

I will never SHIFT-F5 again. That's probably not the issue but still I will not.

[trev]

My personal guess is that the save you are working from was not the save from the end of the session but a save from much earlier on, in other words your final save did not work and you are playing from a previous save.

[I_pity_the_fool]

I will never SHIFT-F5 again. That's probably not the issue but still I will not.

What about Autosaves?

[guermantes]

AUTOSAVES!!!! How could I be so stupid!! I never used them so I forgot they are there. It all looks good and just a few turns to replay.

Kublai Khan is my main ally in the present game and is helpful IRL as well it seems...

Thanks all!

[Jaybe]

QuickSaves do not keep old ones. It is in a folder where the current one replaces the older (so there is always just the one file). I always use the QuickSave when I am about to leave the game or even pause it for several minutes, because it saves the game state of that instant. After I quit the game for the day, I rejoin it by opening the QuickSave.

AutoSaves can be set (in the .ini file) to save as many games as desired, but it normally keeps about 4 or 5, including the one at game start (4000BC). They can also be set to save at any turn frequency: I have mine set to every turn (from when the Better AI mod recommended doing so). I use the AutoSave file only if something goes terribly wrong.

I rarely do a normal save of the game (Ctrl-S). I found that I never went back to them, so even archiving a momentous occasion doesn't seem worthwhile.

[Kuciwalker]

I do regular saves when I quit.

[Ming]

If I'm going to exit the game, I do a save... otherwise, I rely on the auto save feature to solve any lock ups or other game related problems. Worst case, i have to replay a few turns. And if a file got corrupted, I can go back a little farther and try to get past the problem again.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

I play with settings that seem to challenge my PC's memory. So there comes a point in the game (when the saves get up to about 800K) when I save after every other turn or so. And I don't just keep resaving over the same save, I rotate among "STYOM1.sav", "STYOM2.sav", "STYOM3.sav", and so on.

It's tedious, but less tedious than playing the same turns over again after crashing and having to recover from an old savegame.

[EPW]

you know you can change the autosave settings in the .ini file so it saves every turn, or at any other interval you want.

[Dis]

I rely on autosaves to correct losing cities to barbarians as well