ALL of my saves games vanished

[Colonâ„¢]

Civ4 original, Warlords... Can't find them in the recycle bin or anywhere else. Why did this happen and is there an improbable chance I can get them back? Thanks...

[Hauptman]

Sure your looking in the correct folder? If you have both expansions, you have 3 save game folders.

Open sid mier's civ 4 folder, look for warlords fldr, then the savegame fldr shortcut, and it should be there. if not, then I'm clueless.

[Colonâ„¢]

It's when I noticed the Warlords folder was gone I realised something was seriously wrong. Already did a search on C: for file names I could remember.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Hauptman
Sure your looking in the correct folder? If you have both expansions, you have 3 save game folders.

Open sid mier's civ 4 folder, look for warlords fldr, then the savegame fldr shortcut, and it should be there. if not, then I'm clueless.

These folders, of course, are in your documents folder, not your applications folder.

[albucc]

Have you played with accounts in the windows? I mean, have you change your current login name? If so, then maybe your games are in your old login "my documents" folder. That would be "C:\Documents and Settings\<>\My games\...". The savegames of civ get saved inside your personal username files, usually.
I'm not at my home computer now, so I can't say the complete path for sure.

[snoopy369]

It's also possible it's Civ's fault, although it's relatively unlikely that it would happen to both at once. If for any reason it could not find your Civilization4.ini file, it will entirely recreate the folder with that in it "%MY DOCUMENTS%\My Games\Warlorlds" (or "Sid Meier's Civilization 4") (and its subfolders), including removing any save games and whatnot.

[Unimatrix11]

As a note to all game publishers/designers/whatevers: I hate it when any game (or application) creates any folder anywhere else than in the destination folder i assign to it. I am a tidy freak on my comp and cant stand the mess some games create in my ´my documents folder´. Stick to the folders to which you were assigned everyone ! There is no reason, why games (like civ at least) should not be accessible (including the saves) for all users on a comp. And hell - who uses multiple accounts in windows anyways ? I dont know anyone who does...

Recently i had installed ´Silent Hunter IV´ on my comp. I have a new screen, so i wasnt quite sure which refresh-rate to pick. Of course i picked the wrong one. Next time i start up the game its all a graphic-fuzz in consequence of course, making it impossible for me to reset the graphic-settings in game. I checked the game-folder (the destination folder i had assigned for it) for a config-file. Couldnt find were the graphic settings is stored. So i opted for de- and reinstall. After that it was still the same... So i thought: "UH ?! - Is it in the registry or something ?!" (i had deleted the obligatory still existant game folder with its rest-content manually). So i DL regcleaner... no change... it took me the whole evening to figure out, that it had created a seperate folder in the ´my documents´, which is not being deleted by deinstalling, where i finally found the configuration file... pisses me off... seriously...

[Aro]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
As a note to all game publishers/designers/whatevers: I hate it when any game (or application) creates any folder anywhere else than in the destination folder i assign to it. I am a tidy freak on my comp and cant stand the mess some games create in my ´my documents folder´. Stick to the folders to which you were assigned everyone ! There is no reason, why games (like civ at least) should not be accessible (including the saves) for all users on a comp. And hell - who uses multiple accounts in windows anyways ? I dont know anyone who does...

Recently i had installed ´Silent Hunter IV´ on my comp. I have a new screen, so i wasnt quite sure which refresh-rate to pick. Of course i picked the wrong one. Next time i start up the game its all a graphic-fuzz in consequence of course, making it impossible for me to reset the graphic-settings in game. I checked the game-folder (the destination folder i had assigned for it) for a config-file. Couldnt find were the graphic settings is stored. So i opted for de- and reinstall. After that it was still the same... So i thought: "UH ?! - Is it in the registry or something ?!" (i had deleted the obligatory still existant game folder with its rest-content manually). So i DL regcleaner... no change... it took me the whole evening to figure out, that it had created a seperate folder in the ´my documents´, which is not being deleted by deinstalling, where i finally found the configuration file... pisses me off... seriously...

Totally agreed.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Unimatrix11
As a note to all game publishers/designers/whatevers: I hate it when any game (or application) creates any folder anywhere else than in the destination folder i assign to it. I am a tidy freak on my comp and cant stand the mess some games create in my ´my documents folder´. Stick to the folders to which you were assigned everyone ! There is no reason, why games (like civ at least) should not be accessible (including the saves) for all users on a comp. And hell - who uses multiple accounts in windows anyways ? I dont know anyone who does...

Um, actually they're following proper form by doing so, and IIRC "Games for Windows" are required to follow this format. Many people have multiple users on their computers, and imagine a family of 4 with two teenaged children and two parents, all of which play civ; but the teenaged boy likes to use windowed mode and the girl prefers fullscreen, and the dad prefers to play with 'cheat mode' (aka python console) on while the mom doesn't. Putting the INI file in the "My Documents" area allows this to be possible. Save games of course make sense there also; particularly with the relatively obscure civ save names, ie "Isabella 1492.civ4savedgame" where if the father and his daughter both played a game as Isabella, who knows whose save is which, especially if he ends up overwriting hers?

Civ is quite well-behaved in that it has only two folders; the Program File folder, and its own Civ4 folder inside "My Games". Everything is where it is supposed to be, and well discriminated between users.

Ultimately, it's there because it is a very minor inconvenience to you for it to be there, but not putting it there might significantly inconvenience others. You even have the shortcuts, which you could pretend are not shortcuts but actual folders if it makes you feel better; it's not like the folder structure is actually meaningful anyhow in a physical way, each of those files are probably spread across the disk unless you defrag constantly.

[jkp1187]

Bah.

Is there no way to redirect the default path, perhaps via a tag in the *.ini file?

[LordShiva]

Colon^TM sighting!

[Kuciwalker]

As a note to all game publishers/designers/whatevers: I hate it when any game (or application) creates any folder anywhere else than in the destination folder i assign to it. I am a tidy freak on my comp and cant stand the mess some games create in my ´my documents folder´. Stick to the folders to which you were assigned everyone ! There is no reason, why games (like civ at least) should not be accessible (including the saves) for all users on a comp. And hell - who uses multiple accounts in windows anyways ? I dont know anyone who does...

Tough luck, they're doing it exactly right. User files belong in user folders. Duh. Welcome to thirty years ago.

[Unimatrix11]

Pfff- with modern disc-sizes, they could easily all have their own installation of civ - problem solved...
And yeah: i want my dos 6.22 back !

EDIT: How about making it an option during install:

Create configuration and save-games folder in:

O (<- checkbox) Destination folder
O ´my documents´ for this user

or something like that ?

Cause obviously there are others than just me, who use their PC as a P(ersonal)C and for whom the ´my documents´-messup is just an annoyance.

[Colonâ„¢]

*waves at LS*

Originally posted by snoopy369
It's also possible it's Civ's fault, although it's relatively unlikely that it would happen to both at once. If for any reason it could not find your Civilization4.ini file, it will entirely recreate the folder with that in it "%MY DOCUMENTS%\My Games\Warlorlds" (or "Sid Meier's Civilization 4") (and its subfolders), including removing any save games and whatnot.

Something like this must have happened. There's two things I can remember doing before the accident. Firstly I tried one of those Civ4 utilities (wouldn't work so removed it again) and loaded the American Revolution mod (wouldn't work either, because some genius forgot to include the actual scenario on my installation CD - the Civ4 Complete edition FYI). Yet I wasn't able to reproduce the event by going through the same motions.

I'm now saving my games in a folder entirely separate from the Civ4, Warlords and BtS ones.

And I hear ya Unimatrix...

[Unimatrix11]

Well, about putting files in ´my documents´ being the ´right´ way: I will attach a little jpeg, showing a comparison of the games installed on my comp, and the folder in my ´my documents´ (=´eigene dateien´ in german). It shows, that out of 11 games installed, only 5 do that. It only adds to the confusion, that firaxis seems to put all their games into a ´my games´ subfolder (do they think everyone is only running their games ? - mine does contain BTS and Pirates! - thus 5 total in ´my documents´), while the others are in seperate folders directly under ´my documents´. Obviously there is not quite a consensus what ´the right way to do it´ would be...
EDIT: The ´right´way is the way I,or better: the user, wants it to be.