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My opinion is that there is no such thing as cheating unless you are directly or indirectly competing against someone else; i.e. a human--whether in a game, in terms of score, race, etc.
For the purpose of learning the game and trying new strategies, reloading is key; exploring two diverging paths is only possible when exactly the same initial conditions exist before the branch. Reloading makes this possible. Playing through a whole game, making hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions is too coarse grained; large consequences of small decisions are not seen, and the sieve of human memory will let slip important lessons by the time the next game is begun.
There are, however, some things that I consider foolish, that teach nothing, and are "cheap".
1. Reloading to get better combat results. I mean come on, are you five years old? Probabilities are probabilities. Weird **** happens--must and will always happen--with a decent random number generator. Reloading in this case is akin to shouting "Do-over!" on the playground.
2. Reloading to prevent the loss of galleys rushing for contact. This is very similar to reloading to get better combat results.
3. Reloading to expand in a different direction, having realized that an alley is a dead end, there is a strategic resource or luxury there, or to prevent the AI from expanding into a strategically import area. There are just some decisions that you have to live with; revisiting them with more perfect knowledge won't teach you much.
Those having been said, I do reload sometimes, to try out different attack strategies, weapons testing, maneuvering, etc. I sometimes experiment by reloading until before a war I just started and then playing it out by attacking someone else to assess the relative success of particular military campaigns, and to try to see what indicators are best to look at in order to forecast the relative success of a mission (in order to better plan future wars). I may try different unit mixes, more attack or more bombard, or naval infiltrations behind enemy lines. Or I might try different military alliances against an opponent to see which has any effect. Or I might try different tactical objective priorities; e.g. going after resources first.
I also try out different victory conditions as well, although as of yet I have only secured Space Race and Histographic wins.
Basically, I support the use of judicial reloading as a means to learn the game very quickly. This is for my personal benefit, and to make it more fun. In competition however, even for score, I would frown upon such activities.
For the purpose of learning the game and trying new strategies, reloading is key; exploring two diverging paths is only possible when exactly the same initial conditions exist before the branch. Reloading makes this possible. Playing through a whole game, making hundreds, if not thousands, of decisions is too coarse grained; large consequences of small decisions are not seen, and the sieve of human memory will let slip important lessons by the time the next game is begun.
There are, however, some things that I consider foolish, that teach nothing, and are "cheap".
1. Reloading to get better combat results. I mean come on, are you five years old? Probabilities are probabilities. Weird **** happens--must and will always happen--with a decent random number generator. Reloading in this case is akin to shouting "Do-over!" on the playground.
2. Reloading to prevent the loss of galleys rushing for contact. This is very similar to reloading to get better combat results.
3. Reloading to expand in a different direction, having realized that an alley is a dead end, there is a strategic resource or luxury there, or to prevent the AI from expanding into a strategically import area. There are just some decisions that you have to live with; revisiting them with more perfect knowledge won't teach you much.
Those having been said, I do reload sometimes, to try out different attack strategies, weapons testing, maneuvering, etc. I sometimes experiment by reloading until before a war I just started and then playing it out by attacking someone else to assess the relative success of particular military campaigns, and to try to see what indicators are best to look at in order to forecast the relative success of a mission (in order to better plan future wars). I may try different unit mixes, more attack or more bombard, or naval infiltrations behind enemy lines. Or I might try different military alliances against an opponent to see which has any effect. Or I might try different tactical objective priorities; e.g. going after resources first.
I also try out different victory conditions as well, although as of yet I have only secured Space Race and Histographic wins.
Basically, I support the use of judicial reloading as a means to learn the game very quickly. This is for my personal benefit, and to make it more fun. In competition however, even for score, I would frown upon such activities.
. I hate barbs 
(not including MP games obviously)
. 
I really was pissed. Sure they were partially injured, but in most cases they were only 1 hp down. complete bull**** if you ask me. It was tough not reloading there 
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