Help! Again...

[Lord_Vader]

*sobs.

I was doing absolutely amazing (for the first time!) in a single-player game in Dominions 3 Demo. I sent my pretender to the Death Match arena, and he got killed, simply because I had forgot to erase some previous battle orders which basically meant he practically commited suicide. I believed I could simply load the saved game and continue from there, before I had entered the death match.

Is there ANY way whatsoever, even if, yes, it would count as cheating (although there isn't really such thing as cheating in a single-player game), that I could somehow change that last move? If not, well... *sobs again.

I know you CAN continue without your pretender, but really, he was absolutely amazing. He only got killed 'cause of my forgetting.

[Sensori]

You would've had to back up your game's folder before the turn ran. Otherwise it's not possible. :/ The game basically "saves" every turn again again, overwriting earlier turns, so you be outta luck here unless you had a backup.

[Burnsaber]

Lord_Vader said:
*sobs.

I was doing absolutely amazing (for the first time!) in a single-player game in Dominions 3 Demo. I sent my pretender to the Death Match arena, and he got killed, simply because I had forgot to erase some previous battle orders which basically meant he practically commited suicide. I believed I could simply load the saved game and continue from there, before I had entered the death match.

Is there ANY way whatsoever, even if, yes, it would count as cheating (although there isn't really such thing as cheating in a single-player game), that I could somehow change that last move? If not, well... *sobs again.

I know you CAN continue without your pretender, but really, he was absolutely amazing. He only got killed 'cause of my forgetting.

Don't worry. Dominions 3 is not excatly short of "amazing" units. Try summoning some elemental royalty (conjuration 8) and equipping those guys out. I assure, you'll forget that your god ever excisted.

[Loren]

There's no way to recover other than making backups as you go, the game doesn't save them.

Do you realize you can use "Call God" to get him back, albeit with all of his magic abilities reduced by 1? IIRC it's 40 priest-level-months to get him back. (Thus a level-1 priest on his own would take nearly 4 years. 14 level-3 priests could do it in a month.)

[Lingchih]

Man, don't sweat it. I know it hurts now, but you'll lose Pretenders time and time again as you play the game... it's just part of it. Call God him back and don't make the same mistake again. And unless you have the King Hell God of all time, don't send him to the Death Match. It's just asking for heartbreak.

[Aezeal]

Hehe I was a bit surprised to see this "feature" or lack of more back-up features... these days you can save about everywhere in games..

but I really like it now.. you have to think.. can't keep reloading endlessly (which I tend to do from time to time in some games)

think.. you have time and then live with the consequences of your action.. having a dead pretender isn;t that bad certainly if you are late in the game and "doing well" recall him .. and if needed get his magic levels back.. shouldn't be that hard (OK for a rainbow pretender it MIGHT suck a bit )

[Gandalf Parker]

Actually the game does support backups in the Linux sense (its a game created on Linux then ported to Windows and Mac). It can be duplicated for the others.

There are various player-created backup routines. I did a file here that gives you a new icon to click that will back saves of all your games.
http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/SavingSavedGames.zip

it basically does this...
C:\WINDOWS\system32\xcopy.exe /yes savedgames oldsaves /i

Others have taken some of my hints and created ways for you to add it automatic backups to your Dom3 icon every time you end a turn using the postexec switch on Dom3. I also like to add features like "resume game" or changing the default settings I got tired of changing every time I made a game.

[Edratman]

The lack of backup is tough and unforgiving. I know when I played Civ, and countless other games, I would always save before doing something dicey. Many will consider it a cheat, but I'm just playing myself and I'm playing for fun. This is probably why the dev's didn't include the option. I can live with it and actually enjoy not being able to cheat/optimize the game.

It would surprise me if there was anyone who hasn't blown a game by some similar error. I've deleted at least 10 games when I got mad because of something I did or didn't do.

[Gandalf Parker]

But its not lacking. Its there in linux style (a command line option which does far more).

And even windows only PbEM style games tend to have a save but not an actual backup. You just get to save it to a different name so that if you mess up then you can switch games to the one you saved off to a name like "atTurn10"

I suppose that an actual button on the menu that says "backup" or something might have been good for the windows people.

[Yrkoon]

In SP games I sometimes end my turn before I mean to (hitting the "e" key instead of the intended "r" happens regularly), or forget to do something important and end my turn. The game then saves the game with the orders issued, and resolves the turn.

I have found that if I close the dominions window while the turn is resolving (it can take several minutes), I can then just load the game normally and resume from where I left.

That's a great way of not messing up a game if an accident happens (ending turn unintentionally), but only if you realize your mistake quickly. In you case Lord_Vader it probably wouldn't help, since you had to wait for the new turn to see you had done something wrong. But you might find it useful some other time