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Moving all of my documents, appdata, and the entire steam folder over to a new PC, which should include all relevant files, my old Pantheon and saves wouldn't load because my device didn't match. I had to do some file editing to get the pantheon to load, but my saves never would. So ya my assumption is there is some internal list that looks at the device ID and ID of the save files and stores them as "legit saves" and if the save doesn't match that list it is ignored. If you load the game and those saves are "missing" it's probably assumed they are deleted and removed from the list. If you could find that specific file and edit it, maybe you could add the IDs back to get them to load, but I'd imagine it's obfuscated and not something you could just casually fix with a text editor. I don't know what that file might be, I don't think it's the "FILE" under Empire, that is your Pantheon data but copying that over into the new "ID" only allowed me to use my old Pantheon and did not fix my missing saves. The only thing I didn't look into was the registry, it's possible there is something there controlling save lists but I wouldn't recommend messing around with that if you aren't familiar with doing so.
But ya, TLDR, don't touch your saves, and if you switch devices or suffer some other data loss, be prepared to lose everything. There's some very anti-consumer stuff going on there.
Unless some devs want to chime in and explain, I doubt we will find out though.
Well, what I've been doing is this: The game gives us X number of saves (I don't recall the amount; anything under infinite is too low for me). When I run out of saves I make a backup of those files and then delete the (non-backups) to make room for new saves. My thinking was that if I needed to go back 10 turns in the event of a bug or issue, I would have a save file from an earlier point I could reload and continue from.
Recently I ran into a problem where the AI was acting strangely and I decided to revert to an earlier point in my game in an effort to avoid the issue entirely. I deleted my current save files and took my backup files from a backup folder I made several days earlier. But when I went into the game and attempted to load the files I ran into problems.
First, the names of the files being displayed in-game did not match the actual names of the files (I tend to name my save games for reference). Instead, it was showing me the names of the files I had just deleted. Clearly there is a record being referenced and stored somewhere outside the save-game folder.
Second, obviously, the files would not load. The game claimed they were corrupt.
I understand the protections the developers have in place to prevent cheating on Pantheon points but what I was doing had nothing to do with Pantheon points (in fact I was losing potential incoming Pantheon points by reverting to an earlier save where I had accomplished less).
It is strange, because whenever the developers need to look over a player's game to research a reported bug they request the player send them a copy of their save game. Somehow that is all they need, and yet that same save game file on its own seems useless to the players who created it.
I am hesitant to believe it's linked to hardware IDs or registry entries, and am more convinced there are simply critical related files being stored somewhere on our hard drives that we are not aware of (files the developer's tools don't need). What are the files being stored at "Documents/Paradox Interactive/Age of Wonders 4/Logs", for example? They seem to frequently update as I create new save files. Although you mentioned moving your document files to a new PC and your saves still not being recognized. :(
This seems oddly complex. Have the developers really never come out and explained precisely what players need to do to backup or transfer their save files? I have a hard time believing they wouldn't disclose this information for a game like this where so much time can be invested by a player.
Saying "it's for pantheon so it's ok" is excusing terrible practice by devs or their blatant incompetence in save file structure. Fact that these issues persist to this day is pretty insane to me.
I can say 100% that hardware/OS ID restrictions definitely is the case for the pantheon itself. Once I figured this out I was able to restore my pantheon from my old PC so it worked on my new one.
I could never get my old saves to work, so I can't say for sure why they don't work, it's just an assumption on my part that they behave similarly to the pantheon. If you send a save to the devs they aren't loading that save in the normal game, they are using a dev version of the client with special rules and debugging features. But ya, everything in documents, appdate, the steam folders, and the game folders, were all moved over to my new PC and I couldn't load my saves, so it wasn't about any hidden list of saves missing unless that list was in the registry.
I'm not saying this is the same issue you are running into, just that it is the type of issues present with save files because of the convoluted systems involved.
The devs haven't really said anything about it that I am aware of. When the game first released there was a limit of like 10 save slots per game which was obviously atrocious, I believe one of the earlier patches they updated that to like 100 slots (it only keeps the last 24 autosaves, but you can have a lot of manual saves), that's the only comment about their save structure I've seen them make.
I am definitely not saying that. The save and file structure here is absolutely horrendous and should really be fixed and made more consumer friendly. I'm just saying the only reason I can think of for them making things so bad is because of the pantheon, but I also don't believe it is their place to try to police what people do with their single player games. If somebody wants to copy paste save files and load them for victory pantheon points over and over to fill out their pantheon, let them, there are other ways to cheat it anyway. Penalizing all players with a bad save system just to try to stop the handful of players that want to cheat is not OK.
I am struggling to understand (possibly out of ignorance as I am fairly new to AoW4) how the issue I'm encountering could be related to the pantheon protections at all, though. I wasn't trying to reload older backed-up saves from a completed game, but rather for a game that was still in-progress. I just wanted to go back 10 turns in a game that was nowhere near ending.
I can understand the developers having an interest in wanting to protect the pantheon reward system but I don't see why it would need to go as far as preventing what I was trying to do.
Let me try this a different way.
Currently AoW4 allows us to have approximately 50 saves. Assume I save twice per turn (once at the start of my turn, once right before ending my turn).
With that in mind, by turn 25 I am going to run out of save slots. As an example: At turn 25, if I wanted to, I could reload my turn 2 save and continue from there, rewinding the match a total of 23 turns. The game will allow me to do this without issue.
Let's say instead that I want to continue onward from turn 25, but (as I said) I'm out of save slots. My solution is to exit the game, backup my save game folder with its 50 saves somewhere safe, re-enter the game, reload turn 25, delete my 50 saves from within the game's save-game interface, and now (with 50 empty slots) make new save on turn 26.
This is where everything fails. If I suddenly decide I want to go back to my save from turn 25 I obviously need to exit the game and return my backed-up save from turn 25 back into the game's save folder. But upon trying to load that particular save, AoW4 will claim it is corrupted and permit me to load it.
So, we have the first scenario where rewinding 23 turns is completely fine, but the second scenario where rewinding even 1 turn will not work. This is why I'm saying it doesn't make sense from a "trying to prevent exploiting Pantheon points" perspective.
For whatever reason the game does not recognize the backed-up saves as being valid saves any longer. When I deleted 50 saves to empty the used save slots, even if I have those save files backed up somewhere safe the game is nuking some sort of reference (an index or a list) to them that allowed them to be recognized as valid saves.
Mods, don't lock this. The question is still relevant.
Sorry, I just noticed this question. Unfortunately I never managed to get this to work properly. I even posted the question on Paradox's official forums but never received a response.
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/save-game-location-seems-to-require-more-than-backing-up-one-location.1692234/