Autosave And The Mysteries Thereof

[TwinMfg]

I am hoping that someone here is willing to enlighten an ignorant near-noob on how autosave works. Several weeks ago, I was playing a game and made a major goof. True to my modus operandi, I was negligent in saving my game on a regular basis. So I figured I could load the autosave, thinking it saves after every turn. Much to my surprise, the auto save was not even associated with the current game.

Last night I started a game and after playing for a while, my wife informed me it was past my bedtime. Being the obedient husband that I am, I promptly shut down the PC and hopped into bed. Where I promptly sat upright all in a panic. I forgot to save the game! And it was promising to be quite interesting. Well, to make a short story as long as possible, I tried to load the autosave and, much to my relief, there was my game! So, the question is, when does autosave save?

[bretwalda]

I believe it saves when you press ctrl + s

Also there is an "escapesave" that is when you press escape key to get out to the main menu of the game. That might help ;)

[Fortify]

I believe it saves when you press ctrl + s

ctrl + s is quicksave.

but I too have had some odd examples of autosave being inconsistant. I would have assumed it saved when you hit "End Turn" But this seems to not always be the case.....

[lugh]

Bottom line is its pretty unreliable.
The only time you can be certain of it is when you see "Saving..." flash up along the bottom bar when you end the year, but before it starts AIing the enemy moves.
Use ctrl+s to quicksave before you hit end turn, its a good habit saves me a lot of hastle. Also save via the menu [esc] if your going to do anything risky, there is only one quicksave file

[Procrustes]

Somewhere you can turn autosave on and off - it may be that you have it set for some games and not others.

Just a guess....

[TwinMfg]

Thanks, y'all. I'm familiar with "escapesave." But when the wife starts tappin' her foot and snappin' her fingers, escaping her wrath is the only type of "escape" I'm concerned with. ~;)

I didn't know you could quicksave at the strategy map. That's helpful. Thanks again.

[Ludens]

Somewhere you can turn autosave on and off - it may be that you have it set for some games and not others.
Auto-save can be toggled on and off in the in-game options menu accessible from the strategy map. Just click the gray triangle next to the minimap. Standard, it is on at the start of a campaign. However, a lot of troubles with corrupted save games are attributed to auto-save, so I always turn it off.