watch your saves folder

I'm one of those players that likes to save every turn. I don't usually need all the saves, but I feel better having lots of options in case of a crash and saves are tiny right? WRONG.

I happened to be looking through my saves on the hard disk when I discovered a single save is about 90MB. Just 11 saves is ~1GB of used space. My saves folder was over 5GB already. The requirements for this game should say you need 20GB of free space. I can't believe they use up this much space. It's like they are all short movies.

I have about 300GB free space but it still annoys me that saves would be that large. I immediately deleted saves from all my finished campaigns except the last one. Hopefully 10 saves is enough for ongoing campaigns, because that's all I will be keeping from now on. I'm still using around 1.5GB but better than before I guess.

Everyone should check their saves folder to make sure they are not using more space than they want to be.
Vista: C:\Users\<user_name>\AppData\Roaming\The Creative Assembly\Empire\save_games
XP: C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\save_games (RTI saves) ~ Didz
C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire\save_games (GC saves) ~ Didz
AppData is a hidden folder so you need to enable viewing of hidden files in the control panel. You can copy/paste the path into your browser, putting your correct user name in.

Yes I know this as well and I do go in and delete old saves I no longer need. However I get the impression there is a lot going on behind the scenes with the campaign and as it has to record what everything is where it is and what it is doing I guess all that adds up.

I have to say It is a huge jump from M2TW. I have the space at the mo so Im not worrying too much I must just clean it out now and then.

i only ever keep 2 saves max of a campaign anyway. so, unless i do everysingle faction and save for each of them, ill be fine.

on a side-note: did you check whether a late-game save is larger tha a turn-1 save?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Prussian Iron

on a side-note: did you check whether a late-game save is larger tha a turn-1 save?

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This was brought up a few months ago, yes, it turns out they do get larger.

:no:

I had a Supreme Commander savegame that was 1.5 GB.

now I know why my hard drive is full...
:dizzy2:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by antisocialmunky

I had a Supreme Commander savegame that was 1.5 GB.

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:furious3:

Brb checking my supcom savegame now.

It was in the middle of a massive maxed out battle from FA.

I deleted 456 files and still have 36 saved.

Thanks for the head up!

I really was running out of space on my hard drive...now I know why, at least partly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pevergreen

yes, it turns out they do get larger.

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well then, that's why: it is not simply a book-mark. it is, instead, all the data of every faction and unit and city and ship crammed together. which makes sense.

This is not something new. The same thing was present in RTW and M2TW. The difference is that in previous games those saves were small and you didn't notice when they got bigger in the end.

I can't comment on that, I doubt if I got further than 50 turns in a game in either of those. I enjoy the early game more than the mid or late.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Prussian Iron

well then, that's why: it is not simply a book-mark. it is, instead, all the data of every faction and unit and city and ship crammed together. which makes sense.

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Yeah, it makes sense that they get larger - it doesnt make sense that they are that big either at the beginning or the end of the game. I mean, even if theyre saved in bloody XML and theyve stored historical data of every turn so far - how on earth do they manage to use up hundreds of megabytes? It's beyond me frankly. :dizzy2:

They start large and become larger. The game saves the whole startpos.esf file in the save, so basically all entities on the map, including related AI overhead, etc. pp.

If you ever need a clear sign of the map technology jump then this is it.

You've got a digitised map with a million times a million references. This is the result.

If someone programs an AI to deal with that, then let me know an I'll be able to place you with a
military contractor in about 24 hours.

That, or down the road at Cern in Geneva.

Save games on XP machines can be found here: C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\save_games or here C:\Documents and Settings\[user name]\Application Data\The Creative Assembly\Empire\save_games

No idea why there are two locations, unless its been changed by a patch. The first location seemed to contain mostly RTI saves the second Grand Campaign saves.

yes the saves in this are incredibly large and rediculuous, but I would not mind this so much if I could CHOOSE where to save my games. I resorted to in the end calling my saves

(Current faction) Campaign Save 1
... Save 2
... Save 3
... Save 4
... ...
... Save 10

up to 10 and basically I would save over each each save each turn so you get up to ten and then overwrite 1 again and just kept doing that and it worked very well, that way the save folder doesn't grow over 1gb and you are keeping your most recent saves plus a few behind incase something goes awry. However I do sometimes create a unique save if something major has happened such as a major war, revolution, change in alliances or some such like that.

that has served me well, at least now there is a delete button in the save menu finally.

I have too many CTDs currently to keep only a single save per turn (Out of video memory, generic stopped working, "cursed" fleets etc). In addition, the fast forward seemed to be borked last time I played which made this even more annoying, since all battles take forever. I usually save one time at the start of each turn with the default name, ie faction, year, season. Then I save after every major battle I'm not keen on replaying, effectively every major battle :p. I keep perhaps 15 mid turn saves that are named a number of strange things, which I overwrite as I go. My save games folder is probably a few gigs, but before I noticed this it was just silly, since all my mid turn saves were the default name with a number or letter added to it at the end, all unique. =)

good grief.

I was busy wondering why i'd run out of space in my c drive, and why there was such a disparity between my docs and the size of the visible files within, then found this.

Yet ANOTHER thing the designers of this game clearly didn't give any thought to.

I mean stacking the save games in HIDDEN files?

gaaah!:furious3:

wtf is wrong with them?

I agree, and maybe this topic could be stickied just incase anyone doesn't realise it can trace their savegame storage down and free some room, I really do not comprehend the hiding the savegame folders, an option to choose would be really nice, although they have at least now included a delete savegames button in the save game menu screen, I don't remember that being there in 1.0, so there is that at least