savegames before a battle

[gunslinger]

Ok, we've all been there. It's time to go to bed or to work. You hit "end turn" a final time just wanting to see what will happen, and -SURPRISE!- your favorite ally and trade partner just invaded with six stacks of fast mounted missle units. It's going to be a long battle. The VI expansion at least added the ability to do a quick save from the pre-battle screen, but no way that I can see to exit the game from there. I've just been using the old Windows 3.1 trick of hitting Alt + Tab to switch to the desktop, but most of the time that causes the game to CTD, which I'm convinced corrupts the savegame file. I've had lots of savegames refuse to reload after closing the program this way. Does anyone have a better method for quitting the game from the pre-battle screen?

[Knight of the Temple]

Why don't you just auto-calc the battle after saving, and go through the rest of the motions for that year (messages screens, auto-calcing any other battles, etc) and then simply quit as normal at the start of the next turn? And as far as I'm aware you can simply load back up to the pre-battle screen you last saved whenever you're ready for it.

[caravel]

You can do exactly as libra683 said, and then load the "quicksave" entry from the load game menu when you return to the game. This is probably better than the CTD (As far as I know the game always CTDs from the pre-battle screen if you try to alt tab).

The downside is that it's still unlikely to help you with your corrupted save problem, as I'm pretty sure that the CTD doesn't itself cause the corrupt save. The only way to avoid this, is to avoid the pre-battle save and the (CTRL+S) quicksave entirely (both are actually quicksaves).

The CTRL+S save can still be used with some reliability if you only use it at the very start of a turn before doing anything else. Moving alot of agents and stacks and ordering e.g. and assassination or sending an emissary on a mission, and then saving with the CTRL+S is probably going to corrupt that save.

[Deus ret.]

You can do exactly as libra683 said, and then load the "quicksave" entry from the load game menu when you return to the game. This is probably better than the CTD (As far as I know the game always CTDs from the pre-battle screen if you try to alt tab).

The downside is that it's still unlikely to help you with your corrupted save problem, as I'm pretty sure that the CTD doesn't itself cause the corrupt save. The only way to avoid this, is to avoid the pre-battle save and the (CTRL+S) quicksave entirely (both are actually quicksaves).

The CTRL+S save can still be used with some reliability if you only use it at the very start of a turn before doing anything else. Moving alot of agents and stacks and ordering e.g. and assassination or sending an emissary on a mission, and then saving with the CTRL+S is probably going to corrupt that save.

I second. Quicksaving is a good way to lead your data on unsafe ground, but I made the experience that inter-turn quicksaves (= before battles) tend to have A LOT more corrupting potential than those done during a turn.