Gah, I am a Fool...

[DaciaJC]

Indeed, for yesterday I overwrote my Getai campaign when picking up my Romani campaign without knowing it. I had made a backup, but I forgot to to update it for a while.

And so I was wondering if using System Restore could possibly solve this issue.

[MButcher]

From my experience on Windows XP, no it doesn't help.

[Nachtmeister]

There are two things that can help you:
1) police lab and surfice-analysis of your HDD; if you get lucky, the "overwrite" did not take place exactly "on top" of the original savegames, but it will require that you do not write anything to the HDD until done and it is unlikely that windows will avoid writing on allocation units previously occupied
2) more realistic: An backup-"image" of your HDD at any point in time when you still had the original savegames.

AFAIK, windows system restore-files are not "images" but rather "configuration-settings"... Which will not do anything at all for a savegame as it is no system configuration setting but rather a simple file.
Like a text document or something like that...

[DaciaJC]

AFAIK, windows system restore-files are not "images" but rather "configuration-settings"... Which will not do anything at all for a savegame as it is no system configuration setting but rather a simple file.
Like a text document or something like that...

Yes, I had thought that was the case. Just wanted to make sure. Thanks anyways, though.

Lesson learned.

[Ibn-Khaldun]

This reminds me a very good Ptolemaioi campaign. I think I was around 240 or something(my usual Ptolly campaigns never last that long) and then I for some strange reason saved a Seleucid campaign on top of it.
So, now I have this save called "Ptolemaioi" but whenever I open it it's AS campaign. I left that save there in order to remember this forever. Always check where you save your games.

[TheStranger]

That's why I don't have only one savegame, which I wouldn't recommend anyway.

[Nachtmeister]

Simple:
Make a savegame every time you conquer or otherwise gain possession of a city, and once every summer (year-in-history-announcement); make a habit of doing the save the instant you see that symbol before all else.
Format:
"Summer272BC" or "cityname", depending upon which of the two prompted you to save.
When you start a new campaign - alt-tab out of the game, go to rtw/eb/saves/, strg+a, strg+x,
create a savegame directory somewhere else, create a sub-folder named for the faction, create a sub-folder numbered for the campaign (1, 2, 3, 4, ...) with that faction or named for any special stuff about the campaign (Arche_Hellas_mikraasia_271BC or similar unlikely stuff), enter that folder, strg+v.
I have NEVER unintentionally deleted an important savegame yet that I could not re-deem with a pesky but easy one-turn-back-re-load and re-do-what-I-did-last-time.
And I have never-ever overwritten a save from one campaign with another... That way, you are also practically immune to the "persistant CTD".

[antisocialmunky]

"Varus give me back my saves!"

Sorry, unless you have a full backup, a system restore only restores ini's, exe's, and certain other file types.

[DaciaJC]

Simple:
Make a savegame every time you conquer or otherwise gain possession of a city, and once every summer (year-in-history-announcement); make a habit of doing the save the instant you see that symbol before all else.
Format:
"Summer272BC" or "cityname", depending upon which of the two prompted you to save.
When you start a new campaign - alt-tab out of the game, go to rtw/eb/saves/, strg+a, strg+x,
create a savegame directory somewhere else, create a sub-folder named for the faction, create a sub-folder numbered for the campaign (1, 2, 3, 4, ...) with that faction or named for any special stuff about the campaign (Arche_Hellas_mikraasia_271BC or similar unlikely stuff), enter that folder, strg+v.
I have NEVER unintentionally deleted an important savegame yet that I could not re-deem with a pesky but easy one-turn-back-re-load and re-do-what-I-did-last-time.
And I have never-ever overwritten a save from one campaign with another... That way, you are also practically immune to the "persistant CTD".

Good advice, mate. I had gotten in the process of doing that, but I didn't bother to continue for a while. I was only playing one campaign at the time, and CTDs weren't an issue, so I just became lax.

[Marcus Ulpius]

System restore only rolls back drivers and installations. You could use shadow copy, but I doubt you have Win2k3 Server installed on your EB computer. it looks there's no way to bring that campaign back.

[DaciaJC]

Well, I do in fact have a back-up of the campaign, but from 20 years earlier. A lot has happened since that I don't necessarily want to play through again.

I suppose this is the best time to start that new campaign + AAR I've been thinking about...