Since you answered my question, I will respond.

One cheats by breaking the rules for an unfair competitive advantage.

You cannot gain an advantage over an inanimate object that does not care or has no stake in the outcome of an activity. You cannot cheat your car. You cannot cheat the door. You cannot cheat a game because neither the game, nor the AI will feel or think (both activities limited to sentient organisms and in this particular instance, humans) that they have been taken advantage of by the player in order to win. When you show me a game (or a car or a door) that takes issue with how you beat it (drive/maintain it or open it), then I will agree that it is possible to cheat an inanimate object.

Cheating against humans? Unfair and unethical. 'Cheating' an object? Who cares? The object?

In edit-This is why you rightfully say that there is a problem when a player says that they should be playing at God level after changing the rules but acting as if they are playing on a level playing field. The implication is that this great player is playing by the same rule set that all other players are using, thereby creating a hierarchy where they are the best and all other players are inferior, which is in fact a false assertion. Because people are competitive and care about rankings, many would rightfully be irked if someone made the claim of being better while not adhering to the common rule set.

This concern is null and void in a single player game where there are no rankings.

Destroying who's experience? The person changing the rules for their own enjoyment when it has NO IMPACT ON YOU? Why do you care?

Broken mechanics, editing files, etc...who cares? Let me ask you-Do you want to look over my FE folder to see if I am cheating? Exploits are NOT cheats.

In edit-Cheating allows one party to gain an unfair advantage by using a different set of rules over another party. I will ask once again-how can you gain an advantage over an inanimate object (do not try to create a special class for programs/games unless you are prepared to prove to me that games are able to think and care about an outcome)?

Until there is an ironman setting, saving and reloading is part of the single player experiance and can never constitute cheating.

Or at least as we must define what 'cheating' actually is, such a person is as much of a CHEATER as the individual who abuses an in-game mechanic that exists yet shouldn't like "Accuracy + Maul". People will justify and call this 'exploiting', but when the dust settles, there really is no denying that it's just another form of CHEATING.

SO, all you 'anti-cheaters' out there....take a REAL good close look in how  YOU play the game, cause I'm betting your JUST as much a cheater as those that reload.

PS. To those who may not have been on these threads for a long time, willie sanderson is also VERY rude poster. It's best not to encourage this behaviour by allowing him to further troll posters. Just ignore him.

Now on to the topic:

Very interesting ideas posted in mitigating the destuction of a city when attacked by monsters to only losing population or buildings. Would love to see this explored a little more and it would make sense that it should be; after all, you can't lose your heroes....why should you lose your cities?

At the very minimum, the tile the city is on shouldn't lose it's ability to rebuild a city should it be destroyed. No earth salting please.

That's a good post GFireflyE, there are many different levels of metagaming-exploiting-cheating. The question everyone has to ask themselves when they take advantage of an exploit is "Is this ruining my overall experience with this game?" If the answer comes back yes, then don't do it, if you gauge that it won't then be careful because it is real easy to get caught up in the "well if I can do this, then I'm gonna do this too" phase and next thing you know your spawning in 10000 gildar and a full suit of plate armor, and two days later your bored of the game.

@flagyl no worries  We both agree that you can cheat in multiplayer games and that it's a no-no. You stand by your point that you can't cheat in a singleplayer game/or that it doesn't matter because it doesn't affect anyone (I think that's the jist of your arguement? Correct me if I'm wrong) I stand by my point that you can cheat in singleplayer games and that it affects yourself. I feel it is a tremendous loss to cheat in a singleplayer game, because it's hard to go back to playing by the rules that presented the challenge in the first place. I have taken advantage of exploits in the past, and entered cheat codes in singleplayer games, and ruined the experience for myself, so I'm not taking a shot in the dark, I've had my own experiences with it. I wish I didn't. That's all I really have to say on the matter. I will read your response if you compose one, but I've said all I need to say.

There needs to be more weaker monsters and less of the "deadly" groups.  Monsters should be more likely wander around solo especially trolls, skaths, slags, ogres etc.  It's outrageous and impossible to protect against such large groups.  I typically settle carefully, I try avoid pushing my borders of monster lays as much as possible still some "deadly" groups of 5 or so trolls wander in from the wildlands.  A little more care needs to be taken in generating maps.  Each faction should have at least 2-3 "safe locations.

I love the brutality of the world you have to survive in.

I really am tempted to create a max difficulty game, with a weak AI opponent and see who lasts.

The idea of a bear destroying a city is ridiculous. I don't reload, btw.

And I don't think Willie's first language is English, which might be why he comes off as being rude and unintelligent. If that is indeed the case then we should be sympathetic to his difficulties: it is hard to converse in a language not your own (as anyone here who has ever learned a second language should be able to understand).

Agreed entirely. To the OP that is, the whole 're-loading is cheating' discussion is pointless in a single player game. So long as the game isn't balanced on the assumption that all players reload whenever something goes wrong then I don't care.

But as for the razing issue, yep, irritates me no end. Two points in particular as others have said:

* Most monsters should only damage cities, not raze them. Dragons should perhaps destroy (although even then for a big city it should take several turns) but lesser monsters should just damage them.

* If a city is destroyed then the whole can't rebuild on the land mechanic sucks big time and always has. By all means have a ruin appear which must be searched/cleared first but then the city should be rebuildable on the same square.

Issue has been raised many times before though. I don't know if Stardock disagree on the point or if they just don't regard it as important (which would surprise me given how often it has been mentioned on the forums).

Fox, Nunya : between different difficulties, the different perks (factions, characters etc...) and the different loots & quests you can get at the begining, all game are variable at begining, and I found in some game that you can be put in situations where you can't defend yourself. IF you have beastmaster, or rush summons like air elemental & undead, the game becaome easier. In one game I was lucky with my 2 first quest and was rewarded with free longbow women and spearmen with shield & leather, it make the game far easier and with leveling these two units were still my best one in mid game.

Another note on IA: having cities razed, i'm pretty sure it desavantage it even more than you.

The way to go for please every one? add a new system for people who don't want see their cities razed by a bear, and when creating a new game add a chech box for choose wich system you want to play! And add an ironmanmode for people who don't stand reloading game ^^ (well even when there is an ironmode, when I always keep the save option because... of bugs. Loosing your best units because of a bug isnt fun)

I'll just skip the conversation on saving and loading for now.

I think this could be a good idea if it was implemented with either scale and/or recurrence.

Recurrence is simple enough, the monster pillaged and ate. Then he left. The monster still exists ready to repeat on the next turn if the Great God AI wills it. If a cities population falls low enough the city is razed.

Scale would be more like X population is lost fighting against a monster of Y size or Z level. The bigger and badder the monster is the more people with die fighting it trying to kill it or wound it (I suppose this means if you dealt a lot of damage with your militia your peasants should have an easier time surviving the monster attack) and a number of buildings have a chance of being destroyed in the attack. A bear is reasonably tough, but a dragon will eat your town and poop on it until it is unrecognizable from the surrounding landscape. Which is probably 100% cannon behavior of dragons in FE.

Perhaps buildings like the Hedge Wall will help prevent the loss of buildings and other interactive buildings or locations could work along side this mechanic.

(Save/Load Related Part:

Save-scumming is only save-scumming in games where a loss should be game over, eg a rouge-like, WHERE YOU DIE. With 'hardcore' or 'ironman' you can track your skill in terms of progress and it encourages you to learn from mistakes and play to your best. It doesn't have to be a multiplayer game to encourage development of skill and knowledge, SP just means we can disregard balance to a degree. The game is turn-based, so we can take our time with decisions, choosing the right course of action. Losing a town isn't necessarily game over but save-loading partially defeats the purpose of that particular challenge. Claiming that town back should be a rewarding experience, that one load game deprives you of. 'RNG' is part of all games (even in games with strict rule bases you'll never know whats inside your opponents head) so deal with being cheated with superior skills, rather than showing the game who's the boss and simply ignoring it with a load. It ultimately comes down to the individuals goals, if they just want to finish a game coming out on top then why not save/load. It's stress free. Still... Over time people seem to have forgotten that losing is fun. Nothing is more exciting that seeing it all go down in flames!)

I don't find winning or losing fun in these games. I don't want to rush a victory and get top points or watch all my hard work suddenly disappear. I want to play a thousand turns, "max out" my empire, and then quit when I feel like I've accomplished what I wanted. The goal is never to win for me, I don't even play with achievable victory conditions turned on. I also don't play on difficulties where I can lose, but I do keep it hard enough where the enemy can keep me on my toes and I have to work at achieving what I want. It does come down to individual goals, and fun is very subjective, people forget that everyone plays these games differently, some times drastically so.

I realize I haven't offered my own suggestion to the topic. I think everyone can be pleased by making it difficulty based. Having cities razed instantly sounds like something that should be a part of an "insane" difficulty, perhaps the few difficulties below that it should take them an increasing amount of time to raze your cities, perhaps on normalish the city becomes a monster lair until you recapture it, spitting out new monsters every few turns but never being razed, and maybe on the easier settings just have monsters ignore player cities completely. IE on challenging (what I play it), if a monster takes your city it becomes owned by that monster and is instantly reinforced with a tough defending force, then every 5-10 turns it spits out a monster army that wanders around nearby up to some maximum number, perhaps the city level.

About loosing is fun: Loosing in Dwarf fortress is fun because of the deep simulation that can create new and surprising chains of events and because their is no victory to achieve. But in 4x isn't same, you have a goal, it's more competitive, even in sp. If people want more difficulty with razed cities in 1 raid/season, leave it as a option, so every one will be happy and enjoy LH as they want (isn't the point of difficulty levels and world options?).

I feel like you Sanati. I find wining/loosing in an empire game boring, I just love building an empire and see the world evolving. I need to check, but if isn't in, need an option for unlimited nber of seasons in new game option.

I've now had more of a think about it.

When monsters capture a city, make an event of it.

Each turn, the monsters do something. Maybe produce another of themselves. Maybe burn down a building. Maybe kill population. Maybe send out another war party. Maybe convert some population into units that will fight for the monsters (undead!, bandits!).

This should continue until a suitably legendary hero brings an army to defeat the monsters infesting the town.

Possibly things should happen when monsters capture an outpost - maybe they could set up a lair of some sort, and build up strength.