Although in general I like to keep multiple saves I have been playing on iron to test it out. I will say, in general I like the idea of just 1 save and not having to ruminate over "could I have done that better" "What if I...." which I am prone to do, although I highly recommend if anyone is learning the game to do so and if you have a hard battle, play it many times and you'll learn a lot. Now before I start complaining, I admit I don't have to use ironman mode, I know, I get no new content from doing so, no banana stickers, no achievements, yes from, a certain point of view all criticism and concerns are rainbow bright'd away by "nobody is making you play on ironman??". I'll complain anyways. 
Playing on Ironman brings to the surface many festering grievances I have with the game.
1 The AI is prone to massive **** ups and dum behavior. TW somehow has actually mad it worse in some cases over the last year (see HA thread(s) ). Now, normally in about 1/10 battles if my units just say "don't feel like shooting today" and get all shot up with thier pants down, I just re-load the game and probably in won't happen again for another 10 battles or more. But on ironman I gotta just eat a big old sandwich every time the AI derps out! Good thing we can use gear to power level up troops now, we're gonna need it if we're stuck with the derpy choices the AI makes. I'd rather the troops just do their basic roles consistently and for HA with ammo to NEVER charge into melee!
2 The horrendously obnoxious marriage dialogue "pseudo check"... it's not a true check as it can be brute forced and re-seeded and such... I hate it. BUT on ironman you can't (easily) brute force it or re-seed it, you get one shot "Oh boy which 80% choice is the right one? Sometimes it's none of them Oh boy!"
I did get married to the 3rd person I tried. But I have nothing but disdain for this dialogue system and I think it and it's brother and sisters in vassal recruitment and quest options have no place in the game. I don't want to see a % chance in this game. I want to do things and for things to happen. If you want to lock an option behind a skill level or other condition, go ahead, that's fine, that's what games usually would do for this.
3 Ironman saves take a loooooooong time. I posted comparison videos in the 1.6 patch thread, but it's about 4x as long or more then a normal save. Now, you can turn auto save down to every hour, that helps, but is it really even an ironman mode if you aren't saved after every action and you can just exit the game anyways? Sure I wouldn't play it if I had to have a long long save every 5 feet, but still. Then there's also this long pause after some battles and think it's also saving then too. I'm not sure if it's just big battles or lord battles or what but it's very noticeable sometimes. It could be something else as I haven't actually tried to investigate if it made a new save at this time.
4 Ironman..... more like just Inconvenientman. You can just close the game start it back up if you really want a do over. So it's not really different, aside from inconvenience, then just playing on normal saves and "not" re-loading when you whoopsie poopsie.
5 Ironman's arch enemy, Doctor Savius Corruptus! It hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm very weary of getting too attached to my ironman games during beta! I read someone on reddit lost thier ironman save. I'd guess you can manually copy a back up save, like in warband, but then is it really ironman if you're making back up saves everyday?
Anyways what do you think?
Playing on Ironman brings to the surface many festering grievances I have with the game.
1 The AI is prone to massive **** ups and dum behavior. TW somehow has actually mad it worse in some cases over the last year (see HA thread(s) ). Now, normally in about 1/10 battles if my units just say "don't feel like shooting today" and get all shot up with thier pants down, I just re-load the game and probably in won't happen again for another 10 battles or more. But on ironman I gotta just eat a big old
sandwich every time the AI derps out! Good thing we can use gear to power level up troops now, we're gonna need it if we're stuck with the derpy choices the AI makes. I'd rather the troops just do their basic roles consistently and for HA with ammo to NEVER charge into melee!2 The horrendously obnoxious marriage dialogue "pseudo check"... it's not a true check as it can be brute forced and re-seeded and such... I hate it. BUT on ironman you can't (easily) brute force it or re-seed it, you get one shot "Oh boy which 80% choice is the right one? Sometimes it's none of them Oh boy!"
I did get married to the 3rd person I tried. But I have nothing but disdain for this dialogue system and I think it and it's brother and sisters in vassal recruitment and quest options have no place in the game. I don't want to see a % chance in this game. I want to do things and for things to happen. If you want to lock an option behind a skill level or other condition, go ahead, that's fine, that's what games usually would do for this.
3 Ironman saves take a loooooooong time. I posted comparison videos in the 1.6 patch thread, but it's about 4x as long or more then a normal save. Now, you can turn auto save down to every hour, that helps, but is it really even an ironman mode if you aren't saved after every action and you can just exit the game anyways? Sure I wouldn't play it if I had to have a long long save every 5 feet, but still. Then there's also this long pause after some battles and think it's also saving then too. I'm not sure if it's just big battles or lord battles or what but it's very noticeable sometimes. It could be something else as I haven't actually tried to investigate if it made a new save at this time.
4 Ironman..... more like just Inconvenientman. You can just close the game start it back up if you really want a do over. So it's not really different, aside from inconvenience, then just playing on normal saves and "not" re-loading when you whoopsie poopsie.
5 Ironman's arch enemy, Doctor Savius Corruptus! It hasn't happened to me yet, but I'm very weary of getting too attached to my ironman games during beta! I read someone on reddit lost thier ironman save. I'd guess you can manually copy a back up save, like in warband, but then is it really ironman if you're making back up saves everyday?
Anyways what do you think?
