My message was not to you, but since you put yourself in the line of fire, I`ll answer you. The way I see it, once you`ve chosen your parameters in the options and are happy with that, you should not Reload except for real-world needs.
Reloading because you don`t like the way the planets fall is still cheating to get a better win for yourself. So anyone that posts on the forums, saying `I can`t lose because the AI is bad,` is being disingenuous since he reloaded until he got an optimum setting he liked.
The real skill, is being able to take the cards whichever way they fall, and still win. .
But, before you get all umbraged, my original comment was not to you, only to those who boast here. My main point is, if people keep reloading then posting to the Devs that the AI is bad because they can`t lose, not mentioning they always reload for every thing that doesn`t go exactly their way or lie about it, the Dev could make the game needlessly harder until the only way to beat it would be to reload every step in every game.
A flawed mentality. If I'm taking your use of "should" literally, that is. As in, we're morally obligated to reload. I kinda doubt you mean it that strongly, though.
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/playing-to-win
The ultimate objective of playing video games is subjective, since people have their own goals in mind when they play games. The vast majority of people, however, play to 'have fun,' and in my experience the masters have fun even if they lose. To say that your fun should be held above my fun is ignorant of what good game design should truly aim for. If someone has fun by save-restarting until they get a perfect opener then, well, that's their perogative.
Both perspectives are easy to understand and eminently reasonable:
"I don't want RNG to really be a factor because it's dumb to lose to a skill-less and frustrating random reason I had no ability to overcome. I'd rather my optimal starting strategy, the mastery that I've gained by exploitation of the game's mechanics, be brought to the forefront, and perhaps I can optimize it further."
Likewise, the others would say "I want RNG to be a factor because my optimal strategy would be forced to change or be uncertain. I like my mastery to adapt under self-imposed limitations be brought to the forefront." Most people, I think, are the former mentality for the early game and the latter mentality for the late game as 'save-scumming' becomes inherently less effectual over time, and that the loss feels more deserved because it's based less on RNG and more on the 'skill' of the AIs / the mistakes of the player.
Fun for one person and fun for another aren't mutually exclusive. The purpose of options such as 'difficulty' or 'galaxy size' is to cater to the different play styles of people and how they go about having fun. However, the pride of some people is so great that they think their preferred play style should be able to beat all things. This is the scrub mentality which says all ought bow to a particular set of favored options and circumstances. It's elitist. Catering to these people is not good design, though it might be financially beneficial to release multiple titles each catering to a different play style. On the other hand, I believe a truly great title (and thus huge sales) can come from being able to cater to all peoples, that a wide variety of preferences and strategies towards fun at all levels be viable and on display. At such a point, it might become that changing one option makes an entirely different game with an entirely different group of fans.
What this thread addresses, then, is the problems that halt those who've mastered the game to a high degree from having more fun by facing a more difficult opponent. Stardock will likely solve this the correct way by adding more options, or differentiating the available options more, and I think this'll take the form of the more difficult AIs starting to mimic the mastery that human players have shown, or otherwise changing things that are overly meta and strategy centralizing, such as how only a narrow band of strategies are viable in competitive / high level play because of the overpoweredness of one tech tree / underpoweredness of another tech tree.
For now, I suggest you'd be humble and be open to them making the game "needlessly" harder for the people who want to play that game, and be happy with your lower difficulty and having more 'honor' than they do because you don't reload.