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Once an archive is made, it does not show in the load panel as an active moment of the game.  The archive must be restored to be reflected in the load panel. But be aware that what ever state of the game that was represented in the load panel before the archive was restored will be gone. 

So in other words, when you restore the archive, that becomes the active state of the game. There is only one game state "active" at any one time.  Let's say I archive at turn 108, then play on to turn 125. Load panel says turn 125. If I restore the archive I previously made, it will be at turn 108 again. If I did not archive at 125 before this, 125 is not recoverable. anymore. i will only be able to play turn 108 forward.

I think there is  a write up that may better explain this in the manual.

I understand what the implications are when restoring an archive that doesn't represent the current game state, but my question (and I'm pretty sure the manual doesn't cover this) is how to restore anything other than the last archive, since the UI only shows that single file. Suppose I wanted to restore the latest archive minus 1, would deleting the latest archive work; i.e. the one I want to restore would now be the latest, or do I need to do something else.

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I think there is some confusion here as you mention "the latest archive minus 1 ". Archives are not sorted by game, time, turn. They are named by you. It is up to you to choose the archive.

Saved games are displayed when you enter the loading screen from the main menu. Those are sortable by date, turn, etc. A saved game is different from an "archive". Making an archive is an intentional act on your part, not the act of saving. So when you make an archive, you are able to give it a name. Making an archive is discussed on/around page 74 of the manual.

To restore the archive, from the main menu you open to the Load Game screen, and click on the "Restore" button on the bottom. You should then see the list of all archives you have made, select the one you want and that will restore the game to that state. The archives are listed by name - there is not a date or turn information like there is in the Load Dialog, only the archive name you created.  Your selection will overwrite whatever was already there.

Have you tried this and are you seeing something different?

I now understand. My confusion arose because the behaviour of the Load Game dialog was not what I expected. The initial dialog shows ONLY the latest save for a specific game and it never occurred to me that the Restore button would launch another dialog to actually select an archive to be restored. The manual, to me at least, does not make this clear.

Assuming that the framework you're using supports it, may I suggest that you follow the standard Windows and Mac convention of putting three dots/periods after the word Restore on the button to indicate that the Restore button is not an immediate action button but one which displays another dialog. This alone would have eliminated my misunderstanding.

P.S. I've been getting "not delivered" on email I've sent you recently, including for older emails that I know you received (advanced game corruption due to a spotting error) since you replied to the email and fixed the bug.