I don't. I rarely reload, but I don't consider myself playing Ironman. But If something like a dragon wonders into my land early in the game, eating my cities, I might reload battles until I am able to beat it. But, I never claim the game is easy or that I am some great player. The problem with people is that they believe everything in absolutes, so we tend to believe that only the people who play ironman really know what they are talking about or the people that don't are cheaters and their knowledge is flawed. This makes a scenario where people tend to lie about how they play to make themselves credible. But I don't lie, I occasionally reload. And if a drake attacks my city on turn 39 like it did a few games ago, I will reload like a mother fucker to kill it. But most of the time, I will take my loss.
A couple games back, I decided to rush my first neighbor, we had similar power scores, and I figured he would be long gone and I was boxed in with one city, so my situation was going to get worse if I didn't do something quick. I had my sov, a low level champ with fire 1 and an axe, and 3 units of regular guys with clubs, standard militia soldiers. It was enough to take one of his three cities. But he showed up real quick to take it back with an army of quest troops, the Panca archers, the Krax spearman brothers, a sand golem and he was decked out in a lot of rusty armor and a greatsword. I met him battle, he kicked my ass, but I killed the golem. Next battle, he took back his city, but I used Silver tongue and stole his spearmen, which he killed too. So As I recovered in my capital, he gathered his panca archers and a couple of scout troops and came toward me. He attacked my city and I silver tongued his archers, and beat him and kept his archers. After that I moved quick to take him out. I won the war and made my enemy join me. At any time I could have reloaded those battles, but losing them and then finding a way to win was extremely satisfying.
I don't feel that reloading is cheating, but I think you could cheat yourself out of some fun if you do it too much and cheating yourself out of the chance to learn the game more. It's those moments that really lets you learn what skills, abilities, strategies are really good or crap.
