Civilization 4: The World As You Know It Is Changed

[MarkG]

http://civilization4.net/3/174/
by Friedrich Psitalon

[MortVader]

Good information. Thanks.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

- Improvements give you money when you rip them up now. That means a Choker is breaking even on his troops abroad while he's ruining your land. Advantage: Attacker

- Cities are much harder targets, especially after they generate culture or build walls. It takes a serious siege to take a prepared city now - "sudden kills" are going to be rarer. Advantage: Defender

The combination of these two factors suggests a VERY good strategy. If the attacker sees that a defender has a very strong defensive position, then the best bet for said attacker is to pillage the land-willy nilly-in hopes of luring the defender out into the open for combat in the open field. Historically, this makes sense, as few battles prior to the industrial age were fought in cities-except out of necessity.
I am soooo loving the sound of this game !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[knighterrant]

I have found combat as a whole is changed so much that it takes some time to get used to.

Its changed in a good way, mind you. You have to think more about what you are doing and why. Very rarely do I even see a computer opponent taking out a city from other computers or otherwise.

[RobC]

Originally posted by Friedrich Psitalon
One large stack can really tear up the enemy land, but if they're repairing the land 4 turns after you pass, it doesn't do as much good when it costs you 10 gold a turn...

Plus, large stacks are more susceptible to collateral damage from defensive catapults -- no more One-Big-SoD "strategies"

[Lord Byte]

Plus, large stacks are more susceptible to collateral damage from defensive catapults -- no more One-Big-SoD "strategies"

Do take note that you can't use catapults as in CIV3... You will need to attack with the catapult and hope he kills the unit chosen as defender, retreats or you will have sacrificed your catapult!

The only thing you can do with Siege, without attacking is bombard which ONLY lowers defense... It doesn't damage anything else!

[Deathmerchant]

Well, yes, but you can sacrifice your catapult to attack a stack, and it will deal collateral damage to the stack regardless if it actually wins the battle. It's very effective to attack a stack of say, 5 or more units, dealing 2 or 3 damage to each of them, while only sacrificing one catapult. Attack with 2 or 3 catapults, and you reduce nearly every unit in the stack to low health, clearing the way for a quick clean up of anywhere from 5-10 or more enemy units with a mere couple of your units nearby. In this fashion you can clean up enemy stacks of even 10 or more units with a few catapults and a couple of other normal units.

[Rubychaser]

Life, growth and mods, who can ever be sure what they will bring next.

[blackplastick]

You forgot to mention that it is almost impossible to get in a multiplayer game due to "bad peers".

[LzPrst]

You forgot to mention that it is almost impossible to get in a multiplayer game due to "bad peers"

nonsense. I hosted and enjoyed a MP game yesterday with 8 players. people came and left a lot though, but that only shows that the system is pretty decent. it can handle people leaving (AI takes over but still, better than civ3) and returning, and even other people taking over abandoned civs. I havent suffered that myself yet, but no way the AI can mess up completely if you relog quickly.

all you have to make sure is that the correct ports on your firewall are open, easily fixed in windows. according to Soren select the exceptions tab in the firewall window, and add port 2056 for UDP traffic on the SidMeiersCivilization4.exe spot. I did this myself and it helped. couldnt connect to nearly any games or host. after, it worked like a charm.

note. I also opened some ports on my router. ask your ISP for how to do that if you find it necessary.

[Deity Dude]

I don't have a firewall set up. I am almost always unable to connect in Gamespy. On the other hand, if I host in Gamespy or IP there is almost always no problems.

[MasterDave]

I have played a lot of multiplayer civ4 , almost since the game released. However, the connecting to peer problem has always been a serious one, and seems to get worse with every patch. Both of the last two weekends I have simply been unable to play at all due to this problem.

Fred completely glosses over this in his review, making Civ4 Multiplayer sound like the easiest game ever to play over the net. Of course, as the main admin for the Civ4players ladder, it is not in his interest to say anything that would discourage new players from trying the game. However, to gloss over this issue sends a message to the devs and gamespy that finding a solution to the peer problem is not important.

I think that this problem is very serious, and will hurt the long-term health of the multiplayer community. And yes, I have port 2056 open. I was gratified to see Soren address this issue the other day, but simply blaming the users for the problem is not the answer. These same users who are supposedly not manageing their firewalls correctly can play lots of other games over the net, so obviously there is something more to this issue than simple user error.

[Fried-Psitalon]

It's exactly this sort of confusion that is the problem. It's not if YOU have 2056 open that decides if you get in- it's the other fellow. Your open 2056 allows the fellow AFTER you to get in.

The problem was at its worst around Christmas time, and has been getting better since then. It has to do with server load; the less load on the servers, the better Gamespy's NAT servers do.. and the less the other guys who don't have 2056 open affects those of us who DO.

As for my "completely glossing over the issue".... give me a break.

Look at the date the article was written?

Back then, there was no problem.

[MasterDave]

Oh, sorry about that. I thought your review was recent, and did not look at the date of the original thread before posting. I definitely agree that the peer thing was not as bad early on in the game's life, but it recently has become untenable.

I do maintain that frustration over the connecting to peer issue will hurt the Civ4 multiplayer community over the long run. I am approaching the point of just sticking with single player civ4, and just giving up on fighting to get into a game for hours at a time. Gamespy and/or Civ4 developers should at least try to improve the NAT detection they are using now if they are serious about Civ4 being a multiplayer game.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

Dare I say it, but perhaps the Peer connectivity issues are in fact the result of how GOOD MP is this time around? I know this is strange, but consider what Fried-Psitalon said about what the major cause of the problem is-server load. Truth is that I reckon we have ten times more people trying to play Civ as an MP game as opposed to Civ3 (heck, there wasn't even MP in vanilla civ!) and I don't think Gamespy was quite prepared for this level of demand. Once PitBoss is well and truly out, and once gamespy get their heads around the level of demand for online Civ4 games, then I think the problems will be solved! What I can say though is that Direct IP games work like an absolute DREAM !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[MasterDave]

Aussie, I wish I shared your optimism. Unfortunately I have played a lot of games in the past that used Gamespy and I have never seen them actually fix a connectivity issue during the life cycle of a particular game. In most of the other games I played that used gamespy (Moo3, Homeworld 2, Kohan 2 come to mind) nobody with any kind of firewall could host the game. That never got fixed, at least as far as HW2 was concerned. I came up with a home-grown workaround for Kohan 2, but Gamespy itself never fixed that issue as far as I know.

I keep hearing about this Pitboss thing, can you describe how it is going to work?

Direct IP Civ 4 worked very well for me before the 1.52 patch, but now people are getting the same contacting peer hangups that they get in gamespy when they try to connect to me. Also, I am sometimes getting the bad peer bug when I try to join games by IP since the patch.

[blackplastick]

Originally posted by LzPrst


nonsense. I hosted and enjoyed a MP game yesterday with 8 players. people came and left a lot though, but that only shows that the system is pretty decent. it can handle people leaving (AI takes over but still, better than civ3) and returning, and even other people taking over abandoned civs. I havent suffered that myself yet, but no way the AI can mess up completely if you relog quickly.

all you have to make sure is that the correct ports on your firewall are open, easily fixed in windows. according to Soren select the exceptions tab in the firewall window, and add port 2056 for UDP traffic on the SidMeiersCivilization4.exe spot. I did this myself and it helped. couldnt connect to nearly any games or host. after, it worked like a charm.

note. I also opened some ports on my router. ask your ISP for how to do that if you find it necessary.

You can open ports all day and it isn't going to help unless EVERYBODY does it. Ports don't keep you from getting into a game, they keep *others* from getting in. Anyway it seems like it is less of a problem when there aren't many people on.

[LzPrst]

ok. I understand now. regardless though, thethe solution is rather simple... to me anyway. make sure you play with people who have open ports...

isnt that what ladder games and such are for? to get together people who want to play? people you know will finish the game?

it is not exceedingly difficult to open ports, heck, even I managed, so just require everyone to make sure their ports are open...

besides playing civ games IMO is more fun with someone you know than random pick up groups (that have a tendency to be very unstable, and often quite unpleasant).

long rant short: wanna avoid bad peers. play with people you know to be good peers

[OneFootInTheGrave]

so opening 2056 is not sorting the connectivity problems out? Does the game use other ports after the patch?

[Deity Dude]

I am by no means a computer geek so this my sound like a dumb question but couldn't they just program the next patch to open the port when starting a game and close it when finished.

[MasterDave]

It is not just the port that is the issue. There is evidence out there that Gamespy has problems with correctly reading IP addresses when NAT is involved (this is used when people on an internal network, such as myself, share single connection to the net). The NAT (or Network Address Transator) makes artificial IP's that are used internally on the network, but are not real IP #'s that external computers in the outside world will recognize. When gamespy fails in these cases, it takes the "fake" internal network address of someone already in a game and tries to have others connect to that address, which of course does not work and creates a bad peer result, effectively preventing anyone else from joining that game. This problem also affects direct IP connectivity. I have seen it happen myself lateley, where if my wife joins a game, I often get bad peered from that game and vice versa.

My personal solution is that we are getting two fixed IP's rather than using the NAT, but that does not help prevent us from hitting other bad peers due to bad firewall settings or NAT translation problems. Others more technical than myself have said that fixing this bad NAT translation is fairly simple, and hopefully either Firaxis or Gamespy will address this problem in the future.

[arvcran]

Fried - that article is very well written *thumbs up*

I have few connectivity problems.

I always find there is not enough time per turn in my MP games
every one wants blazing time limits. simultaneous movement is new to me cause it is my first time playing - it Rocks ;-).
But can be alarming since it feels like Age of Empire rather than turn based ;-). I think that on turns where you get a tech or have to manage next builds or deal with diplomacy you should get time bonuses - especially during war time (which seams to be all the time in MP lol)

Any how great game and great article!

[Deity Dude]

I hate blazing - it turns into an exercise of trying to finish your turn. I still don't understand why people want to play a game like civ and yet arent patient enough to have turns over 20 secs.