Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

I'm glad to be able to announce the launch of Apolyton's Multiplayer (MP) section including the Apolyton Arena. This part of the site is there to cover all things MP Gaming.

Whether you want to play a spontaneous game casually once a week or be part of a clan participating in tournaments and working your way up the rankings all day long, whether you want to solely play OneCityChallenge or Earth games, whether you're interested in long-term Diplogames, PBeM or Pitboss - this is the section for you.

The common ground of all those ways of playing the game in MP and at the same time main reason for this section is the fact that it's not possible to get a MP game in Civ by just hosting or joining a random game in the MP lobby, because the vast majority of people will quit once something doesn't go according to plan or they ran out of time.

Apolyton Arena
The Arena is the core element of the MP section. It's there to help in settings up games, making sure those games are finished even if a quit occurs and in generally creating a MP environment that allows casual play just as competitive in tournaments for instance.



Account Activation
Just use the Apolyton Account to activate your Arena membership. Your Apolyton account is your Arena account. We will expand this in the future, integrating the Arena achievements with the forum and using Forum communication (like Private Messaging) for the Arena.


Apolyton Steam Chat / Matchmaking
If you're interested in Multiplaying join the Apolyton Steam Group - which is now closing in on 500 members - and use Steam to join the Apolyton Chat Room. Ask for games in the chat group and make sure your opponent(s) is/are member of the Apolyton Arena.

Obviously in the beginning we will first have to reach a critical mass of players here before we'll see nonstop, spontaneous games launched - hanging around in the Chat Group when your Steam is on even when you're not planning on playing a game at that time would help in getting this onto its own feet!


Self-Policing
In general we are fans of giving players autonomy over their games, having the ability to report rule violations and vote whether those occurred. There is always the possibility of appealing to an admin, but the vast majority of daily complaints should be covered easily and without interference of a person standing outside the game. We believe that it is hard for an outsider of a game to judge properly.


Rankings
One of the key developments of the Apolyton MP section is not visible right away. We've spend lots of time taking thousands of MP Civ games into account to create an algorithm that suits the needs of a Civ Ranking.

'CTON' / 'FFA' and 'Teamer' / Duel use different ways of calculating skill gain and loss of players after a match. Each game type is ranked separately and also counts for the Combined Ranking.

There will be separate rankings for 'OCC', for Earth games and for anything else that is required.

The system will display lots of information, for example on the maps or starting eras played in matches, also showing on each player's personal site which starting eras he tends to play for instance.

There will be tournaments supported by a specific tournament software that allows for KO, Double-KO, group system etc. organization, we can display rankings based on Nationality - also planning for a Nations Cup...


What now?
Stay tuned for more information here and in the Steam Group's Announcements and please join the Group's Chat, where we've been having some games and Civ talk over the last week already. And most of all: Join the Apolyton Arena!

Go play duels! Activate your MP Account, ask a buddy to do the same, play a game and report it. Idle in the chat group and ask for games there - obviously that is going to become easier and easier with time when more people hang around there.

Reporting of teamers and cton/ffa will be available very soon, likely till the end of the week - reporting duel works now.