AI or Human

[jonta]

I played a few sessions yesterday
(Name:Tamijo aprox. 19.00-02.00 Central Euro time)
At first I had the usual probs with ports n stuff.; but checking the fan sides I ended up able to play.

To my surprise it turned out that almost all players had left within 1-1,5 hour and I was playing some kind of single player. With 6 AI’s and 1 human at the other end of the world.
WHY does the host always select AI takeover, this will result in the fact that you need to defeat a lot of AI. (stupid to play AI on the internet)
If AI takeover was not selected You could at least consider yourself kind of winning when you were the only player left (like you would in a RTS game).
Or even better end up with a Heads Up situation.
If the game takes to long then one player might send the: sorry chap, but i have to go to bed now, should we save and play again another time, or just quit ?

Need some gentlemanship, to make a game like this work on-line, dont you think.

NB.: Is it possible to arrange a game in here, to make people more committed to stay in the game, even if they are not far ahead.
Any danes playing the next comming days/nights anyway

[marvinkosh]

In part the problem is that the Gamespy lobby is a rather casual gaming environment, and so any games that are set up may not be filled by the sorts of players you would like to spend time playing with.

It's up to the host really to set the conditions for the game properly, by figuring out how long everyone wants to play in that one session. When you actually get in game, send a message to all reminding the players how long the play session is going to be, what sort of victory is being played for, and whether there will be a chance to pick up the game in another session. This is, as you might think, all common sense stuff. However as I said earlier the casual nature of the Gamespy lobby makes it tempting to just click-and-go.

If you want a game of Civ that draws in the players and appeals to them, then you need to go the extra distance and prepare for the kind of game that you and your players want to play. Running Civ IV windowed and having the bulk of your session notes sitting in Notepad ready to be pasted is one option for those who want to concentrate on the game. Posting up your session notes on a forum like this in advance of a session is another good idea, and you may actually get some recruits ahead of time, or some constructive criticism on your plans.

All in all, it depends on how much time you are willing to set aside in order to get that quality Civ experience. As I have just recently discovered, casually gaming in the lobby is nice to cut your teeth on real opponents, but if you want players who aren't going to drop out without a word then you have to attract them