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Hey guys,
One of the best things about Civ4 was the various multiplayer options offered via Gamespy. These features included hot joining a game in progress, password protection of empires, private password game function (that worked) and relatively few lockups and crashes. I loved Civ4 multiplayer to the point where I was playing as a regular in Saturday games with a group of Apolyton regulars for a couple of years after release.
It seems like playing Civ 5 via the "Multiplayer" option in the Civ 5 start window offers none of these vital features (there is an option for making a hosted game "private" but the only result seems to be to make the game invisible to everyone, include those who are trying to join) and is a major step backwards... Four of us tried to play a game the other day, lasted about 20-25 turns, then one person disconnected. We tried to go back to the lobby and post the game, but it was nearly impossible to get our original players back into their original empires because other players kept jumping in. There was no chat window in the lobby to help with communication in the lobby. Once the wrong person jumped in, even if I kicked them out, then our original players would get shuffled to different empires and I would have to restart the host. Once I did that there two (or three instances) of my game on the list, making things even more confused. The other problem is the the name of my game (autosave- private) would not show up on the list, the game I was hosting was always just called "MasterDave". Since I could not make the game private and have ANYONE see it, there was no way to prevent others from joining before the people that were supposed to be joining the saved game.
In Civ4 when someone dropped, all we had to do most of the time was pause the game timer and wait for them to log back in and hot join. With passwords we rarely had problems with interlopers joining instead. This continuity is ultimately is what made the game very friendly to multiplayer. Unfortunately with Civ 5 and the problems I mentioned above, one crash and you are looking at major time wasted trying to get back in to the game, if you can pull it off at all.
Am I missing something? Is there some sort of Gamespy or Steam game lobby that functions better than the in-game "Multiplayer" option? Under the ingame there were only three or four games going on a Saturday afternoon; where I remember dozens of games listed on Civ4 gamespy a couple of weeks after Civ4 came out. Right now, with the lack of private games and the difficulty of getting a save reloaded for more than two players, I think that multiplayer Civ5 will be a no-go for me until (if) they improve the multiplayer options....
This is a real shame because I love Civ5 so far, and I think that its potential for being a great multiplayer game with the new combat model is very promising if there is an alternative to this primitive and ineffective lobby interface...if there is an alternate way to play via Steam, Gamespy, direct IP connections or something else please let me know!!
One of the best things about Civ4 was the various multiplayer options offered via Gamespy. These features included hot joining a game in progress, password protection of empires, private password game function (that worked) and relatively few lockups and crashes. I loved Civ4 multiplayer to the point where I was playing as a regular in Saturday games with a group of Apolyton regulars for a couple of years after release.
It seems like playing Civ 5 via the "Multiplayer" option in the Civ 5 start window offers none of these vital features (there is an option for making a hosted game "private" but the only result seems to be to make the game invisible to everyone, include those who are trying to join) and is a major step backwards... Four of us tried to play a game the other day, lasted about 20-25 turns, then one person disconnected. We tried to go back to the lobby and post the game, but it was nearly impossible to get our original players back into their original empires because other players kept jumping in. There was no chat window in the lobby to help with communication in the lobby. Once the wrong person jumped in, even if I kicked them out, then our original players would get shuffled to different empires and I would have to restart the host. Once I did that there two (or three instances) of my game on the list, making things even more confused. The other problem is the the name of my game (autosave- private) would not show up on the list, the game I was hosting was always just called "MasterDave". Since I could not make the game private and have ANYONE see it, there was no way to prevent others from joining before the people that were supposed to be joining the saved game.
In Civ4 when someone dropped, all we had to do most of the time was pause the game timer and wait for them to log back in and hot join. With passwords we rarely had problems with interlopers joining instead. This continuity is ultimately is what made the game very friendly to multiplayer. Unfortunately with Civ 5 and the problems I mentioned above, one crash and you are looking at major time wasted trying to get back in to the game, if you can pull it off at all.
Am I missing something? Is there some sort of Gamespy or Steam game lobby that functions better than the in-game "Multiplayer" option? Under the ingame there were only three or four games going on a Saturday afternoon; where I remember dozens of games listed on Civ4 gamespy a couple of weeks after Civ4 came out. Right now, with the lack of private games and the difficulty of getting a save reloaded for more than two players, I think that multiplayer Civ5 will be a no-go for me until (if) they improve the multiplayer options....
This is a real shame because I love Civ5 so far, and I think that its potential for being a great multiplayer game with the new combat model is very promising if there is an alternative to this primitive and ineffective lobby interface...if there is an alternate way to play via Steam, Gamespy, direct IP connections or something else please let me know!!