Multiplayer? Did you play CivNet?

[sboog]

I know this is Civ3. But so many of you are talking about multiplayer.

How was CivNet in this multiplayer world?

Was it too time consuming? did it not work?

I have recently bought CivNet off of Ebay, and I hope it will be good.

Any thoughts?

sboog

[Dinner]

I never played civnet but I did play CTP1 & 2 MP and was greatly impressed. In fact MP is the primary reason I still play CTP2 because nothing beats a living, breathing, human opponent.

[down th' pub]

CTP2 multi player?

What patch are you using?

Civ3's multiplayer is as complete out of the box.

[Expatriate]

CivNet was a joke. The network and serial cable multiplayer didnt even work at release and you had to patch it first. Remember that this was back in the days before we all had internet connections at home to DL patches from. I remember spending hours trying to find a gaming magazine that had the patch before giving up. I think Hotseat and modem play were the only MP options that worked.

[ElvisMonster]

I was really disappointed to find out that CivIII didn't have a multi-player option. It's good to hear that they're working on it, but I'm such an instant gratification kind of guy!

So I went back and reinstalled CTP2 and tried to join the one remaining server and.................


(meltdown in 3.....2......1)


I couldn't join the lobby!!!!! *serenity NOW*
Ok, I patched tried again and still no dice. According to the FAQ there is a problem with high-speed connections?!

Does anybody have any tips or tricks that might help me around this problem?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[Adagio]

I tried CivNet once...I was at school, I was having a break, a friend of mine had the game, we installeded it on two computers (don't tell the teachers ) created and joined, after playing until 3000 BC we didn't want to play anymore, the next class was about to start and it was more interesting to play singleplayer

and MP in ctp2 was boring...I entered the lobby, created a game, some people joined my game, launched my game, after few turns I was the only human playing the game I also tried to join a game, the game launches, after few turns I'm the host

[Argos65987]

I never played multi-player at all. I'd be really curious as to who has since so many people are clamoring for it.

[Capt Dizle]

PBEM SMAC was a blast. Team PBEM even more. Open a game turn and sit for an hour until I found the correct, best move. Getting into long strategy sessions with my partner on ICQ. Trying to coordinate search patterns for our noodlejets to prevent the enemy from sneaking in with a probe foil.

You could infiltrate and then see your enemy base's screens, but you might not have found the bases themselves. So, you could look at the blacked out area of the map and see the elevations. SMAC was so advanced you had a map grid. I made map grids on paper and guessed at locations and constructed where I thought the enemy bases were. Confirmed them with careful comparisons of known sections of the map. It was one hell of an intelligence puzzle.

Then you would send out the noodles and strike your opponents at multiple bases and they would say "How did you know where my bases where?" Very satisfying.

SMAC PBEM was so much more advanced than what we have in Civ3 SP that the comparision is like tic-tac-toe to chess. I shudder to think what Civ3 MP will be like.

Now, another nice thing was the ability to name terrain on the map, which we used in PBEM to taunt opponents. Discover an opponent's fleet, sink it and name the square. Yin's Boneyard.

Delightful fun. But not so much for the realtime folks. Civ in realtime would not be my cup of tea.

[Master2000]

Since me and my friends are real civ fanatics we have played them all. I can tell you that CivNet was really cool back then but it was all to buggy. After a couple of rounds it just crashed so you had to save often and re-connect. But in that time you had to look hard to find MP games.

Civ2Gold was ofcourse better in multiplay. The only drawback with turnbased games are that they are very time consuming later on. We had to use timelimit per turn to get it floating, but still it's really boring waiting for your turn.

SMAC had the best approach for turnbased MP so far. All player makes the moves at the same time, but if two units in the same area is moving it gets turn based. It worked really good.

So, I can understand that Firaxis needs more time with the MP thing. The concept needs to be tweaked to allow faster gameplay but still be turnbased. I hope they fix the way diplomatic conversations work. In Civ2, the game really stopped if you needed to talk with another country in your turn. Your time was running out (we used time limiting) so you then had to really haste your unit moves. Another way to fix this (I think) is the ICQ way, just like a message. You could then compose a diplomatic message (like peace proposal) when you are waiting and send it. The other person reads it when he gets time and answer it. This way, you don't have to wait for two people making a haggle.

MP for Civ3 will probably make it the best game in the world, (until Civ4). But with all strategic MP games, the most fun is when you play against your friends in a LAN who you know. For example, one of my friends is a real backstabber, all of us knows this. When you make a pact with him, you almost always need to watch your back. That's the coolest thing, an AI would never do that and if it did, you probably just would be angry and start complaining that the AI is the worst **** you ever has seen. In a MP game you always needs to expect the unexpected, that's what takes it to the next level.

So, all you single player gamers, just try it out. I'm sure you wont be dissapointed. The AI is the best i've seen so far from a Firaxis or MicroProse game but it's still an AI. After a while you have figured out how it works, you can't do that with humans, they are always solving a problem in a millions of ways.

While waiting for this expansion, we are playing our version of hotseat with CIV3.