Could Civilization become a online-blockbuster?

[nato]

I think there will be some sort of multi player because it is a near guaranteed way for them to make money. I do not know how different or innovative MP will be, and I do know many people are now skeptical of Firaxis, but even so I think it is a near guarantee of money for them, so it will happen.

The more I think about it, the more I like my "everyone gets the same start terrain/resources, but the start terrain/resources is not always the same" idea. It seems simple yet powerful, and a way to get both balanced games yet a civ like sense of exploration. If AOK had had that, maybe it would not have gotten so utterly repetitive and formulaic after a while.

[Oligarf]

Nato:
I quite like your ideas. It would help the starting location misery. But I can imagine that players with bad starting locations team up against that lucky bastard in the game. So I don't think it necessarily has to mean trouble, but your solution would defenitely help.

Nostromo:
Simultaneous turns are interesting as well, a timer could temper the turn-based part of the game. Using simultaneous turns could also make it possible to make the combat more interesting. Shogun: Total War is a good example of this concept.

Pyrodrew:
Chess is another game than Civ. I hope I don't have to explain that.

[nato]

Thanks Oligarf. You are right, ganging up against a person with a lucky start location would help balance the uneven starts. That would go along with the first rule for all free-for-alls ... "Gang up on the guy in the lead!"

It would just depend on the guy starting in the middle of the jungle not leaving right away, hoping for better luck in a new game. I suppose if people were known and had reputations they would be more likely to stick around than anonymous people.

[Pyrodrew]

Originally posted by Oligarf
Chess is another game than Civ. I hope I don't have to explain that.

Duh! But both are turn-based. When you make a turn-based game into a real-time game you get a *completely* different game. I didn't think I would have to explain that.

[nato]

I myself am still not sure how different RTS and TBS are, if you are doing the same basic things. Civ and AOK are awful similar if you ask me...

I guess it is a matter of how much time you have to think. I think maybe the speed is different, but the actual activities aren't too different.

That is just how I see it of course.

[Oligarf]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
Duh! But both are turn-based. When you make a turn-based game into a real-time game you get a *completely* different game. I didn't think I would have to explain that.

You don't have to explain that. But that fact offers a new aspect, important in the real world, called time. I can fight several wars at once in CIV not having to bother about time. In real life that's not the case.

[PerpetualNewbie]

Unless you make some major changes in unit control, I can't imagine MP ever being viable.

For instance, last night I was zooming in on a space race victory, and the Zulu decided to attack, and simultaneously cancel all trading. Lucky me, with no aluminum, and not one single civ with any extra that would trade it for any price. It took me 45 minutes to get my military massed for attacks on several fronts, including 4 transport-based task forces. It was almost 90 minutes before all those strikes were resolved. Surely you would not begrudge me the time to make my decent counterattack, but 15 other people waiting 90 minutes for me to finish up seems like a collosal waste of time. Now if there were MPPs that people took seriously...

Furthermore, I can't even carve out a 1 hour block of uninterrupted time. That is why I had to shelve AOK -- too many demands on my time to commit to even a quick game.

Also, terrain differences are just too extreme to try to do any "fair" start adjustments, IMO. Again, in AO*, you just pop up a granary or storage pit in a place that makes sense now, and you expect to just abandon it when it has served its purpose. If one player gets 3-4 good secondary cities, and I get just desert, I for one, will be trying to figure out which player to give my stuff to, and bail. Politeness is all well and good, but my free time is too scarce to spend hours doing something I'm not enjoying...

[Pyrodrew]

Well said PerpetualNewbie. Unlike RTS, even if TBS has a time limit per turn, I can spend 90% of that time all on multiple battles without decreasing my effectiveness in those battles for the total time given. In RTS, only the area you are giving attention to *at that second* will be at your top performance.

There are far more RTS games out there than TBS, those who have the RTS desires should play those. Sadly, Lords of the Realm3 is being turned into a RTS. We don't need to lose any more TBS for another 'click-fest' RTS experiment that may not even be good.

[Inverse Icarus]

online BLOCKBUSTER? not likely.
[list=a][*]civ caters to a refined taste[*]target area too small[*]time involved is extensive[*]continunences of saves don't happen often[*]small groups of friends will have fun[*]mu;tiplayer isn't being developed.[/list=a]

[Tormund]

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
When you make a turn-based game into a real-time game you get a *completely* different game.

I know I'm going to get flamed for this, but...

A. A turn based game is an infinitely long real time game.


If you can accept this point, then I would take it a step further and maybe you can accept the next point as well...

B. A turn based game is an 'almost' infinitely long real time game.


I think I could support this statement by saying no 'single' player can ever spend an infinite amount of time on a game. This stems from the fact that death is a certainty in life.

The reason I grabbed Pyrodew's original post was because it made reference to MP chess. Something in which I partake. Players may choose to play according to either A or B. If choosing B the game style can essentially remain unaffected. Assuming that you select a time scale that you are both comfortable with. It is a measure to ensure that if a person walks away there will be a resolution based on time and not uncertainty.

That is why I would like to see a MP version of Civilization III that is in real time. The players should be able to set the appropriate time limits (turn, game or both). They should be able to set the victory conditions (those already available and more customisable victory options, such as highest score in said year as well as the ability to surrender). There should also be a system of recognition in place for players who do play games through to completion.

I could go on, but time doesn't permit...

[Pyrodrew]

Rolling...

Originally posted by Tormund
A. A turn based game is an infinitely long real time game.

I disagree with that. In RTS things are in constant movement. Player A is moving his units at the *same time* Player B, C, & D are moving their units. Therefore, if Player A moves his units faster that may change what Player B, C, & D do with their units. This results in players responding to constant changes (no matter how slow it is) rather than constant variables (as TBS is based specifically that turn). A marble rolling down a hill is not the same thing as a marble being repositioned over descending positions on that hill. Likewise, assume the following...

XYZ
OYY

X=Unguarded City with Walls
Y=Grasslands
Z=Your Cavalry Unit
O=My Rifleman

Assuming we had the same reaction speed of moving our units & were both familiar with the scenario... In a RTS scenario game, your Cavalry (moving 3sqs/sec) would most likely gain the Unguarded City 1st compared to my Rifleman (moving 1sq/sec). However, in a TBS scenario game the player who starts 1st would most likely gain that Unguarded City. Thus you end up with possibly 2 different outcomes. If we had different reaction speeds, then the city would more likely go to the person with a quicker reaction speed.

Once the 1st player moves, this directly affects how the other players will move. TBS gives this ever important 1st move randomly or pre-selected by the game players. The slowest player is always last (or atleast never 1st to move) in RTS. In TBS the slowest player has a chance to be 1st.

I would like to see a MP version of Civilization III that is in real time.

I wouldn't mind that... as long as Firaxis doesn't sacrafice turnbased MP, the editor, or other prior efforts for it. That & they don't call it Civilization.

[Tormund]

Civilization as a Real Time Multi-Player Turn Based Game?
I'd like to see that!

Originally posted by Pyrodrew
In RTS things are in constant movement. Player A is moving his units at the *same time* Player B, C, & D are moving their units.

I don't see why this can't be the case in a real time turn based game.

The way I envision it would work is as follows...

1. Players all have their turn simultaneously. This is a fairer approach because otherwise the person moving first has a consistent advantage over everyone else. Players may agree on a set amount of time to complete their movements to ensure that games can be completed within a reasonable time frame.

2. Once everyone has completed their turn, the changes made by each client (player) are submitted to the server (host).

3. The server allows all moves that result in no conflicts.

4. The server uses its 'set of rules' to resolve any conflicts.

5. The client responds to questions raiased by the server in the conflict resolution process.

6. Return to Step 1.


To recycle Pyrodew's example...

XYZ
OYY

X=Unguarded City with Walls
Y=Grassland
Z=YOUR Cavalry (6.3.3)
O=MY Rifleman (2.4.1) ?!?

Both players wish to occupy the city. So during their turn both players simultaneously request that their unit move into the city. These requests are sent to the server and a conflict is generated. This conflict could be satisfied in any number of ways. My suggestion would be to divide the turn into segments based on the highest number of moves of an individual unit. In this case that would be the cavalry with 3 movement points. In the first third of the turn the cavalry travels one square onto the grassland and the rifleman is a 1/3 of the way into the city. By the second third of the turn the rifleman already has a presence in the city and I believe that this unit should hold the city. The server would then notify the owner of the cavalry and present options to modify their turn movements. The modification however is still restricted to the fact that they have attempted to move into the city, but they do have 2/3 movement points left. The cavalry could attack, retreat or hold its position. In fact this would be the prompt that is presented to the user.

This IMHO would preserve the essence of a turn based game, but enable it to make the transition into the real time game world.

[Oligarf]

Good work Tormund, I like it to see that people are willing to work out an idea. I do realise that my poll is only talking about RTS vs. TBS. As I said before there could be other concepts to use, simultaneous turns, now worked out by Tormund. Personally I am in doubt, because although Pyrodrew has a point with saying that good choices should be rewarded and not the quickest. With simultaneous turns this shouldn't be a problem. But I do think that a great leader isn't only marked by his smart solutions but also in which time he can come up with them.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Tormund
I don't see why this can't be the case in a real time turn based game.

This IMHO would preserve the essence of a turn based game, but enable it to make the transition into the real time game world.

Sorry to say, but this wouldn't work, for various reasons.

First, you wouldn't be preserving the essence of a turn-based game at all. If you think about how the game would be played out, the faster players would be still be rewarded for their reflexes, which definitely isn't in the spirit of TBS.

Second, there are technical issues. First, in tightly packed quarters, your server would be resolving conflicts like there's no tomorrow; the player could be asked repeatedly what he wants his move to be, because his first choices "didn't work". If units A and B are trying to capture a city located at a certain tile, and unit C wants to move into unit B's tile, then you've got some problems with your conflict resolution. I suppose you could work out some sort of "batch mode", but this would break the "real-time" feel of the game. More plausibly the server would resolve such multi-dimensional conflicts by the time of arrival of each request to the server, which again rewards faster players.

Third, there are some moves in TBS games that are strategically sound but that you couldn't do if the game became a weird RTS/TBS hybrid. For example, I may want to move my unit along a road network to the front lines to attack, then retreat. If I take care of this one unit exclusively during this process, all my other movements won't occur until after I'm done. This means that another player could exploit a certain weakness I'd been hoping to address later on in my turn. It seems to me that players would often get penalised for not playing their turn "in the right order". I defy anyone to determine (in real-time) the best turn order for 40+ units against 3+ opponents.

RTS games like Age of Empires avoid these problems because 1) there are way fewer units, 2) the units can be grouped and 3) the units have a certain degree of autonomy. Even so, pathing is still a difficult problem for such games (I've you've ever played the series you'll know what I mean).

Lastly, the players who have come to enjoy TBS do enjoy the turn-based aspect of the game. Taking this away may turn off many dedicated players who want to play MP, but still want to play the same game. RTS Civ3 is a wholly different game.


Dominae

[Oligarf]

Let's make my point again: I never said that Civ should become RTS-only! I just came up with this to provide a multiplayer solution, you haven't heard me talking about the singleplayer experience.