Could Civilization become a online-blockbuster?

[Shadowlord]

IMHO, Civ III MP should be like Civ II MP - that was fine for me, playing a LAN game. People would move their units on their turns and urgent things (such as assigning production after a city finishes building something), and usually manage their cities and diplomacy and such on other people's turns.

A user-definable time limit also existed in Civ II MP, this would be good in Civ III also.

But no, you shouldn't be able to move your units during other people's turns.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Oligarf
Let's make my point again: I never said that Civ should become RTS-only!

I understand your point. My point is that any attempt to make Civ3 a RTS game for MP purposes creates a completely different game, IMO so different that it won't feel like you're playing Civ3 anymore. Might as well go for other civilization-type RTS games (like the one Brian Reynolds is currently working on).

MP Civ3 should be exactly like SP Civ3, except your opponents are a lot smarter. That's the ideal, of course. I don't think that the TBS format of Civ3 should be sacrificed just satisfy the angry masses who want MP Civ3.


Dominae

[HazieDaVampire]

I think the only thing that makes turn based strats boring will probubly be them long waits till its your next turn, this could be almost illiminated if you could actualy chose what our going to do in your next turn, before its even your turn! This would be like, their turn, BAM you've already moved STRAIT after they've made theirs, of course a back button should be made that works for certain moves and stuff. Since the situation mite change, and a mini list of moves that mite have to be changed and you just click on the correct sentence and it jst moves the screen over to it.

I'm sure they could make it work.

[nato]

HazieDaVampire - Neat idea, but one major problem.

If you make the turn so fast that the player that it is like you say, "BAM you've already moved STRAIT after they've made theirs"

... then you have eliminated the wait, but you have also eliminated the time the other player needs to make the moves so he can immediately enter it in.

Somewhere that human decision time has to happen.

[HazieDaVampire]

Ok, I’ll start again

1, the first and second players make there move decisions.
2, The first player presses some kind of ‘Go’ button and his moves take place.
3, The second player is told he can now move and can either continue making moves, or press his ‘go’ button so that his moves take place,
4, once again both the first player and the second player make there move decisions,
3, The first player presses his ‘go’ button and his moves take place.
4, The second player presses his ‘go’ button and his moves take place.

This completely eliminates that boring “GOD CANT HE MOVE” effect that everybody gets while playing a turn based strat! I think you’ll agree this will work with the ‘back’ button I described. You of course can’t press this back button once you know what will have happened because of your moves like.

1. Person has one unit and is wondering if he should attack or retreat, he decides to attack.
2. Player’s unit is killed when he presses the ‘go’ button
3. He can no longer go “AH CRAP “at least I have that back button” because he’s already pressed go, if he COULD press the back button. It would be like seeing into the future!

[Sarxis]

You may be right in saying that real-time games, be them FPS, RPGs, or RTS do fit in better with the mainstream gamers.

But to say that TBS games are 'unsuccessful' just because they aren't as popular as the other genres is a mistake.

[HazieDaVampire]

TBS games are unpopular on-line because of the "GOD, CANT HE MOVE" effect like i mentioned earlyer.

[Rusty Nail]

one possible way to do it

The major problem with civ MP is the time factor. It is next to impossible to get the same people to continue a civ2 MP game on another day for scheduling reasons, so the game often dies early or requires too much time for one sitting. Most people would not want to spend more than a couple of hours at one sitting. So what about an ongoing game that anybody can join (i.e. take over an AI) in a common gaming room, played only during SPECIFIC HOURS on certain days with whoever shows up, so that if a participant WANTS to continue the game, he gets the first right of refusal for his civ if he shows up on time the next scheduled day. Otherwise somebody else or the AI takes over for him (assuming at least one human shows, or maybe at least two humans). The new gamer could look over the ongoing games and the statistics of the competing civs (as in civ2 MP but with more information) and pick the one that looks most interesting for one hour, two hours, whatever. If nobody else shows up, you end up playing against the AI (or leave for another game), but in many cases there would be human opponents, and often the same participants would probably try to continue the next day. But the point is, a no-show does not necessarily ruin the game for the others. Also, particularly good game situations that have been saved (we all have some) could be offered to the community. I think this idea could work with a little thoughtful organization. I would personally find this far more challenging than a single player game even if it required a modest fee to cover the overheads.

[Oligarf]

Shadowlord:
MP CivII wasn't that fantastic. I tried it and although it worked most of the time, you reach a point in the game that moving units takes several minutes, and unexpected happenings could increase the length of turns enormously. TBS in MP is almost impossible unless a system like Hazie proposed is used.

Rusty Nail:
A very nice idea as well, might work better with scenario play because I don't think I can live in a role in an completely random game. I mean that as a new participant in an existing game, you have no idea what a mess you've got yourself in. In a scenario you would have at least some great lines of the story.

HazieDaVampire:
YES!! "GOD, CANT HE MOVE", that's what I meant. Had that recently at a little LAN. Two friends of me and myself thought it would be nice to play Championship Manager on a LAN. It worked, but I and one friend of mine where always looking one way, looking in a way saying to the other friend: "Presh that 'Continue Game' button", it was like he tried to buy the whole world. In RTS is that no problem, someone that is doing to much, will be punished for that.

[HazieDaVampire]

Hey, i didn't say anything about punishing them (I think you think that i ment that once a player presses 'Go' everybody goes!), It will only go when everybody has got the 'go' button toggled on (It could be maby two colours, red for "Press me and we go" and green for "Ah crap, i need to do that first!", when all have go on green, you see all the turns take place one after another. Then the process starts again!

[Oligarf]

Originally posted by HazieDaVampire
Hey, i didn't say anything about punishing them (I think you think that i ment that once a player presses 'Go' everybody goes!), It will only go when everybody has got the 'go' button toggled on (It could be maby two colours, red for "Press me and we go" and green for "Ah crap, i need to do that first!", when all have go on green, you see all the turns take place one after another. Then the process starts again!

What I ment with punishing someone for his actions was this: In TBS someone can fine-tune his empire, he has 'infinite' time. Fine-tuning in RTS is a lot harder, RTS forces you to think about the time, TBS lets you squander it.

So that punishing part had nothing much to do with what you said, and indeed it would be quite mean to let the turn start when not the last one but the first one ready presses GO.

[Fresno]

Europa Universalis proved that it's possible to have a historical RT-strategy game which is both fun to play and historically accurate. So I guess it should be possible to have a RT-version of Civilization. It would make the game better fitted for online playing, but if you would have to pay for it I'd rather play it for myself. After all, I'm Dutch.

[mhaupert]

2 words ... UNIX EMPIRE

[Oligarf]

Originally posted by mhaupert
2 words ... UNIX EMPIRE

Url??? Link??? Is it a game???

[mhaupert]

Originally posted by Oligarf


Url??? Link??? Is it a game???

It is/was a game. It was a hybrid tbs that we played as a client/server setup back when irc was just a neat new idea and usenet was king.
For more info: http://www.empire.cx/