Cooperative Multiplayer

[St Leo]

Coop (multiple players controlling one civ) is one of the most fun ways of playing AoE and I think it would work even better in Civ.

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St. Leo
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[airdrik]

I totally agree with you. And it would be a lot easier to get on and off of MP games, as you don't need to start a whole new civ, you just send messages around asking for current positions in the games and people playing the games post messages saying which positions are open. You make an agreement and your playing MP civ with as well as against other humans.

It would definetally make micromanaging a lot easier in MP games.

[Sirotnikov]

This is interesting. I never heard of such an option and I played AoE 2 over the internet. I'm probably a little slow.... Please do elaborate.

How are the parts being devided? "head of state" "head of diplomacy" had of military" or maybe each player get's a province to run?

[airdrik]

Perhaps each player gets a set of units/cities which they control (and they can pass the control of those units to other players as they want/need) and you can just designate (if you want) one player as head of offencive military and give them all the units that will be used as offencive units for conquering other civs. If they need more units they can just send messages to the other players asking for more units. Another player could be designated to run the southern portion of the civ and they would control all production in those cities and opperate settlers and caravans in that region.

When a new tech is discovered then you would colaborate as to which tech to research next. One person could be designated as the representative of that civ to all (or different players to different civs as desired) other civs. They would control all diplomacy with the other civs that they are reps to.

[Ilkuul]

quote: Originally posted by airdrik on 04-04-2001 02:27 PM Perhaps each player gets a set of units/cities which they control (and they can pass the control of those units to other players as they want/need)...

Well, well, this is fascinating. Would this also tie in with the idea of 'provincial/state/regional governors' -- i.e., that while one player is the 'big boss' (king, emperor, whatever), the others are in charge of different geographical areas of his empire (as opposed to your idea of controlling different 'functions' such as war, diplomacy, etc.)? And would it also allow underhand dealing, i.e. revolts, secessions, coups, where one or more of the 'governors' set themselves up in opposition to the king -- or is this meant to be truly co-operative, i.e. no back-stabbing??

[JosefGiven]

How about a co-op victory condition? Where players sign an alliance one step higher, and even more binding than the current Alliance available in Civ II.

Under this agreement, the two (or more?) sides share the end-of-game points between them. This means less points than if one super-civ beat all, but it could be one way for the lesser civs to stay in on the action, and steal the glory from the superpower(s).

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[airdrik]

Ilkuul:
You could definetally set it up that way so that one player has control of the capitol and all diplomatic negotiations and have him give general orders to each of the governers (other players). Another feature could be added to allow players to revolt and start their own civ if they wanted to.

JosefGiven:
Idea: each player (in a civ) can sign a co-operative agreement with the other players in a civ saying that they will not revolt from that civ. If you have an alliance with another civ than you could sign a co-op agreement with them where you pretty much become one civ (with two capitols). No Co-op agreements can be canceled.

[Ilkuul]

This begins to sound very much like what was suggested in an earlier thread about having an "allied victory" in Civ3 (see 'Should Civ3 allow for an "allied victory"?', dated 26th March).

The main difference, though, was that there we were proposing simply that Civ3 should include this among victory conditions: i.e., that if you went for an allied victory, a combined score would be given at the end, not individual scores or rankings. We assumed, tho', that the alliance would be like any other alliance, i.e. breakable! (In which case the game would default back to individual victory.) I do like the idea of an unbreakable alliance, tho' -- maybe that should be allowed for as an option at the negotiating table: only to be entered into with great caution!

[jdlessl]

There's been discussion on this kind of thing before.

Massively Multiplayer Civ

I've described my ideas about a hierarchical cooperative Civ in there. Very similar to what's been described here. The catch, of course, is synchronization between all the players. A team of humans versus lots of computers is even less fun than single player, so it'd have to be against other teams of humans. By this point, we're up to dozens of players (at least!), and you can't play 'real-time turn-based' (a turn-based game, but one in which everyone is sitting in front of their computers at the same time) in a game like that. The conenctions would fall apart in minutes.


Airdrik: you just send messages around asking for current positions in the games and people playing the games post messages saying which positions are open. You make an agreement and your playing MP civ with as well as against other humans.

That's a cool idea! Players would develop reputations as excellent city adminstrators and such and thus be in high demand to play for your team. Of course, you'd have to worry about them double-crossing your civ as soon as they're in. Basically the entire team consists of mercenaries you can never completely trust. Hey, the more intrigue, the better! I've always thought Civ was never Machiavellian enough.

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Jared Lessl

[airdrik]

So you sign the unbreakable agreement w/everyone, and anyone who doesn't sign it gains 'un-trustworthy' status. Though if someone signs this agreement, leaves, and another person takes his place than the new person still has to sign the agreement again.