Who's given up on MP?

[art_vandelai]

I am very close to just throwing in the towel and deciding to give up on the CIV III MP option as a viable option for play. I have on ocassion been successful in getting games up and running, but the games that have worked have for the most part been far less enjoyable than the single player version. I think that the MP product needs a lot more features in order to be really usable and to allow a strong community to develop around the game.

Some of the things I can think of:

- balanced starting positions option.
- recording of statistics by screen name (i.e. wins, losses, civs played, incomplete games, score, number of leaders produced, cities built, number of cities conquered/lost, kings taken/lost, civs eliminated, average power/score/culture, etc.) that are visible on a website.
- proper recording of scores (e.g. domination victory when everyone else quits should not be worth 17,000 points- maybe your ending score + a few additional points for the victory.
- automatic organizing of games including people of reasonably close skill levels, forced patching to play MP.
- stability (there's no reason why a turn-based game should not run absolutely smoothly with only 8 players on broadband).
- save games on a central server (to avoid edits or cheats)
- ability to see who's in the lobby, store buddy lists, etc. without having to use Gamespy.



Has anyone out there been successful in getting a game started with more than 4 people (even with the 1.14 patch)?

There seems to be very few people in the community that are willing to play MP games, and actually have reasonably good pings. When proceeding to the game lobby, half of the players usually don' t end up making it.

The requirement to ask people to leave when their connection is not up to speed really makes it a lot more effort than its worth. Crashing is still an issue, although less than previously.

Players who join a game, if they are lucky enough not to be disconnected, quit the game as soon as things aren't going their way. Instead of allowing an AI to take them over, the entire civ gets destroyed. Persuading people to continue investing time in a game when they are less developed or less powerful in the beginning is too difficult - it's human nature not to want to invest more time in a losing situation.

When a game actually works, usually its only 2 or 3 players. With so few players, it's not really Civilization, it just becomes a glorified wargame, as someone mentioned on another thread.

[Dis]

I like the screen name.

there is always pbem. I still have hope for that. I have several games going on.

[FNBrown]

I've given up on LAN play due to persistent out of synch errors.

Just finished a hotseat game... although I don't think I have the patience to use that feature repeatedly. I'd really like to see the LAN play work more reliably.

[delmar]

Re: Who's given up on MP?

I went to Gamespy once, spent there ~3 hours, and I am never going back. However, multiplayer is not only Gamespy. You can find opponents outside of Gamespy (e.g. on this forum) and play Direct IP. PBEM is also a very good alternative (maybe the best, not sure yet). If you survive the first 4000 years without dying of boredom, that is.

As for the features you requested:

- balanced starting positions: would really help, but how do you evaluate the strength of a starting position?

- recording statistics: Would be interesting but not sure how important it is. I think I don't understand what you would do with this information. Could you elaborate?

- proper recording of scores: It would be good to get a better indicator about the strength of a Civ within a particular game, that's for sure. I am not sure though that I could come up with a good formula. Maybe there shouldn't be a single "score" at all, rather a set of statistics (maybe that's what you mean with the above?). However, you are talking about the end score, I believe. I never played for scores. Maybe just because the scoring system is weak. I suspect though that people playing for scores are missing out on the spirit of Civ (though it's always possible that I am missing something )

- automatic organizing of games including people of reasonably close skill levels: how would you know automatically who is reasonably close? IMHO the only way to decide this is to play it out. And even if you kick someone's ass in one game, how do you know it's not because you were lucky and he was not?

-stability: Well, what can I say. Maybe that this is not a feature at all, this is a must. I've had pretty good experience with 3 humans + 4 AI though. And I would really like to try with 4 or more humans.

- save games on a central server (to avoid edits or cheats): I am somewhat surprised that so many people are concerned about this but I guess I must be naive since, ... well, so many people are concerned about this. Maybe you should check out this thread:

http://www.apolyton.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68730

and the CivII thread referenced there. Apparently the CivII folks came up with some method to catch and ban cheaters, I guess we could do the same or similar with Civ3.

- ability to see who's in the lobby, store buddy lists, etc. without having to use Gamespy: Which lobby? Gamespy is a (the?) lobby, nothing more, isn't it? I decided not to use Gamespy because I realized that I don't care who is in the lobby. You can't play Civ3 in a reasonable way with random people, as you point out very accurately. This forum seems to be a good place to find "good" people, whatever "good" means to you. You can also have a buddy list here, if I remember correctly, although I have never used it. My buddy list is in my head.

As for Civ3 MP becoming a glorified war game, yes, that's definitely a risk. Although I think it depends greatly on the personality and the skill level of the people who are playing and the game settings. I don't think you can win by war mongering against people who are at the same level as you, or on a continents or archipelago map, or if there are 4 AIs on Emperor level next to you.

[War4ever]

i woudn't say i have given up, but i think more patches are needed to make it really playable in the way civ was meant to be played

[Panag]

Originally posted by War4ever
i woudn't say i have given up, but i think more patches are needed to make it really playable in the way civ was meant to be played

hi ,

its a general feeling , or you can read a book and try PDEM , ......

have a nice christmas day

[zulu9812]

I was in a 3-player game (ping was 290) and the lag was 6 seconds at around 2000BC shortly after that the game froze for one of the players. He wasn't automatically kicked either, so the game froze for everyone.

[Hydey]

I might have given up but we can't even buy the bloody game yet

[Eli]

I've given up. Well, it never worked for me in the first place anyway.

As Diss said, at least the PBEM option is working fine.

[Panag]

Originally posted by Eli
I've given up. Well, it never worked for me in the first place anyway.

As Diss said, at least the PBEM option is working fine.

hi ,

well like some mentioned the other day "the grass grows faster" , ........

at present some players are trying to setup an MP game with skynet , with its own server space , skynet has done this for countless other games and they tend to work a bit better when played there , at least there are no time out's , .....

more later when it works

have a nice day

[Brutus66]

My wife and I have tried a LAN Regicide game on a huge map. No lag to complain about, but everytime I went directly for an AI's capital and killed their regent, the game would hang for a minute while it changed all of that player's cities to rubble and removed their units. Then the game would drop my wife's connection.
The only solution was to take the majority of the AI's cities before going for the kill. I guees there's less for the game to update when most of the units and cities are gone.
Pretty lame though- Firaxis can do better.
The AI seems to be at a loss when playing this game form too. They just keep their regent in their capitol- no guessing involved where he might be hiding.

[Harovan]

I tried several times, but can't get a decent MP game. I don't like duels (that'd be the easiest but it's not civ as it was meant to be) and would like to play a game against 2-3 human opponents, but alas - either I find the people and the bloody game doesn't work, or I see invitations like "hya d00d w4nn4 play?", no thanks.

I'm close to give up online MP. PBEM works so far for me, although has issues too, oh well.

[ThePlagueRat]

Is the gamespy the stuff who comes along with PTW ?

If so i've done a few games, and I use to win a lot.
I always win on walkover. Cause I sit there for about 6 hours,
and the cowards give up or gets hungry, sleepy, etc.

But some games have been interesting, though.
Almost got beaten to, but he gave up when my berserks came.

Can we register our IP-somwhere for direct play?

[antmanbrooks]

< this is me waiting for multiplayer turns??

It seems to me that on gamespy PTW is really difficult to actually get a game started. My girlfriend tried for about 2 hours yesterday before getting into a game. everyones pings where red and by the time the game started it was just completely unplayable. It was a mad rush for swordsmen, unless you happened to be Carthage who have an immediate advantage. Certain Civs are completely unplayable in multi because eveyone just rushes for the attack - I do the same myself!
After about 5-8 cities for each civ the game was so bogged down with lag, that you didn't get time to carefully plan your cities build cues because you had too many units to worry about before the enemy attacked them? THIS IS NOT HOW CIV SHOULD BE PLAYED, if you want RTS games then there are much more reliable, fun titles out there. AOM & total war to name a couple. I don't know if this is just me but I play civ because its turn based and you can take things a little easier to plan each move rather than being thrown in the mad rush to be quicker than your opponents at building things! Don't get me wrong I'm not **** at this either but its just not the reason I play civ. It would be so much better if it didn't jump around all jerky whenever you moved a unit and you wern't pressured to think of absolutely every little thing because the cue management is ****! Well there we go rant over, and before anyone says, I know you can have it completely turn based, but at the moment it's just a relief to get into any game you can, because more often than not it crashes before you get there. I'll give it a few more chances and if I can't get a fun, non lag game I'm taking it back! If we all do the same Firaxis won't release this sort of unfinished product in the future. If other companies can produce reliable titles why can't they????

If anyone knows a better way to set up a game with a few people who want to play a turn based game that will play without lag let me know. I'm willing to connect directly to an IP if anyone else wants too.

[antmanbrooks]

< this is me waiting for multiplayer turns??

It seems to me that on gamespy PTW is really difficult to actually get a game started. My girlfriend tried for about 2 hours yesterday before getting into a game. everyones pings where red and by the time the game started it was just completely unplayable. It was a mad rush for swordsmen, unless you happened to be Carthage who have an immediate advantage. Certain Civs are completely unplayable in multi because eveyone just rushes for the attack - I do the same myself!
After about 5-8 cities for each civ the game was so bogged down with lag, that you didn't get time to carefully plan your cities build cues because you had too many units to worry about before the enemy attacked them? THIS IS NOT HOW CIV SHOULD BE PLAYED, if you want RTS games then there are much more reliable, fun titles out there. AOM & total war to name a couple. I don't know if this is just me but I play civ because its turn based and you can take things a little easier to plan each move rather than being thrown in the mad rush to be quicker than your opponents at building things! Don't get me wrong I'm not **** at this either but its just not the reason I play civ. It would be so much better if it didn't jump around all jerky whenever you moved a unit and you wern't pressured to think of absolutely every little thing because the cue management is ****! Well there we go rant over, and before anyone says, I know you can have it completely turn based, but at the moment it's just a relief to get into any game you can, because more often than not it crashes before you get there. I'll give it a few more chances and if I can't get a fun, non lag game I'm taking it back! If we all do the same Firaxis won't release this sort of unfinished product in the future. If other companies can produce reliable titles why can't they????

If anyone knows a better way to set up a game with a few people who want to play a turn based game that will play without lag let me know. I'm willing to connect directly to an IP if anyone else wants too.