Hybrid Playtesters Wanted

[Rommel2D]

In Keygen's PBEM trilogy it was stated that a game can be switched from online MP to PBEM and vice-versa, but the response there was less than enthusiastic. Has anyone successfully played a game like this?

I would like to play in an 8 player game on at least a standard sized map without accel. production. This would take rather long for standard PBEM, so I'm hoping this could be surmounted with online sessions when everyone is available on a weekend, to make progress, and PBEM to keep interest up between sessions. Even if the online session was a one time jump-start, it might be enough to get past the initial lull in interaction. Any humble pilgrims willing and able?

Essayon!

[DaveMcW]

I once tried to convert a PBEM to online mode and it refused to launch. The error message was "You cannot start a hotseat game with more than one player."

Also, loading MP games from the SP menu will convert all human opponents into AIs.

[Rommel2D]

Well, I was able to convert a saved simultaneous move game into PBEM, and play through a whole turn loading from the main menu without problems. There was no prompt for passwords, but they are hardly functional anyway. The jump-start idea at least would work.

Converting a PBEM save back to online is harder to test. As far as I could get with my save (the opponents were anonymous and long gone), the player slots in the launch screen were arranged oddly and there was no way to tell what would happen to players trying to connect.

Dave, when you tried to convert your PBEM to MP, were you trying to establish a connection with players on a network or make it hotseat? If it was a network, how did they show up on the screen? Did you change the "game type" pulldown to turn based _after_ loading the save? Did you turn off the turn timer? Were the save and all PCs using 1.21?

I don't think Firaxis had this option in mind when designing the interface, so we might have to figure out some tricks to make it work. There's no reason it shouldn't.

[DaveMcW]

It was a 2-player PBEM between the Koreans and Scandanavians with custom leader names.

There is no way to change the game type without unloading the save. The players showed up as Korea and Scandanavia in the chat, not as our leader names. And yes, both had 1.21.

The custom error message gave me the impression that they did anticipate this trick and blocked it from getting any farther.

[Rommel2D]

The game doesn't unload for me when changing game types. When I change a PBEM save to any of the online types, the player slots become open. It looks like it's waiting for someone to connect to them. (The wierd thing is that the top slot, vacated when the former PBEM host was eliminated, appears with my name and civ, but clicking on the numbered box to the left of the slot cycles through all the other players and thier respective civs.) If I select a computer player for the player slots, it assigns the AI the civ that had been there in the PBEM. The game name and settings remain the same and the players reappear in their slots if the type is changed back to hotseat or PBEM. Its not easy to describe, but the game is still there.

The error message was "You cannot start a hotseat game with more than one player."

The message makes no sense, at least not in this context. First off, a hotseat game needs more than one player. Anyway, why is hotseat mentioned at all? This is only about PBEM and online MP. Doesn't seem like a custom error message to me at all.

BTW, would you be interested in playing if it does work?

[caliskier]

Thanks for the message on my thread Rommel, I would be interested in playing a normal turn-based game that swiched to pbem, if you all could get it figured out. Now you have one person. I am out of practice though, I stopped playing civ 3 about a year ago to play the new metroid, and zelda games and to get engaged. I just got ptw so I may not be a very worthy aponent. or a good speller

[Rommel2D]

I hope you have some patience Caliskier, I don't think this will be getting off the ground real soon. I'm sort of planning to wait until the next patch is released, as it will likely improve connections and allow non-US speakers (;-) to join.

In the meantime, we can still test the MP interface to see if it works at all. Do you have the 1.21 patch and a good internet connection?