PBEM Questions

[Slax]

1. If an human enemy unit attacks, what do you see when you load up the save file? The animated battle, or just the results?

2. How are trades conducted between human players?

[alva]

1. no idea

2. over severall turns AFAIK, so it's best to do this in seperate e-mails

[ayronis]

Strategies will have to be re-thought if the battles are not displayed when you load your turn (and I am doubtful they will be.) I can see this having two major effects on gameplay:

I. Quick strikes with amphibious or fast moving strike teams will be even more usefull. If you can wipe out your opponent fast enough, they will not even be aware of what hit them. In many ways this is a little more realistic in the pre-modern ages, but it will make for a great deal of frustration if you load up your game only to see "X tribe has declared war on you" and you discover 3 or 4 of your frontier cities missing.

II. Because of I. people will begin employing spotter units and outposts more often. This may be the point of outposts inclusion in PTW. It certainly would be fun to notice that someone has forgotten to leave a spotter and ambush them - now wouldn't it?
Naturally you will know who you are at war with, or who just declared war on you, but the 'fog of war' becomes a lot more intimidating this way. It also makes you consider the distance of visibility caused by certain terrain more.

Even though it introduces more tactical and strategic options, I think it will be more frustrating than anything else. Only time will tell....

[Slax]

1. Enemy attack - I think there should be replay of each battle at the start of your turn (separated by a popup 'OK' click). Can anyone confirm we see nothing?

2. Trade - I have heard of people dealing by email outside of the game, but how is the final trade made? Is it a) player#1 Proposal, b)player #2 Accepts? Even if the deal is negotiated outside of the game, does the final trade take 2 turns?

[ayronis]

1) The replay would be nice....

2) The final trade takes 2 actions, just as you described, but it is only one 'turn'. Both you and your trade partner are on the same 'turn', even though you don't take them at the same time.
If you are player #1 you do not see the benifits until your next turn. In many cases this will not make a difference because the effects of most trades aren't applied until the next round of calculations. The real disadvantage will be if you are trading for technology, you will have to begin producing your new units one turn later...

...alas there is no other way to handle trades in PBEM is there?

[Borc]

If i load a pbem-save file NOT from the BIG START-MENUE but from inside the game (load new game option) then i can play a pbem game as a normal single player game without any need to give passwords anymore... so it is very easy to cheat :-//

[Tharsonius]

Originally posted by Borc
If i load a pbem-save file NOT from the BIG START-MENUE but from inside the game (load new game option) then i can play a pbem game as a normal single player game without any need to give passwords anymore... so it is very easy to cheat :-//

hmm, I hope they patch this soon

[Slax]

According to the Gamespot review:

"There's no replay of the other players' turns. If an enemy unit scoots in and out of your viewing range, you'll never see it. If you lose a unit, it just vanishes and you have no indication it was ever there. If a city falls, you can't see who attacked it. If a unit is lost in a pitched battle, you don't know how damaged the enemy was as a result of the skirmish."

This answers my original question! Kinda sucks.

[Tiberius]

This was about HotSeat, not PBEM. I know they are more or less the same thing, but who knows? Could somebody (who played PBEM enough) to give us a hint how things are working?

If it's true, not only it "kinda sucks" but sucks badly. Sorry for saying it, but right now this is how I feel. I was hoping that there was at least one multiplayer gametype they've done properly

[klesh]

CivII's PBEM games display no enemy moves, as they've already happened. Since battles *could* have different outcomes, its rediculous to assume battrles would be replayed. Here is a post where I was able to slide a 30 unit stack behind enemy lines, and my opponent didn't manage to see them during his turn, though he came 1 tilke away from spotting me. I took his city the next turn. It's called recon people, know where your enemy is!

-FMK.

[TheBirdMan]

Originally posted by Slax
According to the Gamespot review:

"There's no replay of the other players' turns. If an enemy unit scoots in and out of your viewing range, you'll never see it. If you lose a unit, it just vanishes and you have no indication it was ever there. If a city falls, you can't see who attacked it. If a unit is lost in a pitched battle, you don't know how damaged the enemy was as a result of the skirmish."

This answers my original question! Kinda sucks.

This is in fact very good. That does not sucks!

[Slax]

Well I disagree with the last two posters. If the enemy moves, and I miss it, OK, my mistake. But, if a battle happens, I want to see it. I obviously had units there to report the battle back to the capitol. And, the replay would not be the actual battle, so the outcome would never change.

It still sucks, IMO.

[Tiberius]

I agree, Slax. If something happened regarding my units, cities, etc, I'd like to know. A replay, a news report, something.

[TheBirdMan]

I still do not agree with (many of) you.

If an enemy unit scoots in and out of your viewing range, you'll never see it.

I think this more like a feature than a glitch. Fast units (with enough movementpoints) should be able to scout without being seen. If people used the abilities of their own scouts/diplomats/slavers etc, they would see the enemy first.

**

If you lose a unit, it just vanishes and you have no indication it was ever there.

The unit is killed, no survivors. No one alive to tell you. If you used two units who always can see each other, you would know.

**

If a city falls, you can't see who attacked it.

Ok - agree. But under certain conditions, I still do see the possibilities/advantages in a sneakattack. I like this.

**

If a unit is lost in a pitched battle, you don't know how
damaged the enemy was as a result of the skirmish."

Fine I say. You shouldn't know.

[Tiberius]

Do you play single player, BirdMan? You can see all of these there. Multiplayer should be the same. It's not a different game, the only difference is that you play it with humans, not the AI.

I don't feel like I should check every turn my every unit, city, and so on. This is why I have advisors. They should inform me. "Mr. President, the germans have sneak attacked us and conquered Apolyton" or "Your Majesty, the faitfull citizens of Leipzig have joined our empire". News reports, this is what I'm asking for (or better an event replay).