Differences between MP and SP?

[Zachriel]

What will be the differences between Multiplayer and Singleplayer games?

HOMELAND DEFENSE
For instance, I think that most players will have larger militaries during all ages of the game. Players will not leave interior cities unprotected. And due to the possibility of a co-ordinated, combined-arms attack, players would be expected to produce more defenders than against the AI.

CITYPACKING?
Also, will CityPacking be required to stay competitive?

http://www.zachriel.com/gotm7/ad1000-PersianInfantry.htm

DIPLOMACY
Finally, what difference will it make when you visit your diplomacy screen and know that those faces represent real human intelligence, some perhaps intent on your destruction?

[WarpStorm]

Some perhaps intent on your destruction? Some?

[Theseus]

When you say citypacking, you mean 3-tile spacing? More?

[DrFell]

Really tight packing will work well. The disadvantage of really tight packing in civ2 was the increasing unhappiness, which made them really unproductive after a bit. Also, if you packed your cities too tight you loose out on WLTK day later in the game. Increasing unhappiness is gone in civ3, and WLTK day is much more useless. Also, in civ2 tight city spacing you'd often have to stick cities in bad locations. Some would grow slowly and never really be useful. In civ3 you get higher corruption, but you can use those corrupt cities for pop rushing and the like, and since the city square automatically produces two food etc there are really no disadvantages for tight city spacing.

And of course, two cities grow faster than one.

[Inverse Icarus]

Firaxis (i think Mikey B) said you have a "slider" where you set your mood. It would be fun but would you ever believe it?

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Theseus
When you say citypacking, you mean 3-tile spacing? More?

I was referring to when players place towns only a square or two apart, especially when without regard for the terrain. This results in a short-term gain in production. When combined with an early rush, it may be difficult to stop with a standard city spread.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by DrFell
Really tight packing will work well. . . . since the city square automatically produces two food etc there are really no disadvantages for tight city spacing.

And of course, two cities grow faster than one.

That's correct.

I am generally against any hard rule preventing the placement of towns close together, but I think it would unbalance the game if that was the only viable strategy. Town placement should ideally be according to the terrain.

[DrFell]

'Optimal' city spacing for size 20 cities will leave you very weak indeed in the early game. Not only will your expansion be a bit slower, but cities so far apart are much more difficult to defend against a rush, in fact, perfectionist empires like this will be the early rushers' dream opponents.

[GI Josh]

Warfare will be more intense and shorter lived. Expect surprise attacks against border cities w/i the movement radius of fast movers, i.e. cities that can be taken in the first turn. Post-engineering, I for one will be foresting my borders to slow down a surprise attack.

Expect more frequent attacks - a human won't let another human take a large lead without challenge. A pure builder strategy will no longer be viable - as soon as a human sees that you're temporarily weak as you build infrastructure, he'll attack. Speaking of which, be much more wary about RoPs if you have weak interior defenses.

The more human players and the fewer ai civ's in a given game, the less important reputation will be. Humans won't care about "reputation". Post-RR, and especially post-arty, being able to enlist an ai ally against a human player won't be worth anything; it will however be useful in the early game period, especially on higher levels, where the ai civs can outproduce humans and stack of doom tactics can inflict real pain on a human player (unlike post-rr/post-arty).

Human-to-human diplomacy will be incredibly rich. Expect to see two humans conclude a military alliance, only for one to be secretly allied with a different civ and stab its public supposed-ally in the back. MPPs won't be worth spit with human players - humans will feel free to ignore an MPP and not attack. There will be a lot of phantom wars where a partner in an MPP or mil alliance never does squat.

I would love to see unit trading - you could really hurt a human by supplying units (secretly of course) to a rival.

Germany will never make it to panzers as a viable civ - too scary!

That's it off the top of my head.

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
Some perhaps intent on your destruction? Some?

Maybe I exaggerated a little!

(There may be shifting alliances. Or there may be options for team play, or coalition victories.)

[Capt Dizle]

Let me talk a bit from my experience from SMAC PBEM. The first thing you saw happening was people stepping forward to act as CMNs. Creator, moderator, and uh, I forget what the N stands for. These people create the games and act as referees.

Most players did not want to play games with an early rush so the maps were created so that player had room to build a bit before being subjected to combat. Early exploration took place for the purpose of establishing contact with other players. Diplomatic agreements were more focused early on research swapping and trade. Backstabbing was a staple of play. Most of the time you found that the best players were both good technically and diplomatically. In most cases, whoever won the diplomatic game won overall.

There were of course team games where you worked together to beat the other side or sides without having to play the diplomacy game.

The big difference in the two games as I see it will be the movement restrictions in enemy territory and the inability of airpower to kill units outright. In SMAC, you have choppers clearing out defenders and paratroops dropping in, you can clean out a rival in just a few turns if you get the tech edge.

Its going to be a little bit different in Civ3.

[Capt Dizle]

One other comment. The environment is very competitive. And for the record, from first hand experience, Vel can play.

[Theseus]

Does it devolve into total war, the way that Civ2 MP seems to?

[DrFell]

Probably. You don't end up good at civ2 if you're only good at war though.

[SABRA]

Zachriel ; nice site you got .

, they should give us the option to switch between players like in civ2 !