Managing your Multiplayer turns

[Obese Monkfish]

Well, I was able to play about 1 hour of MP versus a guy with 75 ping last night. It, of course, crashed just as things got interesting, but what the hey, I'm learning to be less furious about this whole thing.

Anyway.

We were playing turnless. I had extreme trouble managing my turns. Part of that is due to the lag, which, although minimal, was definitely there, making stuff slower... and part of that was due to just plain old incompetence on my part.

Stuff I noticed was difficult
- it didn't pop up to tell me when I discovered science
- it didn't pop up when stuff finished building, so I had to constantly go around making sure I didn't overflow with spearmen
- I couldn't quite tell when I would get more moves and when I wouldn't??


Any advice here? I play a very traditional Civ 3. I get popups for everything, and never use build queues.

Tips?

[Dominae]

Right now, Turnless is the worst possible way to play MP; even people with low pings report being extremely frustrated at how you "lose time" in Turnless.

I suggest playing Simultaneous, with the time limit set to 'None'. This way, every gets to play at the same time, and the last person to click in ends the turn. You feel sort of bad if you turn takes longer than other players (due to diplomacy and whatnot), but most people I've played with didn't seem to mind the short wait.

As for managing your turns, there's a few things you should keep in mind.

1. Always move your units at the beginning of your turn. CTRL-D (IIRC) forces all automatic moves to happen right away instead of at the end of your turn, which is really helpful.

2. Always keep an eye on your Science. This is especially important when you meet other civs, since the tech cost may go down.

3. City production doesn't produce a popup, but there is a message that appears in the top left of your screen. In the early game it's usually enough to inform you what's going on (but I can imagine it gets sort of cluttered in the late game...if ever you get there). Also, the "cycle through cities" button is really helpful, especially if you're set up to see the production and turns remaining right from the main map.

4. Learn to use shortcuts in order to avoid opening new screens. This is especially important with regards to city production: you can right click on a city and change your production from the main map, instead of having to open the heavy city screen. With lag, opening city screens takes a long time (an extra 20s to each turn, depending on number of cities).

5. I don't really have any advice for comabt in Turnless or Simultaneous (I've never gotten to that point in a game yet). Again, I assume it's a good idea to move your military units first.


Dominae