Turnless MP is NOT True Civilization At Heart

[NeOmega]

slow medium and fast adjust themselves as empires get bigger....

back to the topic, I agree, there are far better RTS's than Civ III turnless could ever hope to be.

I will never play a turnless game, you can bank on that.

I mean, wheres the diplomacy in turnless, and what is Civ III without diplomacy?

[notyoueither]

BTW, do not confuse Turnless with Simultaneous.

I agree Turnless is trash for the RTS masses. I have always laughed that they call that 'strategy'... Yah, right.

Simultaneous OTOH. is quite fun. You are all moving at once. He may move that unit, and then you, or...

You can also set the Simultaneous clock to None, ie, no clock and no time limit.

Simultaneous is probably the best of both worlds. You do not have to wait for all the other players to move before you do, and you have the option of taking as much time as is required for your move. People hosting especially need this, since lag is worse for them, they often run out of time to consider everything with even a slow clock. Especially if they become the largest empire.

[War4ever]

BTW did any of you play civ2 MP in simul mode, your right, civ should be played turnbased, but in civ2 it was amazing how quick the game did go in simul mode.....

and lets be honest, there are way better rts games out there, but no better tbs games IMO.....

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by notyoueither
Simultaneous OTOH. is quite fun. You are all moving at once. He may move that unit, and then you, or...

Simultaneous is probably the best of both worlds. You do not have to wait for all the other players to move before you do, and you have the option of taking as much time as is required for your move. People hosting especially need this, since lag is worse for them, they often run out of time to consider everything with even a slow clock. Especially if they become the largest empire.

I was one of the lobbist for introducing Simultaneous in Civ III, and I'm considering to buy PTW just to give a try at Simul mode.

Just 2 questions for you, if you already played it:
a) Can you confirm I can play Simultaneous in Single player mode, too (AKA every other player is AI)?
b) Do you find the game stable enough in Simultaneous mode (AFAIK most of crashes and bug alert are related at internet game)?

Thank you in advance

[Sarxis]

I'm sticking with TBS.

[metalhead]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith


I was one of the lobbist for introducing Simultaneous in Civ III, and I'm considering to buy PTW just to give a try at Simul mode.

Just 2 questions for you, if you already played it:
a) Can you confirm I can play Simultaneous in Single player mode, too (AKA every other player is AI)?
b) Do you find the game stable enough in Simultaneous mode (AFAIK most of crashes and bug alert are related at internet game)?

Thank you in advance

Answer to (a) - Well, you could go into MP, host a game, and launch with yourself as the only player. Add a few AI civs, and you could then try out the simultaneous mode at your leisure without other people bugging you.

Answer to (b) - So far, the only games I've been able to play are simultaneous. The host has frozen every time on the other settings (when the game has actually launched), but simultaneous seems to work OK, it isn't even that laggy, although unit animations are pretty jerky. Of course, this is with 2 human players only. I have yet to play a working game with more than 2 people. So, I would say, at least right now, it seems to me that simultaneous is the most stable mode.

As for turnless, I think everyone owes it to themselves to try a turnless game with accelerated production and a fast timer. It will likely drive you crazy after 10 minutes or so.

[Wittlich]

Originally posted by metalhead
As for turnless, I think everyone owes it to themselves to try a turnless game with accelerated production and a fast timer. It will likely drive you crazy after 10 minutes or so.

Actually, my partner and I (mistakenly) tried it. You say try it for 10 minutes?! We were both a basket case in just the first 2 minutes!

Need-less-to-say, we restarted a new game in the turn-based mode.

[ajerzguy]

Originally posted by Adm.Naismith


I was one of the lobbist for introducing Simultaneous in Civ III, and I'm considering to buy PTW just to give a try at Simul mode.

Just 2 questions for you, if you already played it:
a) Can you confirm I can play Simultaneous in Single player mode, too (AKA every other player is AI)?
b) Do you find the game stable enough in Simultaneous mode (AFAIK most of crashes and bug alert are related at internet game)?

Thank you in advance

You can play simutaneous in single player thru mutiplayer LAN. Set up # of computer opponents. Presently in one now for more than 2 hrs with no crashes at all.

[DJ RRebel]

Wittlich ... I can only imagine !!! lol

Must have been a nightmare !!!

Anyhow ... let's hope the game options get developed a bit more with future patches !!!

[neonext]

It's amazing to me how many people can knock the turnless mode without even trying it.

For those of you who HAVE tried it, you have a valid point by saying it takes away a lot of the strategy involved by making the game have such a faster pace.

There IS still much of the game's strategy involved though, you just don't always have the time to figure it all out, especially if you have a huge empire.

Just realise that the turnless mode is there for people who want the Civ experience, but don't want to wait an eternity for their next turn (btw, this is true in SP and MP). Simultanious mode with a turn time limit is a great way of handling TBS while elminating a lot of the waiting, but it DOES NOT solve the problem.

Also, saying anything like, "if i wanted to play an RTS i would go buy one" is just plain stupid. This game wasn't designed to be a RTS game, so of course it couldn't compete with RTS games. Hell, even calling the turnless mode a RTS game is wrong, because it really isn't real-time. It's semi-real-time. It's basically in between TBS and RTS because there are technically still "turns", they are just on forced timers and on everything from unit turns to city production turns.

Some people just don't have the patience to wait 5 minutes while Mr. Tweek-On-Everything-In-My-Whole-Empire is finishing his turn. For those who do have the patience and want to play civ the way it was meant to, there are plenty of other modes for you to play.

[mok]

I have tried turnless mode and to me it does have the feel of an RTS with too much to do.

The interface does not lend itself to turnless mode very well. Data is not displayed in a way that it can be analyzed in a second. When your turn rolls the unit you had selected changes, adding to confusion(this is a bug IMHO). Being able to affect changes to a city take too much time, you need hot keys for production changes. NEVER allow popups to appear.

My main gripe about it though is that you are unable to set a game clock. Sure they have a "Fast, Normal, SLow" setting, but
why cant the Host decide what the actual times should be? Say, allow him to input the number of seconds allowed in a turn. Or, like a chess clock, the number of seconds allowed in an entire game. Or input a constant into what ever time formula it appears they are using based on game turn.

If Firaxis can give the host control of the game clock, then you can have a game where players are constrained to time limits in managing their world, and then the clock becomes more of a part of the strategy, instead of just some Zurg Rush-like clickfest.

Civ III is very strategy and micromanagement feature rich, and those who "do not want to wait" in multiplay need to buy something else, like Age of Kings or Empire Earth.