For Sid Meier

[BigToolV8]

After playing Civ3 I was very impressed with your fine game. It worked well unpatched and the support was good. I couldn`t wait to "buy" Play the world. I was under the understanding that I`d be able to "play The World" with the new addon. How wrong I was. The whole point of PTW was the multiplayer feature. There are many problems with your new game m8. I wonder if you are aware of them, I`ve been trying to play a game now for 3 days and have only managed to launch and play 4 or 5 times . It is not clear to many peeps I`ve talked to where to get the patch, the Civ3 site does not tell European`s that they need a differant patch to the American one. Indeed the European patch is not easy to find. There are still problems with the new patch. I know not all issues can be resolved with 1 10 meg patch. But I do feel like PTW is a poor effort. Civ is not unreal tournament, why does it lag so much? It`s a turn based strategy game and I `m running a 600k cable modem. The lag is terrible, surly this would be a major concern while this game was in development, is it possible that this aspect as been overlooked? Please fix the Lag, patch support, chat going missing during games (i`d like to be able to say more than 2 words), crashes during launches and anglo american version conflicts as soon as possible. I feel very let down and the situation now is that PTW is going back into the box and into the pile of game I don`t play anymore. Sad but true. Thnx anyway Sid.


My most respectful thnx BigToolV8

[WarpStorm]

I'm not Sid, but I'll respond anyway.

First off, Sid has no control over what goes on the Civ3.com website. It is owned and run by Infogrames, not Firaxis, and they seem to be slacking on updates.

You are right, Civ3 is not Unreal Tournament. It is much easier to remove the appearance of lag and latency in FPS games than TBS games. Strange, but true. Why, how, huh? Most FPS games don't really care if message packets are lost or out of order. They keep going by using variantions of client side predicition to keep the game running smooth. This has the side effect of no 2 players actually 'knowing' the 'real' state of the game. Unfortunately, this won't cut it in a TBS game. You want every move that you make to be done in the order you did it and none to be thrown out. This means that you have to wait for the messages to be accepted by the other players before moving on. This is the cause of the lagginess. If you have a ping of 500, this means that every action will take about a half a second on the average to complete.

What can be done about this? Using the current model, a little tweaking might help a little, but the fundamental problem will still be there. The only thing I can think of to really fix this is to add a strict I-Go-U-Go mode where the entire message traffic (with the exception of chat and diplomacy) are sent at the end of players turns instead of continuously. This would allow the game to be lag-free when you can actually do something. This mode (as well as hotseat and PBEM) should have an Important Events Log, as you would miss everything when it isn't your turn.

PS, Sid, if you ever want to speak up on this forum, you have a captive audience.

[zulu9812]

Sid Meier has had almost nothing to do with the Civilization since the release of Civilization Gold in '94. Brian (edit ) Reynolds did Civ2, and Jeff Briggs did Civ3. The "Sid Meier's Civilization" is just a brand name now.

[Peter Triggs]

How'd Burt manage to take time off his acting career to do Civ2?

[jdd2007]

well if sid meier isnt doing anything with civ3, how come he doesnt have the time to visit apolyton?

[zulu9812]

He probably does, but do you really think he'd pick the username Sid Meier?

[WarpStorm]

Well, maybe, just maybe, he's working on his next game.

[CrONoS]

What you say it's true.... but I want to know if CivNet, Civ2 MP, CTP was lagfree in MP? If yes, Civ3PTW have "strangely programmed" PTW since the others game was fine in MP and are TBS games.

Nice day

WarpStorm:
TBS games. Strange, but true. Why, how, huh? Most FPS games don't really care if message packets are lost or out of order. They keep going by using variantions of client side predicition to keep the game running smooth. This has the side effect of no 2 players actually 'knowing' the 'real' state of the game. Unfortunately, this won't cut it in a TBS game. You want every move that you make to be done in the order you did it and none to be thrown out. This means that you have to wait for the messages to be accepted by the other players before moving on. This is the cause of the lagginess. If you have a ping of 500, this means that every action will take about a half a second on the average to complete.

[WarpStorm]

CivNet, Civ2 MPG, and SMAC all used the I-GO-U-GO method of multi-play and therefore were relatively lag free. I don't know about CTP, because I didn't like it in SP.

[zulu9812]

Incidentally, I don't know for sure if Sid posts here under a pseudonym - but I do know he checks the boards. About a year ago, he listed his 5 favourite sites in a mini-interview with a UK PC mag and Apolyton was #1.

[Franses]

Originally posted by WarpStorm
CivNet, Civ2 MPG, and SMAC all used the I-GO-U-GO method of multi-play and therefore were relatively lag free. I don't know about CTP, because I didn't like it in SP.

I played a lot of CTP MP games and it worked fine. So it can be done. Have had many hours of fun with it. It is turn based but you can see if the opponent attackes and what the results are. So, I suppose it is more than I-GO-U-GO.

It must be possible to improve PTW dramatically. It now even plays badly sometimes over a LAN. Unbelievable. Having said that I have to admit that I have a couple of one to one games running good and having a lot of fun too.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by zulu9812
Sid Meier has had almost nothing to do with the Civilization since the release of Civilization Gold in '94. Brian (edit ) Reynolds did Civ2, and Jeff Briggs did Civ3. The "Sid Meier's Civilization" is just a brand name now.

It is a MARKETING GIMMICK, or trick. And it won't work next time.

Brian Reynolds? Let's keep him and dump Jeff Briggs for Civ 4.

[notyoueither]

Can we dump certain posters?

[Swissy]

Originally posted by jdd2007


well if sid meier isnt doing anything with civ3, how come he doesnt have the time to visit apolyton?

Seeing that the last game he had any real input as to design was SimGolf. I take that as an indication of what his current intrests lie. That means he is on the golf course, or calling his broker, or checking the bank to see if the latest check from Infgrammes has arrived. One thing he is not doing is checking Aployton, for until the checks stop rolling in he has no reason to be concerned with what we say.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by Swissy


Seeing that the last game he had any real input as to design was SimGolf. I take that as an indication of what his current intrests lie. That means he is on the golf course, or calling his broker, or checking the bank to see if the latest check from Infgrammes has arrived. One thing he is not doing is checking Aployton, for until the checks stop rolling in he has no reason to be concerned with what we say.

We should all be so lucky.