Love the Single Player... But the Internet is pretty pathetic IMO. Why couldn't it be as easy and as properly constructed as Battle.net (Blizzard Entertainment) for WC,Diablo and SC. That would make it so much neater.

I seemed to have missed why you think it's "lame."

hmmm constantly getting kicked out of gamespy - regardless if my anti virus and firewalls are on or off works for me. Trying pbem now since no one I know wants to play by IP.

I seemed to have missed why you think it's "lame."
Selecting a game is just frustrating.

1. The list keeps changing on you. There is a "Refresh List" button, but why would anyone ever use it when the list changes every .5 seconds? The interface would become 72% less lame just by making the list refresh Manual instead of Automatic. Right now it is incredibly difficult to read the game titles, or even join the right game without the list changing under your mouse. I am extremely disappointed with this feature: the person who wrote this interface obviously expected there to be 7 games of Civ at any given time.

2. The filters are stupid. First off, there is one new filter that no other online game has (Games in Progress). It is the only filter that does not have a text name, just a stupid icon without a tooltip. It is the only filter guaranteed to not be recognized by veteran online players, so I guess it makes perfect sense to make it the only undocumented one.

Secondly, there is no "Show me the games I can actually play" filter button. The filter buttons do not hide the games you selected against, but merely put them on the bottom of the list. Since there are multiple filters, this guarantees you cannot produce a short list that has what you want.

Also, the Ping filter puts 0s ahead of 95's. So if you sort for lowest ping, you get 7 pages of 0's. You have to sort for highest ping, and then pick the lowest one. Here's a clue: if a game has 0 ping... don't f**king show it to me. What the hell do I want to see it for? I can't do anything with it.

The stupidity of sorting the list by "locked" or "in progress" demonstrates the total lack of thought put into this interface. If you are trying to join a game, you either want a) a new game, b) your friend's locked game which you have the password to, c) a game in progress that you got kicked out of. The filters should be; "Find a new game," "Find a game in progress," "Find a private game." The screen should NOT SHOW YOU the games you just expressly said you weren't interested in.

3. There is no /ignore function to silence the spam from idiots. WTF? Has no one at Firaxis ever played an online RTS? What map script are these guys living on?


The interface they created looks like it would be really, really cool... on my office lan. For internet use, it demonstrates an incredible sense of naivite and total lack of experience with the actual internet.

I love Civ4, but the internet interface is terrible. The most amusing thing is that it is just as terrible as the Total War interface. It's like there is one person who writes the same retarded, frustrating, stupid interface to these games, over and over. Except Starcraft. Starcraft has been out there for ages; Starcraft makes it easy to find a game you want to play even when there are 30K games in progress. All I can figure is that nobody else ever wants their game to be as successful as Starcraft.

Yes the lobby has problems but the bugs will be fixed soon in the first patch. In the mean time some people find running in windowed mode help prevent or delay crashes. Just set "fullscreen=0" in the ini.

Yes it would be nice have had the "pilar" icon explained, but the filters as is do work. I'm not sure how you expect the game interface to decide what a "private game" is? If you want a real private game that doesn't even show up on the game list use Direct IP.

We have compiled a list of interface improvements that we would like to see to make finding and organizing game easier, and have indicated these to the Dev's, how much makes it into the first patch or the next one is unknown right now, but improvements are sure to follow. We, on the ladder, expected the CIV lobby to be accessable with Arcade, which is a big help in multitasking and setting games up and dealling with drops and restarts, but it seems that Firaxis and Gamespy dropped the collective ball on this issue.

In the end the lobby will be quite usuable and functional I'm sure, and the MP game code itself is miles better that C3C ever was, and ofcourse there's the depth of strategy as well, I fully believe that this game will remain fun even without mods and XP's for a long time to come.

CS

Yes the lobby has problems but the bugs will be fixed soon in the first patch. In the mean time some people find running in windowed mode help prevent or delay crashes. Just set "fullscreen=0" in the ini.

Yes it would be nice have had the "pilar" icon explained, but the filters as is do work. I'm not sure how you expect the game interface to decide what a "private game" is? If you want a real private game that doesn't even show up on the game list use Direct IP.

We have compiled a list of interface improvements that we would like to see to make finding and organizing game easier, and have indicated these to the Dev's, how much makes it into the first patch or the next one is unknown right now, but improvements are sure to follow. We, on the ladder, expected the CIV lobby to be accessable with Arcade, which is a big help in multitasking and setting games up and dealling with drops and restarts, but it seems that Firaxis and Gamespy dropped the collective ball on this issue.

In the end the lobby will be quite usuable and functional I'm sure, and the MP game code itself is miles better that C3C ever was, and ofcourse there's the depth of strategy as well, I fully believe that this game will remain fun even without mods and XP's for a long time to come.

CS



Just stop using gamespy!!!

WillemIV stop using game spy, but that is what Civ IV automatically goes to for a mp game. What other options are there? besides direct ip and local lans?